Maximillian Alvarez is editor-in-chief at the Real News Network and host of the podcast Working People, available at InTheseTimes.com. He is also the author of The Work of Living: Working People Talk About Their Lives and the Year the World Broke.
LaborInterviewPodcast
South Korea Declared War on Unions. Workers Are Fighting Back.
In the face of widespread repression, South Korean workers are rising up for fair pay and labor protections.
Maximillian Alvarez
LaborInterviewPodcast
Autoworkers Are Fighting for the Future of the Industry
Stagnant pay and hazardous conditions have driven autoworkers at the Big Three to organize.
Maximillian Alvarez
LaborInterviewPodcast
West Virginia University Administrators Just Announced Massive Layoffs. Campus Workers Aren’t Going Down Without a Fight.
The new WVU budget slashes nearly 10% of majors and 7% of all faculty, but campus workers are fighting back.
Maximillian Alvarez
LaborInterviewPodcast
Railroad Whistleblowers Keep Losing Their Jobs
Michael Paul Lindsey II, a locomotive conductor and engineer of 17 years, tried to sound the alarm on railroad safety. Not long after, he was fired.
Maximillian Alvarez
LaborInterviewPodcast
UPS Workers Aren't Afraid of a Fight
“[UPS management] love nothing more than to reward productive workers with more productivity. And people that keep up with that, by the time they’re 20 years in, they’re getting knee replacements, they’re getting hip replacements, their quality of life plummets.”
Maximillian Alvarez
LaborInterviewPodcast
LGBTQ+ Workers Are Organizing to Fight the Right
“You can’t legally be discriminated against based on your identity, but…bosses are going to find any excuse that they want to justify firing people or retaliating against people.”
Maximillian Alvarez
LaborInterviewPodcast
Neoliberalism Has Wreaked Havoc on Canadian Workers. Now, They’re Charting a New Path.
“Labor has not survived unscathed. It is quite scathed.”
Maximillian Alvarez
LaborInterviewPodcast
Canadian Workers Are Saying No to Precarity
Workers at the Canadian Labor Congress came together to share stories and organizing strategies.
Maximillian Alvarez
LaborInterviewPodcast
Cop City is Bad News for Working People
Kamau Franklin and Mariah Parker on the fight to stop Cop City in Atlanta.
Maximillian Alvarez
LaborInterviewPodcast
Norfolk Southern Won't Clean Up Their Mess Unless We Make Them
“Even early on, I knew it would not be safe to go back home.”
Maximillian Alvarez
LaborInterviewPodcast
Southern Workers Are Building a Movement to be Reckoned With
“The South got something to say, workers here have something to say.”
Maximillian Alvarez
InterviewPodcast
Writers Are More Powerful Than the Streaming Industry
“If we turn this career into a gig, into a hobby, the people who are going to be able to do it are the people who have generational wealth and privilege and are just doing this for fun.”
Maximillian Alvarez
Interview
How Right-Wing Media Fuels Transphobic Violence
Kayla Denker, a trans woman, war veteran, and legal gun owner, posted a video online toting a gun in response to CPAC’s call to “eradicate” “transgenderism.” She’s become a target of an internet trans panic mob ever since.
Maximillian Alvarez
LaborPodcast
Working People Podcast: University of Michigan Tried to Stop a Strike. It Didn't Go How They Planned.
Unable to stop the strike through the courts, university administrators have resorted to calling campus police, docking pay, and pressuring faculty to report on strikers, organizers say.
Maximillian Alvarez
Interview
“The People of Chicago Run the City”: Brandon Johnson on His Progressive Vision
We spoke with Chicago mayoral candidate Brandon Johnson about public safety, the housing crisis and building a movement against the neoliberal status quo.
Maximillian Alvarez
LaborPodcast
Rail Workers of the World, Unite!
Railroad workers and union reps from the US, UK, and France discuss the class struggle in their respective countries and how these struggles are connected internationally in this special episode of the ‘Working People’ podcast.
Maximillian Alvarez
Labor
Wall Street Caused the East Palestine Crisis
Rail companies are trying to turn astronomical 45% profit margins—and no one's stopping them. An interview with railroad worker Matt Weaver.
Maximillian Alvarez
LaborPodcast
Where Do Railroad Workers Go from Here?
Four railroad workers discuss Congress’s handling of the rail contract dispute, and how Wall Street’s destruction of the freight rail system is only going to get worse for workers, shippers, and all of us.
Maximillian Alvarez
Labor
In Key Swing States, Union Members Are Democrats’ Last Line of Defense
In 2020, UNITE HERE workers led the charge in canvassing voters and played a key role in Democrats’ electoral victories. This year, they’re taking the lead once again.
Maximillian Alvarez
Labor
Inside the Fight To Unionize Delta Air Lines
Delta is the last major airline in the US where flight attendants are not unionized. Its workers want to change that.
Maximillian Alvarez
Labor
I Survived the Rig Explosion That Caused the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill. This Is What I Saw.
It’s been 12 years since the oil spill caused by British Petroleum devastated the Gulf. A people’s history of this disaster has yet to be told.
Maximillian Alvarez
Labor
One Year Later, Friends and Family of Kroger Employee Driven to Suicide Want Justice
The tragic suicide of Evan Seyfried has been linked to targeted bullying and harassment by coworkers and management at Kroger—his loved ones are still seeking answers and justice.
Maximillian Alvarez
Labor
Heat Waves Are Literally Killing UPS Workers
Package deliverers and mail carriers aren’t just suffering from capitalist-induced climate change. They’re also often forced to work in vehicles without air conditioning.
Maximillian Alvarez
Labor
Chicago Teachers Suspect Mayor Lightfoot Tried To Fire Them for Opposing a New Scrapyard
Chicago Public Schools targeted two teachers involved in a campaign to stop the relocation of a dirty General Iron metal shredder to Chicago’s Southeast Side. The union and the community fought back.
Maximillian Alvarez
Labor
Ask a Railroad Worker: How Did Railroad Jobs Get So Bad?
As a national rail shutdown over mounting labor disputes looms in the US, it’s worth asking how we got here from the folks who know best—the workers themselves.
Maximillian Alvarez
Labor
Chipotle Shut Down Its Only Unionized Store. Organizers Say It’s Retaliation.
While the company denies the closure is related to union activity, it fits a larger pattern of union-busting efforts at other franchises like Starbucks and Heine Brothers’ Coffee.
Maximillian Alvarez
Labor
The New ‘Lavender Scare’ Is an Attack on the Working Class
A new wave of attacks on queer and trans rights is here. The Working People podcast asks veteran LGBTQ+ labor organizers how workers can fight back.
Maximillian Alvarez
Labor
UK Rail Workers Prepare for Second Round of Strikes
After their bosses responded to last month’s 40,000-strong rail workers’ strike with a “paltry” contract offer, the National Union of Rail, Maritime, and Transport Workers are gearing up for another day of strike action on Wednesday, July 27.
Maximillian Alvarez
Labor
Organizers Look Back on Labor Notes 2022
A whopping 4,000 union workers and activists attended the Labor Notes conference in Chicago this year to share strategies and report on the status of the rising labor movement.
Maximillian Alvarez
Labor
A Pro-union Worker Asked Amazon for Injury Accommodations. Amazon Fired Her.
The Amazon Labor Union victory at the JFK8 warehouse on Staten Island was historic. But right now, as we speak, Amazon is currently in court trying to throw out the results of that election, and pro-union workers keep getting fired.
Maximillian Alvarez
Labor
Frontline Physicians in L.A. Can’t Pay Rent, So They Threatened to Strike
Medical residents and interns in LA County have kept their hospitals running while making minimum wage and struggling to pay rent. Then they overwhelmingly voted to strike and won big.
Maximillian Alvarez
Labor
Louisiana Dollar Store Workers Can’t Control Air Conditioning in Their Own Stores
The pandemic and the inflation panic have been a boon to dollar stores, which are spreading rapidly throughout low-income areas and “food deserts,” but dollar store employees are being left behind. That’s why workers and community members are organizing.
Maximillian Alvarez
Labor
"Definitely It's Retaliation": Starbucks Closes Unionized Store in Ithaca
A conversation with Nadia Vitek, a worker-organizer with Starbucks Workers United.
Maximillian Alvarez
Labor
What It's Like Being a Gravedigger During the Pandemic
A conversation with a cemetery worker about politics, life and labor during the Covid crisis.
Maximillian Alvarez
Labor
The Long, Uphill Battle to Unionize Workers at Religious Institutions
A conversation with Maggie Levantovskaya, a lecturer at a small Jesuit university, about how workers there formed a union, despite the fact that the National Labor Relations Board does not have jurisdiction over religious institutions.
Maximillian Alvarez
Labor
One Big Union for Charter Schools?
A conversation with Tyler Powles, who was a 4th-grade teacher at Caliber: Beta Academy for five years, and Erinn Murphy, an education specialist (and school parent) at Caliber: ChangeMakers Academy.
Maximillian Alvarez
Labor
Meet the Tongan-American Unionist on a Pilgrimage To Support Striking Workers Around the U.S.
A conversation with Tevita 'Uhatafe, a rank-and-file member of the Transport Workers Union Local 513 in Dallas-Fort Worth.
Maximillian Alvarez
Labor
50 Years of Class War in Wisconsin
A conversation with veteran educators and organizers Frank Emspak and Adrienne Pagac about the conditions that paved the way for the Wisconsin Uprising.
Maximillian Alvarez
Labor
The Campus Workers Withdrawing Their Consent
A conversation with student and graduate employees about why workers are simultaneously on strike at two universities.
Maximillian Alvarez
FeatureInterview
Why Nina Turner Is Taking on the Establishment Again
On her second run for Congress, the plainspoken progressive is still calling it as she sees it.
Maximillian Alvarez
Labor
The Incredible, Winding Path of a Working-Class Nurse in Wisconsin
A conversation with long-time artist, activist, and registered nurse Susan Simensky Bietila in Milwaukee.
Maximillian Alvarez
Labor
Why Workers Picketed the Southern Poverty Law Center
Employees and union activists say the civil rights organization mistreats its lowest-paid and most marginalized workers.
Maximillian Alvarez
Labor
Howard University Faculty Win Tentative Agreement Just Hours Before Planned Strike
After nearly four years of bargaining with the university to get their first union contract, lecturers at Howard University narrowly avert a strike at the 11th hour.
Maximillian Alvarez
Labor
Wisconsin's Labor Movement Was Forged in Fire
Scholars Harvey J. Kaye and Jon Shelton talk about the strikes and uprisings that paved the way.
Maximillian Alvarez
Labor
The Wisconsin Teachers Still Trying to Rebuild Unions After Scott Walker Gutted Them
A conversation with K-12 teachers in Hortonville and union organizers with the American Federation of Teachers.
Maximillian Alvarez
Labor
Unions Stand With Exploited Immigrant Demolition Workers in NYC
A conversation with Chaz Rynkiewicz, vice president of Laborers Local 79.
Maximillian Alvarez
Labor
The Political Transformation That Happens When Workers Speak for Themselves
On the importance of deep conversations—and listening.
Maximillian Alvarez
Labor
A U.S. Court Just Intervened to Stop 17,000 Railroad Workers From Going On Strike
A conversation with Jeff Kurtz, a railway engineer and union member for 40 years.
Maximillian Alvarez