Haymarket Originals brings in depth, series-length audio treatments of a wide range of historical and contemporary political subjects to podcast listeners around the world.
The first season of Haymarket Originals was FRAGILE JUGGERNAUT: WHAT WAS THE CIO?—a limited series revisiting and reflecting on the near-mythical trajectory of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) and the high water mark of US labor activity in the 1930s and 1940s.
What does it *feel like* to build worker power? Season two of Haymarket Originals brings you inside one of the most dynamic and inspiring organizing drives in the labor movement today. HEAT THE GROUND UP is an oral history of Starbucks Workers United, voiced by the baristas who built it.
The sudden end of World War II was met with both exultation and terror. While millions of Americans understood that the killing abroad could come to an end, the fate of the depression economy that had only been revived by wartime mobilization now hung uncertainly in the balance. The saga of demobilization and reconversion, the name for the process of converting the economy back to civilian production and the winding down of military contracts, is the subject of Episode 18 of Fragile Juggernaut: a battle between business interests and a revived CIO social democracy for hegemony over the reconversion process, fought in the backdrop of the largest strike wave in American history.
Buy Detroit: I Do Mind Dying, 20% Off: https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/458-detroit-i-do-mind-dying
Episode 19 of Fragile Juggernaut weighs up the results of the struggle for hegemony in the 1945-1946 strike wave over the next several years. While millions of workers participated in militant actions, their strikes were uncoordinated and politically isolated, opening the way for the political right to organize a backlash and recapture Congress in the midterm elections.
At the center of the agenda of the new Republican Congress: labor law reform, codified in the form of the notorious 1947 Taft-Hartley Act. We dive into the details and consequences of the law, restraining workers’ right to organize and, most significantly, driving a wedge between the left wing of the CIO and the rest of the federation.
Featured music: The OPA Shout (Pete Seeger); The Same Old Merry Go-Round (Oscar Brand); Taft-Hartley Blues (unidentified); The New Walls of Jericho (Richard Huey and Chorus); The Peekskill Story (The Weavers).
Fragile Juggernaut is a Haymarket Originals podcast exploring the history, politics, and strategic lessons of the Congress of Industrial Organizations and the rank and file insurgency that produced it. Support Fragile Juggernaut on Patreon and receive our exclusive bimonthly newsletter, full of additional insights, reading recommendations, and archival materials we’ve amassed along the way.
Support us on patreon: https://www.patreon.com/FragileJuggernaut/posts
Buy Set the Earth on Fire: The Great Anthracite Coal Strike of 1902 and the Birth of the Police: https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/2220-set-the-earth-on-fire
Episode 20 of Fragile Juggernaut takes us from 1950 to 1955—the end of the line for the CIO. At the beginning of the story, the expulsion of the left-led unions was a recent wound, and the Cold War liberalism of figures like Walter Reuther seemed like a viable and vital project for the CIO’s future, with the landmark 1950 GM contract, the “Treaty of Detroit,” marking a new phase in how industrial unions related to management. The Korean War seemed like a proving ground for this hypothesis, and proved a brutal disappointment. By 1955, the CIO threw in the towel, merging back in to the AFL on the older federation’s terms.
To tell this story, we talk with guest Toni Gilpin, author of The Long Deep Grudge: A Story of Big Capital, Radical Labor, and Class War in the American Heartland. Toni helps us see this story from the perspective of the UAW’s left-wing rival, the Farm Equipment Workers (FE), who resisted the direction charted by Reuther in 1950—as long as they could. And with Toni, we talk about some of the long-term legacies of CIO radicalism for the civil rights movement.
This is our last narrative episode. It will be followed by one summary and reflection discussion.
Featured music: “Sixteen Tons” by Tennessee Ernie Ford
Archival audio credits:
CIO debate on the merger; Truman 1949 State of the Union; Walter Reuther on fringe benefit programs; Reuther on “Reutherism”; Truman on seizing the steel industry; Eisenhower message to the merger convention; interview with Anne Braden (1); interview with Anne Braden (2);
Fragile Juggernaut is a Haymarket Originals podcast exploring the history, politics, and strategic lessons of the Congress of Industrial Organizations and the rank and file insurgency that produced it. Support Fragile Juggernaut on Patreon and receive our exclusive bimonthly newsletter, full of additional insights, reading recommendations, and archival materials we’ve amassed along the way.
Buy Tramps and Trade Union Travelers, 20% off: https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/985-tramps-and-trade-union-travelers
This “coda" is our last episode in the mainline of this series on the meaning of the CIO, and here, the whole organizing committee gets together to discuss some of the larger themes and debates that an overview of this historical sequence can inspire. We ask, “what are the lasting consequences of its defeat (if it even was one),” “what does the CIO teach us about working class politics,” and “what does it even mean to make use of this history?” And more, and more.
Thank you for listening and supporting the show. We hope that it has given you even a sliver of historical understanding that it has provided us.
Fragile Juggernaut is a Haymarket Originals podcast exploring the history, politics, and strategic lessons of the Congress of Industrial Organizations and the rank and file insurgency that produced it. Support Fragile Juggernaut on Patreon and receive our exclusive bimonthly newsletter, full of additional insights, reading recommendations, and archival materials we’ve amassed along the way.
Buy Class Struggle Unionism, 20% Off: https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/1767-class-struggle-unionism
Support us on patreon: https://www.patreon.com/FragileJuggernaut/posts
What does it *feel like* to build worker power? Season two of Haymarket Originals is bringing you inside one of the most dynamic and inspiring organizing drives in the labor movement today. Heat The Ground Up is an oral history of Starbucks Workers United, voiced by the baristas who built it.
We'll be back soon with more episodes of Heat the Ground Up!
Our podcast host is Clarissa Redwine. You can find more of her work at strike.kitchen. This entire oral history is released under a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike 4.0 International License. The music was composed by Michael T. Simonelli over at the podcast production company Charts and Leisure.
Welcome to Heat the Ground Up, an oral history of Starbucks Workers United. Together, we’ll follow one of the most important labor fights in a generation through the voices and perspectives of the workers who organized it from the ground up. In this first episode, we’re joined by a handful of labor experts who will walk us through the significance of this story and some of the challenges workers were up against, setting the stage for the larger narrative.
This podcast is a Haymarket Originals production. Visit haymarketbooks.org to find indispensable radical books, podcasts, virtual events, and other political education resources, including Class Struggle Unionism, which is 20% Off online. Please also consider joining the Haymarket book club. It’s one of the best ways to support Haymarket, and help fund projects like this one.
Our podcast host is Clarissa Redwine. You can find more of her work at strike.kitchen. This entire oral history is released under a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike 4.0 International License. The music was composed by Michael T. Simonelli over at the podcast production company Charts and Leisure.
Welcome to Heat the Ground Up, an oral history of Starbucks Workers United. Together, we’ll follow one of the most important labor fights in a generation through the voices and perspectives of the workers who organized it from the ground up. In this second episode, we’ll dive into the issues that fueled organizing and the salting operation that gave workers at Elmwood in Buffalo a path to unionization.
This podcast is a Haymarket Originals production. Visit haymarketbooks.org to find indispensable radical books, podcasts, virtual events, and other political education resources, including Unite and Win. Subscribe and listen to the Unite and Win companion podcast here.
Please also consider joining the Haymarket book club. It’s one of the best ways to support Haymarket, and help fund projects like this one.
Our podcast host is Clarissa Redwine. You can find more of her work at strike.kitchen. This entire oral history is released under a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike 4.0 International License. The music was composed by Michael T. Simonelli over at the podcast production company Charts and Leisure.
Welcome to Heat the Ground Up, an oral history of Starbucks Workers United. In this episode, baristas take the union public in Buffalo, NY and we get an inside look at management’s anti-union campaign. Over the course of the series, we’ll follow one of the most important labor fights in a generation through the voices and perspectives of the workers who organized it from the ground up.
This podcast is a Haymarket Originals production. Visit haymarketbooks.org to find indispensable radical books, podcasts, virtual events, and other political education resources, including Set the Earth on Fire, which is 20% Off online. Please also consider joining the Haymarket book club. It’s one of the best ways to support Haymarket, and help fund projects like this one.
Our podcast host is Clarissa Redwine. You can find more of her work at strike.kitchen. This entire oral history is released under a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike 4.0 International License. The music was composed by Michael T. Simonelli over at the podcast production company Charts and Leisure.
Welcome to Heat the Ground Up, an oral history of Starbucks Workers United. In this episode, baristas in Buffalo, NY weather the final blows of management’s anti-union campaign and prepare for an election. Over the course of the series, we’ll follow one of the most important labor fights in a generation through the voices and perspectives of the workers who organized it from the ground up.
This podcast is a Haymarket Originals production. Visit haymarketbooks.org to find indispensable radical books, podcasts, virtual events, and other political education resources, including Detroit: I Do Mind Dying, which is 20% Off online. Please also consider joining the Haymarket book club. It’s one of the best ways to support Haymarket, and help fund projects like this one.
Our podcast host is Clarissa Redwine. You can find more of her work at strike.kitchen. This entire oral history is released under a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike 4.0 International License. The music was composed by Michael T. Simonelli over at the podcast production company Charts and Leisure.