Belabored Podcast #17: Fast Food Nation

This week on Belabored: a closer look at the historic fast food strikes in seven cities and an exploration of the relationship between funding sources and internal democracy in alt-labor. Plus college athletes, graduate student employees, and sobering survey data.

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On the 17th episode of Dissent’s Belabored podcast, Sarah and Josh consider this week’s historic seven city fast food strikes. Is this campaign’s strategy–partnering unions and community groups, mounting one-day strikes, and attacking the entire industry at once–paying off? What comes next? How will this all end? Then they explore a related question: what’s the relationship between funding sources and internal democracy for campaigns organizing workers who don’t pay union dues? And in this week’s opening news round-up, they tackle college athletes, graduate student employees, sobering survey data, and who’s afraid of alt-labor.

Links for those following along at home:

Fast food strike reporting from Sarah and Josh

Josh on “Who Should Fund Alt-Labor?”

Sarah on minimum wage protests

AP: “80 percent of U.S. adults face near-poverty, unemployment” during life

Micah Uetricht: “Big Business Aims to Crush Worker Centers”

Josh on Jack Lew’s union-busting at NYU

Travis Waldron on student athletes and pay

Sarah on on the Laundry Workers Center

Sarah on McDonald’s and payroll debit cards

Stories we wish we’d written:

Susie Cagle, “The Dark Side of Start-Up City,” Grist