Listen: Labor Day ‘24; NYC Taxi Workers Confront Uber, Lyft…

District Council 37 Retirees and others fighting the ongoing "Medicare Dis-Advantage push march in last year's Labor Day Parade in NYC. Photo/Joe Maniscalco

By Bob Hennelly

The Stuck Nation Labor Radio is celebrating Labor Day—and its third anniversary on the air.

This Labor Day, the union movement is on the march around the country with members taking risks  collectively to improve their circumstances, that of their families and the communities where they live in a way we have not seen in recent American history. 

This includes a mass mobilization for the upcoming election where the union movement is directly confronting voter suppression all over the country, but particularly in the southern right-to-work states where elected officials have formed what I call the “low-wage cartel.” These states  hand over millions and millions in  taxpayer subsidies to corporations that regularly violate federal labor law like Mercedes Benz and Amazon did in Alabama even as they ration healthcare for the people. That’s right, these governors use taxpayers funds to support multinational corporations that flout labor law as part of their business strategy to keep wages and benefits as low as possible. 

On this episode, we are joined by John Murphy, the Grand Marshal New York City Central Labor Council’s Labor Day Parade that’s next Saturday on Sept. 7th.  John is the International Representative of  the United Association of Journeymen and Apprentices of the Plumbing and Pipefitting Industry as well as a member of the CLC’s executive board.  The CLC represents over 300 union with more than a million members in the five boroughs.

In the second half of the show, we will get an update from Bhairavi Desai, the executive director of  New York Taxi Workers Alliance, which now includes 28,000 members and is fighting collusion between Uber and Lyft.

Listen to the whole show below: