At this very moment, 10,000 UAW members at John Deere are on strike in Iowa, Illinois, and Kansas; 35,000 healthcare workers at Kaiser Permanente have authorized a strike; 1,400 workers at cereal giant Kellogg’s are on strike in Nebraska, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee; 1,100 coal miners in Alabama have been on strike since April; 800 nurses in Massachusetts have been on strike since March; and many other strikes and strike authorizations are also unfolding. On top of that, record numbers of US workers are voluntarily quitting their jobs, in what is being called the “Great Resignation.” Something is happening here. How should we understand this pivotal moment of labor strife? And what could this moment become if the working class gets more organized and more militant?

In this segment of The Marc Steiner Show, Marc talks about Striketober, the “Great Resignation,” labor militancy, and the importance of bottom-up organizing with longtime labor organizer Alex Han. Han is a former union leader who has spent 20 years organizing in the labor movement; he is the Bargaining for the Common Good Fellow at the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor at Georgetown University. Tune in for new episodes of The Marc Steiner Show every Tuesday on TRNN.

Pre-Production/Studio/Post Production: Stephen Frank