America’s Work Force Union Podcast

She started at a hazardous waste disposal plant in El Dorado, Arkansas, where the workers know which chemicals can be stored together, which can be incinerated at the same time and how to handle both safely. Today Charleeka Thompson directs the United Steelworkers NextGen Department, the union's effort to bring new and young members into the movement.

On today's episode of America's Work Force Union Podcast, Thompson discusses her path from a union-represented plant to the Rapid Response Department in Pittsburgh and then to NextGen, why the committee became mandatory for every USW Local in 2025, how a Canadian Local used a Dungeons & Dragons-themed event to teach collective bargaining and why she is taking the 2027 NextGen conference to Little Rock, Arkansas. She also explains how seasoned activists and new members build the union's bench together, and why young workers in the South are ready for unions once workplaces are organized.

Visit usw.org for more.

Ask 100 parents how to get into college, and they can fill a blackboard. Ask how to get into the Insulators Union, and you get silence. That information gap is the single biggest barrier keeping qualified young people from union apprenticeships that pay $80,000 to $100,000 three to five years after high school, with no student debt. And now Trades Futures and NABTU have built an AI tool to close it.

On today's Trades Day episode of America's Work Force Union Podcast, NABTU Director of Research and Education Dr. Tom Kriger discusses the Multi-Craft Core Curriculum boot camp, the growth of Trades Futures from 10 programs to the largest pre-apprenticeship program in any American industry serving 7,500 students annually, the applied math gap sending candidates into the trades unprepared and the new Jobs Machine agentic AI tool built with Microsoft Elevate to answer the questions parents and students most need answered about getting into a union apprenticeship.

Visit nabtu.org and tradesfutures.org for more.

Two conversations that go to the heart of what workers deserve — one on a bankrupt airline treating its fired employees’ most sensitive personal data as a commodity to be sold, and one on making sure federal and postal workers get the most out of their benefits during one of the most important windows of the year.

TTD AFL-CIO President Greg Regan discusses Spirit Airlines selling sensitive employee data — approximately 100 million emails, 500 million Microsoft Teams messages, payroll records, tax information, employment contracts and Social Security numbers — as an asset in its bankruptcy proceedings to train AI models. Employees currently have fewer legal data protections than consumers, and TTD joined members of Congress in sending a letter to Spirit Airlines and Google demanding guardrails. Regan also addresses the lame-duck congressional session following the November 3rd election and the surface transportation reauthorization, which must be extended before it expires in December.

Then, Blue Cross Blue Shield Federal Employee Program Senior Vice President David Yoder discusses Open Season for federal employees, postal workers and uniformed service members. FEP Blue held rates flat on the majority of its dental and vision products this year through a focus on preventive care and increased the vision eyewear allowance from $140 to $160. Yoder explains why total out-of-pocket cost matters more than premium when comparing plans, why the FEP dental and vision plans require separate elections and why members who do not currently wear glasses should still consider vision coverage for its preventative care value.

Visit ttd.org for the congressional letter on Spirit Airlines and fepblue.org for Open Season information.

For too long, the trades have been treated like a fallback — something you choose when college does not work out. The truth is the world runs on the backs of builders, welders, riggers, electricians and laborers. It is time to start acting like it.

That is the back cover of Kim Pierce's book, The Hands That Built This: Restoring Respect and Rebuilding the Future of the Trades. Kim is a former ironworker who passed her journeyman exam with a 98% score and boomed across the United States before becoming a construction safety professional with more than 18 years on the job. She wrote the book in six weeks from a job site in Puerto Rico.

On today's Trades Day episode of America's Work Force Union Podcast, Kim discusses what it took to earn respect as the only woman ironworker on nearly every job she worked, why the disappearance of shop classes from American high schools cost an entire generation, why the skilled trades shortage is an economic crisis rather than just a construction industry problem and what the trades are doing — and still need to do — on mental health and suicide awareness on construction job sites.

If you or someone you know is struggling, call or text 988. Visit kapiercebooks.com for more.

Ohio workers are 84% more productive than they were a generation ago. Their wages have gone up 22%. Ohio's union density has fallen from 35.5% in 1979 to 12.8% today. That collapse represents $8.6 billion in annual wages that should be in Ohio workers' pockets and is not. Ohio's minimum wage is $11 an hour, which leaves full-time workers more than $10,000 short of covering basic living expenses in even the state's cheapest county. And the childcare workforce has lost nearly 40% of its workers since 2019, with no recovery in sight.

On today's episode of America's Work Force Union Podcast, Policy Matters Ohio Executive Director Hannah Halbert and Work and Wages Director Ali Smith discuss the annual State of Working Ohio report — what it found, what it recommends and what it would take to close the gap.

Download the full report at policymattersohio.org.

Pennsylvania modeled its labor law on the federal Wagner Act in the 1930s, including the exclusion of agricultural workers from the right to collectively bargain. The exclusion was the product of industry lobbying and the deliberate effort to deny rights to the predominantly Black workforce in the fields. Ninety years later, the Pennsylvania legislature still has not fixed it.

On today's episode of America's Work Force Union Podcast, UFCW Local 1776 Keystone State President Wendell Young IV and FarmSTAND senior staff attorney Hannah Wolf discuss the constitutional lawsuit filed at the end of September challenging that exclusion, what happened when workers at a southeastern Pennsylvania grow facility tried to organize without legal protection, the three constitutional arguments FarmSTAND is making and why Young says that protecting farm workers would help stabilize food prices for every American family.

Visit farmstand.org for more.

First-year apprentice wages: $87,500. Wages and benefits within four to five years: $125,000 to $200,000. Student debt: zero. Three out of four teens say they would consider a trade over college. And the sheet metal industry still has more work than it can easily fill.

On today's Trades Day episode of America's Work Force Union Podcast, Sheet Metal ITI Executive Director Michael Harris discusses 40 years in the trade, what the earn-while-you-learn apprenticeship model actually delivers, the data center and chip manufacturing construction boom driving demand for sheet metal workers across the country, why the trades offer meaningful protection against AI displacement and what National Careers in Trades Week — launched in spring 2025 with SMACNA and SMART — is doing to make sure young people actually know these opportunities exist.

Visit sheetmetal-iti.org for more.

Two conversations about fighting for the people who need it most — one on what is at stake for Ohio’s schools and working families heading into November 3rd, and one on nearly three decades of labor law in Detroit and a campaign to bring that experience into the boardroom at one of the country’s most important social mobility universities.

Ohio Federation of Teachers President and Ohio AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Melissa Cropper discusses the urgent need for school funding at both the local and state level, why this election carries real consequences for Ohio’s children and working families and the sense among OFT members that genuine change is within reach for the first time in a long time.

Then, Miller Cohen, P.L.C., labor attorney Richard Mack discusses nearly 28 years of representing workers, the Detroit bankruptcy in which city workers earning $30,000 to $35,000 a year lost pension payments and all retiree healthcare before Medicare, while bankruptcy attorneys billed up to $1,100 an hour, and his campaign for the Wayne State University Board of Governors. Wayne State is the number one school in Michigan for social mobility and among the top 2% nationally, with graduation rates that have climbed from 26% to 60% over the past 15 years — but Mack says that is still not high enough for a student population of full-time workers, parents and first-generation college students navigating challenges most university students never face. He and his running mate, Sharif Akil, bring a combined 60 years of civil rights litigation experience to the campaign and a commitment to protecting students and faculty from federal pressure on First Amendment rights.

Visit oft-aft.org for more from the Ohio Federation of Teachers and richardmackforwsu.com for more on Richard Mack’s campaign.

He had a meeting scheduled at the World Trade Center on the morning of September 11. His wife called. He canceled. The next morning, he was at Ground Zero through an empty Long Island Expressway on a police escort. Six days later, LIUNA Local 79 members had cleaned out the Verizon vault beneath 140 West Street, and the New York Stock Exchange was operational.

On today's Trades Day episode of America's Work Force Union Podcast, AECOM Tishman Senior Vice President and Labor Coordinator Frank Noviello marks the 25th anniversary of September 11 with a firsthand account of arriving at Ground Zero on September 12, the silica dust threat that LIUNA Local 79 worked to protect its members from, and the 25-year all-union rebuilding effort — on time, on budget — that produced One World Trade Center at 1,776 feet and is still going with Tower 2 under construction today.

More information on LIUNA is available at liuna.org.

The University System of Maryland negotiated raises with its workers. The raises were legally binding. The state sent the money to cover them. The USM withheld them anyway. The governor had to order them to comply. Then UMD College Park laid off 73 workers — the first mass layoff of state-funded positions in the university's history, with more than 80% of those laid off being union-represented.

On today's episode of America's Work Force Union Podcast, AFSCME Local 1072 board member Krista Bulley, vice president Jen Patterson and at-large executive board member Patrick Trujillo discuss what is happening at the University of Maryland: how the union forced the governor's hand on the raises, who the 73 laid-off workers were and why the union says the budget crisis UMD is citing does not exist, and where the Step 3 grievance fight at the Office of Administrative Hearings stands as the union works to bring every one of those workers back.

Visit afscmemd.org for more.