Gripping stories of the historic battles for worker rights and how they fuel today's struggles.
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Sep 27, 2026 · 29:30
On Labor History Today: What can labor history teach us about the present—and the possibility of change? In this episode, we share excerpts from the relaunch of the Working…
Sep 20, 2026 · 29:30
On this week’s Labor History Today: Delta pilots trace the 1894 Pullman Strike’s connections to Labor Day and today’s airline labor law; more than 400,000 unionists march on…
Sep 13, 2026 · 29:30
On this week’s Labor History Today, we explore how working people preserve the history that official markers, museums and tours too often leave out. Every Labor Day, union…
Sep 6, 2026 · 28:54
On this week’s Labor History Today: Activist and artist Austin Sauerbrei talks about his debut graphic novel Trouble! at Coal Creek , which brings to life the 1890s miners’…
Aug 30, 2026 · 29:29
On this week’s Labor History Today: John Dick and Dave Elsila of the Michigan Labor History Society take Chris Garlock and Elise Bryant on a tour of Transcending, Detroit’s…
Aug 23, 2026 · 29:30
On this week’s Labor History Today: The IWW’s Little Red Songbook was created to “fan the flames of discontent”—and its songs have carried solidarity into workplaces, union…
Aug 16, 2026 · 29:30
On this week’s Labor History Today: Richard Trumka traces the history of labor art from the coalfields of Harlan County and the Flint sit-down strike to the Pittston mineworkers’…
Aug 9, 2026 · 29:34
On this week’s Labor History Today: Dave Zirin discusses his new book, The People's Historian: The Outsized Life of Howard Zinn , exploring the historian's influence on…
Aug 2, 2026 · 29:30
On this week’s Labor History Today: A hand-held fan donated to the Museum of Vancouver tells the story of Canadian workers who volunteered to fight fascism in the Spanish Civil…
Jul 26, 2026 · 34:28
On this week’s Labor History Today: Historian Dr. Jeffrey Johnson tells the story of the 1916 San Francisco Preparedness Day bombing and the infamous frame-up of labor leader Tom…
Jul 19, 2026 · 29:25
As Spain and Argentina meet in the 2026 FIFA World Cup final, Labor History Today looks beyond the action on the pitch to explore soccer's deep roots in working-class communities…
Jul 13, 2026 · 30:00
On this week’s Labor History Today: The FIFA World Cup is once again captivating fans around the globe as the 2026 tournament heads into the semifinal round, with France facing…
Jul 5, 2026 · 29:21
On this week's Labor History Today: As the nation reflects on Independence Day, we turn from the "Great Men" of history to the voices of the people. We begin with Frederick…
Jun 28, 2026 · 29:30
This week on Labor History Today: Silk stockings were all the rage in the 1920s, but the workers who made them paid the price. When the H.C. Aberle Hosiery Company in…
Jun 21, 2026 · 29:30
This week on Labor History Today (originally broadcast 1/11/2026), Simon Sapper talks with historian Martin Wright, co-author of Made by Labour: A Material and Visual History of…
Jun 14, 2026 · 31:55
On this week’s Labor History Today (Originally released October 12, 2025): A visit to the Donora Smog Museum , where a six-day inversion in 1948 trapped toxic fumes over a…
Jun 7, 2026 · 29:28
As the United States approaches its 250th anniversary, Labor History Today visits Old Slater Mill in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, widely considered the birthplace of the American…
May 31, 2026 · 29:30
On Labor History Today: What happens if the labor laws that have governed workplace organizing since the 1930s simply disappear? Historian Leigh Campbell-Hale joins Labor…
May 24, 2026 · 29:30
This week on Labor History Today: Hazel Dickens remembered. The Mine Wars Forum talks with Hazel’s nephew Buddy Dickens about the legendary labor singer’s deep roots in the West…
May 17, 2026 · 29:31
On this week’s edition of Labor History Today: the People’s 250 campaign asks whose stories belong in America’s history, from the 1968 Memphis sanitation strike to today’s fights…
May 10, 2026 · 29:26
On Labor History Today: What do Chicago’s three Haymarket monuments reveal about labor history, public memory, and who gets to shape the story of the past? Labor historian Peter…
May 3, 2026 · 29:30
On this week’s Labor History Today: a powerful look at past and present struggles for worker rights and justice. We revisit the Haymarket Affair and the origins of May Day, then…
Apr 26, 2026 · 29:30
On this week’s Labor History Today: Can resistance to Trumpism help rebuild worker power? Jeremy Brecher, author of Strike! , joins labor historian Joe McCartin and organizer…
Apr 19, 2026 · 29:29
This week’s Labor History Today features Labor Express Radio in Chicago, previewing May Day 2026. From the 1886 fight for the eight-hour day to today’s call for an “economic…
Apr 12, 2026 · 29:26
On this week’s Labor History Today, producer producer Harold Phillips talks with Victoria McCallum and Lantz Simpson, co-writers of The Last Words of Joe Hill, a short play…
Apr 5, 2026 · 29:22
On this week’s Labor History Today : In April 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. stood with striking sanitation workers in Memphis—members of AFSCME Local 1733—delivering his powerful…
Mar 29, 2026 · 29:30
On this week’s Labor History Today: As Women’s History Month draws to a close, we mark the founding of the Coalition of Labor Union Women in 1974, when more than 3,000 women from…
Mar 22, 2026 · 29:29
This week on Labor History Today, we explore moments when workers didn’t just demand change—they forced it. Detroit, 1937: sit-down strikers face a violent police raid—and…
Mar 15, 2026 · 29:30
This week on Labor History Today: From the fiery tragedy that shocked the nation—the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire—to the powerful solidarity of the 1912 Bread and Roses…
Mar 8, 2026 · 29:30
On this week’s Labor History Today, we continue our look at the legacy of A. Philip Randolph and the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the first major Black-led union in the…
Mar 2, 2026 · 29:30
On this week’s Labor History Today, historian Eric Arnesen marks the centennial of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, tracing how A. Philip Randolph and Black railway…
Feb 23, 2026 · 29:30
On this week’s Labor History Today, host Chris Garlock explores how workers’ struggles leave lasting marks—not just on history, but on the physical landscape itself. In Hamilton,…
Feb 15, 2026 · 29:31
On this week’s Labor History Today: Labor History in 2:00 on the Sons of Vulcan’s 1865 strike, a Labor Jawn conversation with songwriter Mindy Murray about her song “Striking at…
Feb 8, 2026 · 29:22
This week on Labor History Today: The 66th anniversary of the Greensboro sit-ins — a turning point that helped ignite the modern Civil Rights Movement and reshaped American…
Feb 1, 2026 · 29:31
This week on Labor History Today, we remember Pete Seeger and how his songs helped build movements—from union halls to civil rights and environmental campaigns. Then we turn to…
Jan 25, 2026 · 29:30
This episode of Labor History Today features historian Marcella Bencivenni on Arturo Giovannitti—Italian immigrant, poet, socialist, and labor organizer—whose role in the 1912…
Jan 18, 2026 · 29:26
This week on Labor History Today, we explore how the 1892 Homestead Strike continues to live on—not just in books and archives, but in film, music, and living memory. We begin…
Jan 11, 2026 · 29:30
This week on Labor History Today, Simon Sapper talks with historian Martin Wright, co-author of Made by Labour: A Material and Visual History of British Labor, 1780–1924 . The…
Jan 4, 2026 · 29:32
This week on Labor History Today, we move from repression to resistance—and from history to possibility. We begin with Labor History in Two and the 1917 trial of labor leader Tom…
Dec 28, 2025 · 29:31
On this week’s Labor History Today: From Camp Solidarity in Matewan, West Virginia—the heart of the legendary Mine Wars—UMWA President Cecil Roberts reflects on the long struggle…
Dec 21, 2025 · 29:30
In this episode of Labor History Today, labor organizer and researcher Eric Dirnbach talks with Dave Kamper, author of Who’s Got the Power: Hope for Troubled Times , about the…
Dec 14, 2025 · 29:32
This week on Labor History Today, we head to Philadelphia with an excerpt from the Labor Jawn podcast. Hosts Sam and Gabe talk with labor historian Dr. Francis Ryan about…
Dec 8, 2025 · 11:48
This week on Labor History Today, we revisit the 1946 Oakland General Strike through the eyes of labor educator and activist Stan Weir — and uncover the surprising role a…
Nov 30, 2025 · 29:52
This week on Labor History Today, we’re marking the 50th anniversary of the Walter P. Reuther Library building at Wayne State University with a special episode from our friends…
Nov 23, 2025 · 42:19
On this week’s Labor History Today: We turn up the “today” in Labor History Today with a special edition focused on the historic, open-ended strike now underway at Starbucks.…
Nov 16, 2025 · 20:34
Historian and former UAW organizer Rudi Batzell joins America’s Workforce Union Podcast to explain how the failure of land reform after slavery — and employers’ use of racial…
Nov 11, 2025 · 2:00
On today’s Labor Radio Podcast Daily: Organising for a Change digs into the reform vote and the real fight ahead for labor. In labor history, on this date in 1919, a deadly clash…
Nov 9, 2025 · 33:21
On this week’s Labor History Today: U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders accepts the 60th annual Eugene V. Debs Award from the Eugene V. Debs Foundation in Terre Haute, Indiana — and pays…
Nov 2, 2025 · 26:11
On this week’s Labor History Today: Our friends at America’s Workforce mark Halloween with a chillingly real tale — the untold story of John Henry and his lasting legacy on…
Oct 26, 2025 · 37:04
On Labor History Today: In 2005 the Guinness Brewery at Park Royal, West London closed after seven decades of production. Tim Strangleman spent the last six months of the…
Oct 19, 2025 · 40:16
On this week’s Labor History Today: Justice Denied: David Gariff on “Ben Shahn and the Case of Sacco and Vanzetti.” Saul Schniderman remembers musician activist Elaine Purkey.…
Oct 12, 2025 · 31:55
On this week’s Labor History Today: A visit to the Donora Smog Museum , where a six-day inversion in 1948 trapped toxic fumes over a Pennsylvania mill town and changed how the…
Oct 5, 2025 · 55:27
On this week's Labor History Today: Mary Kenney O’Sullivan, first AFL woman organizer; novelist Jack London’s classic definition of a scab; Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union leads…
Sep 28, 2025 · 15:53
This week on Labor History Today: From the 2025 Camp Solidarity, West Virginia Mine Wars Museum co-founder Wilma Steele unpacks the red bandana—tracing its paisley roots from…
Sep 21, 2025 · 34:04
On this week’s Labor History Today: From Camp Solidarity in Matewan, West Virginia—the heart of the legendary Mine Wars—UMWA President Cecil Roberts reflects on the long struggle…
Sep 14, 2025 · 35:46
This week on Labor History Today, labor historian Joseph McCartin joins Chris Garlock to unpack his recent congressional testimony on unions, antisemitism, and the long fight for…
Sep 7, 2025 · 28:54
On this week’s Labor History Today: Activist and artist Austin Sauerbrei talks about his debut graphic novel Trouble! at Coal Creek , which brings to life the 1890s miners’…
Aug 31, 2025 · 34:28
On this week’s Labor History Today: Historian Dr. Jeffrey Johnson tells the story of the 1916 San Francisco Preparedness Day bombing and the infamous frame-up of labor leader Tom…
Aug 24, 2025 · 31:16
This week on Labor History Today: the Solidarity Forever podcast explores how enslaved Black laborers resisted and strategized before the Civil War. At a time when the President…
Aug 17, 2025 · 40:40
On this week’s Labor History Today, scholar and creator Shana L. Redmond sits down with Naomi R Williams, Assistant Professor of Labor Studies and Employment Relations at Rutgers…
Aug 10, 2025 · 28:59
This week on Labor History Today: From Nixon’s “hard hat” protest to reform battles inside the Steelworkers, from Philly’s once-every-40-years sanitation strikes to the enduring…
Aug 3, 2025 · 31:55
On this week’s Labor History Today, we feature the Tales from the Ruther Library podcast, where Dan Golodner talks with historian Dr. Justine Modica about the history of…
Jul 29, 2025 · 2:00
On today’s Labor Radio Podcast Daily: The Worker Power Hour tackles the housing crisis and wage stagnation in Southern California. In labor history, on this date in 1970, Delano…
Jul 27, 2025 · 35:53
This week on Labor History Today: author Mark S. Ferrara joins labor educator Linda Donahue to explore the hidden history of the workers who built and lived along the Erie Canal.…
Jul 20, 2025 · 44:52
Ben Fletcher was one of the most important black labor leaders in American history. Yet he’s almost entirely unknown. In today’s show, from the Working Class History podcast…
Jul 13, 2025 · 18:12
For decades, rumors have circulated about a strike in space. The story goes that in 1973, the three astronauts on the Skylab 4 mission took an unplanned day off to protest ground…
Jul 5, 2025 · 43:12
This week on Labor History Today, we bring you a special episode celebrating folk legend Pete Seeger. In the first episode of A Weekend With Pete Seeger , recorded in 1999,…
Jun 30, 2025 · 39:14
On today’s Labor History Today, from our friends at The Docker Podcast , we join ILWU longshore workers James Brophy and Leith Jasinowski-Kahl to mark the 90th anniversary of the…
Jun 22, 2025 · 33:38
This week on Labor History Today, we bring you a special episode from the We Rise Fighting Labor Podcast , exploring the power and potential of today’s mass protests—from the…
Jun 15, 2025 · 18:54
On this week’s Labor History Today: We remember legendary union leader Tony Mazzocchi—his fight for worker safety, his role in founding the Labor Party, and his lasting impact on…
Jun 9, 2025 · 24:38
This week on Labor History Today: From the Library of Congress’ America Works podcast: Bill Favaro shares the origins of his family’s Louisiana rod & reel shop, and Juan Salcido…
Jun 1, 2025 · 33:59
On this week’s Labor History Today: "This drunk came on and he started showing me a bad time, and I up and popped him and knocked him out. The soldier got one arm, I got the…
May 26, 2025 · 40:38
This week’s Labor History Today podcast: Mongrel Firebugs and Men of Property (Encore) Steve Fraser discusses his book “Mongrel Firebugs and Men of Property: Capitalism and Class…
May 19, 2025 · 22:58
On this week's Labor History Today: Before she turned 20, Emma Tenayuca led thousands of Mexican American pecan shellers into one of the largest strikes of the 1930s. A fearless…
May 11, 2025 · 38:52
On this week’s Labor History Today podcast: In a special crossover episode with the Power At Work podcast, historians Joe McCartin and Veronica Martinez-Matsuda join me and Power…
May 4, 2025 · 30:49
On this episode of Labor History Today, we mark the 40th anniversary of the end of one of the most significant labor struggles of the 20th century: the 1984–85 British Miners’…
Apr 27, 2025 · 31:55
Sara Nelson’s inspirational keynote at the April 6, 2021 symposium celebrating the 50th anniversary of Jeremy Brecher’s classic labor history book “Strike!” On today’s Labor…
Apr 20, 2025 · 25:39
This week on Labor History Today: The 25th annual DC Labor FilmFest kicks off May Day at the AFI Silver! Host Chris Garlock previews the powerful lineup of films about work and…
Apr 13, 2025 · 45:59
On Labor History Today: Para Power: AFT president Randi Weingarten talks with Nick Juravich, associate director of the Labor Resource Center at UMass Boston, about class, race…
Apr 6, 2025 · 32:43
On Labor History Today: In 1934, as part of an effort to boost morale and encourage citizens to find community in their traditions, the Roosevelt administration sent artists to…
Mar 30, 2025 · 22:22
On Labor History Today: Kings and presidents and CEOs like to think that they make history but real history is actually made by thousands of small actions like this: a handful of…
Mar 23, 2025 · 55:19
On Labor History Today: Joe McCartin, Leon Fink and Patrick Dixon discuss the 2002 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that undocumented workers don’t have the same rights as Americans,…
Mar 16, 2025 · 27:32
Labor History Today: During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, 800 nurses walked out on strike in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. As concern rises about the return of measles and…
Mar 9, 2025 · 44:31
Labor History Today: This week’s edition of the show takes us to Australia, but the history of slavery and the ongoing failure to come to terms with the resulting racism and…
Mar 2, 2025 · 20:29
On Labor History Today: A visit to the Northern Ireland city of Derry and a search for the real Factory Girls. On this week’s Labor History in Two : Jefferson Outlaws the Slave…
Feb 23, 2025 · 30:26
As Black History Month comes to a close, the On the Line podcast marks the occasion with a fascinating look back at the history of train sleeping car porters, almost all of whom…
Feb 16, 2025 · 29:10
For 150 years, Richmond's place in history has been as "the capital of the Confederacy." But this label hides a much richer and more complex history. On today’s show, originally…
Feb 9, 2025 · 24:35
On Labor History Today: Grit and Working-Class Solidarity: B.C. Workers Respond to the 1919 Winnipeg General Strike. The On the Line: Stories of BC Workers podcast reports on “A…
Feb 2, 2025 · 18:11
On Labor History Today: The 1917 “Bath Riots”. The story of Carmelita Torres, the "Latina Rosa Parks," and the so-called “Bath Riots” on the U.S.-Mexico border in 1917. On Labor…
Jan 26, 2025 · 40:51
On this week's Labor Heritage Power Hour: MLK in Memphis; “We Will Not Be Turned Around”, Part 3 of AFSCME’s I AM STORY podcast about the 1968 sanitation workers’ strike.…
Jan 19, 2025 · 33:00
On this week’s Labor History Today: While historians have written prolifically about the 1914 Ludlow Massacre, there has been a lack of attention to the Columbine Massacre in…
Jan 12, 2025 · 34:49
On this week’s Labor History Today: Battle of the Eureka Stockade. Australia’s history closely tracks American history; the subjugation of indigenous people is the most obvious…
Jan 5, 2025 · 58:33
American labor unions have seen an incredible resurgence in recent years, which, suggests public historian Tom Goldscheider , “begs the question: why were they in decline in the…
Dec 29, 2024 · 30:27
Joe Jencks is a 25-year veteran of the international folk circuit, an award-winning songwriter, and a celebrated vocalist based in Chicago. Merging conservatory training with his…
Dec 23, 2024 · 37:29
“This fight isn't just for the teamsters. This is for all American workers.” This weekend, Teamsters struck Amazon in New York City, Atlanta, Skokie, Southern California, San…
Dec 15, 2024 · 35:09
On this week's Labor History Today: Touring the American Labor Museum The American Labor Museum in Haledon, New Jersey, is also known as The Botto House, and that’s because for…
Dec 8, 2024 · 48:48
On this week's Labor History Today: Decades before Miami became Havana USA, a wave of leftist, radical, working-class women and men from prerevolutionary Cuba crossed the Florida…
Dec 1, 2024 · 31:18
Dr. Jay Cephas considers two Depression-era murals in Detroit and their contrasting messaging about workers, labor, and power. Diego Rivera’s famed Detroit Industry murals (top),…
Nov 24, 2024 · 32:17
Five stunning paintings depicting labor organizing, pickets and the violence directed at workers in the turbulent 1930s were almost lost to history. The story of Philip Tipperman…
Nov 17, 2024 · 27:17
Labor historian Mitch Troutman’s 2022 book, The Bootleg Coal Rebellion: The Pennsylvania Miners Who Seized an Industry, 1925-1942 is a detailed account of coal bootlegging in the…
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