Double podcast episode about the iconic strike of mostly East African Asian women workers at the Grunwick photo processing plant in London in 1976-8. Featuring Amrit Wilson, Jayaben Desai and Colum Maloney, who took part in the dispute, and Sujata, chair of the Grunwick 40 group.
Continue reading “E67-68: The Grunwick strike”
Podcast episode about two extremely influential South Korean worker organisers, Jeon Tae-il and Lee So-sun, and the autonomous self-organisation of women textile and garment workers in the country from the 1960s to the 1980s.
Continue reading “E51: Jeon Tae-il and Lee So-sun”
In this podcast episode, historian Joey DeFrancesco tells the story of the first factory strike in US history when in 1824, young women and girls working in the mills in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, organised themselves and walked out, winning better conditions. Joey also explains how the development of capitalist industry in the north was dependent on the labour of enslaved people in the south.
Podcast episode about the workers at the Lusty Lady strip club in San Francisco who in 1997 were the first women who managed to unionise a strip joint in the United States, and who later took it over and ran it as a workers’ co-operative.
Continue reading “E20: The Exotic Dancers Union”
Podcast about the early history of women in the revolutionary Industrial Workers of the World union in the United States, in conversation with Heather Mayer, author of Beyond the Rebel Girl: Women and the IWW in the Pacific Northwest, 1905-1924.
Continue reading “E16: Women in the early IWW”
Podcast episode about the Vietnam war with Noam Chomsky, and Mrs Van, a member of the Vietnamese Women’s Union. We look at the geopolitics of the conflict and its human cost.
Continue reading “E14: The Vietnam war with Noam Chomsky”
Episode about the crucial role played by women in the great miners strike in Britain, 1984-5, in conversation with Heather Wood, chair of the Easington women’s strike support group.