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.
Continue reading “E32: The Pawtucket mill strike”
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. Continue reading “E13: Women in the miners’ strike”
This is the first episode of the new WCH podcast on the Grunwick strike of East African Asian women workers in London 1976-8. Continue reading “E1: The Grunwick strike, 1976”