Episode 12 of Fragile Juggernaut turns the lens on the situation and activity of white-collar, professional, and creative workers in the 1930s and 1940s. Together with guests Nikil Saval (state senator from Pennsylvania and author of Cubed: A Secret History of the Workplace) and Shannan Clark (historian at Montclair State University and author of The Making of the American Creative Class: New York’s Culture Workers and Twentieth-Century Consumer Capitalism), Alex and Gabe dig in on a few key sectors: office workers, journalists, academics and scientists, and workers in the culture industries—art, film, radio, theater, and publishing. How did the labor movement and the left conceptualize these kinds of workers and what role they might play? What was the relationship between their organization and struggle, on one hand, and the content and function of their work, on the other?
Sonically, this episode is a bit of a concept album, interspersed with excerpts from Marc Blitzstein’s 1937 musical play The Cradle Will Rock (actually a higher-quality 1964 recording). Inspired stylistically by the plays of Bertolt Brecht and institutionally sponsored by the WPA (until it panicked and backed out), The Cradle Will Rock is set in Steeltown, USA: a sex worker is thrown in jail after refusing a cop free service. There, she meets academics, artists, and journalists who have been arrested in a police mix-up at a steelworkers’ rally, which they were monitoring as members of the anti-union Liberty Committee of steel baron Mr. Mister. While these anti-union professionals and creatives wait for Mr. Mister to come clear things up and bail them out, they explain how he recruited them to the Liberty Committee. Also with them in jail is steelworkers’ leader Larry Forman, who warns them that the cozy “cradle” where they sit will soon fall.
A correction: Gabe says in the episode that the Disney strike was in 1940. In fact, it was in May 1941.
Featured music (besides The Cradle Will Rock): “Teacher’s Blues” by Pete Seeger.
Archival audio credits: “I Want to Be a Secretary,” Coronet Instructional Films (1941); Dan Mahoney Oral History, San Francisco State Labor Archives and Research Center; Oppenheimer (2023); “WPA Helping Theaters All Black Production of Macbeth”; Isom Moseley oral history, Federal Writers Project (1941); Dumbo (1941).
Fragile Juggernaut is a Haymarket Originals podcast exploring the history, politics, and strategic lessons of the Congress of Industrial Organizations and the rank and file insurgency that produced it. Support Fragile Juggernaut on Patreon and receive our exclusive bimonthly newsletter, full of additional insights, reading recommendations, and archival materials we’ve amassed along the way.
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What does it *feel like* to build worker power? Season two of Haymarket Originals is bringing you inside one of the most dynamic and inspiring organizing drives in the labor movement today. Heat The Ground Up is an oral history of Starbucks Workers United, voiced by the baristas who built it.
Welcome to Heat the Ground Up, an oral history of Starbucks Workers United. Together, we’ll follow one of the most important labor fights in a generation through the voices and perspectives of the workers who organized it from the ground up. In this first episode, we’re joined by a handful of labor experts who will walk us through the significance of this story and some of the challenges workers were up against, setting the stage for the larger narrative.
This podcast is a Haymarket Originals production. Visit haymarketbooks.org to find indispensable radical books, podcasts, virtual events, and other political education resources, including Class Struggle Unionism, which is 20% Off online. Please also consider joining the Haymarket book club. It’s one of the best ways to support Haymarket, and help fund projects like this one.
Our podcast host is Clarissa Redwine. You can find more of her work at strike.kitchen. This entire oral history is released under a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike 4.0 International License. The music was composed by Michael T. Simonelli over at the podcast production company Charts and Leisure.
Welcome to Heat the Ground Up, an oral history of Starbucks Workers United. Together, we’ll follow one of the most important labor fights in a generation through the voices and perspectives of the workers who organized it from the ground up. In this second episode, we’ll dive into the issues that fueled organizing and the salting operation that gave workers at Elmwood in Buffalo a path to unionization.
This podcast is a Haymarket Originals production. Visit haymarketbooks.org to find indispensable radical books, podcasts, virtual events, and other political education resources, including Unite and Win. Subscribe and listen to the Unite and Win companion podcast here.
Please also consider joining the Haymarket book club. It’s one of the best ways to support Haymarket, and help fund projects like this one.
Our podcast host is Clarissa Redwine. You can find more of her work at strike.kitchen. This entire oral history is released under a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike 4.0 International License. The music was composed by Michael T. Simonelli over at the podcast production company Charts and Leisure.
Welcome to Heat the Ground Up, an oral history of Starbucks Workers United. In this episode, baristas take the union public in Buffalo, NY and we get an inside look at management’s anti-union campaign. Over the course of the series, we’ll follow one of the most important labor fights in a generation through the voices and perspectives of the workers who organized it from the ground up.
This podcast is a Haymarket Originals production. Visit haymarketbooks.org to find indispensable radical books, podcasts, virtual events, and other political education resources, including Set the Earth on Fire, which is 20% Off online. Please also consider joining the Haymarket book club. It’s one of the best ways to support Haymarket, and help fund projects like this one.
Our podcast host is Clarissa Redwine. You can find more of her work at strike.kitchen. This entire oral history is released under a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike 4.0 International License. The music was composed by Michael T. Simonelli over at the podcast production company Charts and Leisure.
Welcome to Heat the Ground Up, an oral history of Starbucks Workers United. In this episode, baristas in Buffalo, NY weather the final blows of management’s anti-union campaign and prepare for an election. Over the course of the series, we’ll follow one of the most important labor fights in a generation through the voices and perspectives of the workers who organized it from the ground up.
This podcast is a Haymarket Originals production. Visit haymarketbooks.org to find indispensable radical books, podcasts, virtual events, and other political education resources, including Detroit: I Do Mind Dying, which is 20% Off online. Please also consider joining the Haymarket book club. It’s one of the best ways to support Haymarket, and help fund projects like this one.
Our podcast host is Clarissa Redwine. You can find more of her work at strike.kitchen. This entire oral history is released under a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike 4.0 International License. The music was composed by Michael T. Simonelli over at the podcast production company Charts and Leisure.
Welcome to Heat the Ground Up, an oral history of Starbucks Workers United. In this episode, we get an inside look at the first Starbucks Workers United vote count and see the union take off across the country. Over the course of the series, we’ll follow one of the most important labor fights in a generation through the voices and perspectives of the workers who organized it from the ground up.
This podcast is a Haymarket Originals production. Visit haymarketbooks.org to find indispensable radical books, podcasts, virtual events, and other political education resources, including Class War, USA, which is 20% Off online. Please also consider joining the Haymarket book club. It’s one of the best ways to support Haymarket, and help fund projects like this one.
Our podcast host is Clarissa Redwine. You can find more of her work at strike.kitchen. This entire oral history is released under a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike 4.0 International License. The music was composed by Michael T. Simonelli over at the podcast production company Charts and Leisure.