Working People
Working People (in partnership with In These Times and The Real News Network) is a podcast about working-class lives in the 21st century. In every episode, you’ll hear interviews with workers from all walks of life. We talk about their life stories, their jobs, politics, and families, their joys and hopes, their dreams and struggles. Overall, Working People aims to share and celebrate the diverse stories of working-class people, to remind ourselves that our stories matter, and to build a sense of shared struggle and solidarity between workers around the world.
The Real News Network proudly partnered with Working People during Season Four of the show and will be posting all new episodes here on the TRNN website. To listen to the back catalog of Working People episodes, listen and subscribe on your podcast player of choice using the buttons below.
Subscribe to Working People
Latest Episode
“Shut everything down”: Amid federal invasion, Minnesota calls for mass strike on Jan. 23
“Right now, we face an existential threat, not just to the labor movement, not just to the working class, but to any and every freedom that we hold dear… Come out, join us on January 23rd”
Recent episodes
The longest-running strike in the US is over—and the workers won
After over 3 years on strike, members of the Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh have returned to work at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. While the legal battle is still unresolved, this is a major victory for the labor movement.
What does it mean to be a union member in these dark times?
“I feel so strongly that, in these moments where we feel like there’s not a lot of hope, there’s a lot of hope when it comes to this community… There is so much power and influence that labor has, it could be so transformative.”
‘Starbucks is the largest labor violator in modern history’: Starbucks workers prepare for indefinite national strike
“We’ve been fighting for a very long time, and we’re at the point now where we’re done—and workers will go on strike by Thursday if this company does not come back with some new proposals and resolve all of these ridiculous Unfair Labor Practice charges.”
Campus life is unrecognizable in the Trump era: ‘There’s so many cops everywhere’
As the federal government continues its top-down assault on higher education, universities are internally building repression and surveillance machines that mirror the Trump administration.
Life after genocide: A Gazan’s message to the world about the ceasefire
“When the ceasefire began, I felt a mix of disbelief and emptiness. After two years of genocide, silence felt strange, almost frightening.”
Workers replaced by AI have a dire warning for the world
“Basically, the most evil billionaires in Silicon Valley want to consume everything before it’s too late, and then kick the tires and leave us all to drown…”
This government shutdown is not like the others: Furloughed federal workers explain
“We swore an oath when we took these positions to defend the Constitution and to provide these services to the American people… what’s going to happen to your everyday American when they don’t have Social Security or food assistance or Medicare?”
‘Microsoft is an active partner in the genocide!’: Inside the tech worker revolt for Palestine
“I, like many others, thought that working for Microsoft was the opportunity of a lifetime. I worked three years on Azure, not knowing that my labor was actively being used to facilitate the murder of my people.”
‘Hearts are crying and bodies are bleeding’: Gazans describe their daily struggle to survive
“I am asking everyone: use your voice, share the truth,” Mohamed Abu Tawila tells us from Gaza. “Call for the protection of civilians, and support… families getting food, water, medicine, shelter. We want life, safety, and a chance to live. Don’t forget us.”
Supply chain crisis will ‘get a lot worse’ with rail mega-merger: Railroad workers explain
“The robber barons of the 19th century never dreamed of having this much power. And here we are today, potentially on the threshold of allowing a mega merger… the likes of which we’ve never seen.”
‘Crazy as hell!’ and ‘Distraction from Epstein’: Residents respond to Trump’s takeover of Washington, DC
“The state of mind of DC citizens right now is that they’re under a police state, mainly in the poor Black and Brown communities… their mandate is to harass the citizens of the District of Columbia.”
These ‘neighbors from the hood’ saw ICE terrorizing their community—and banded together to fight back
“They’re showing up and just kidnapping people. I think we, as Americans, should have an expectation that we should be able to walk—regardless of the color of our skin, what we do for a living, the language that we speak—and not be grabbed off the street.”
Corporations and the government are turning the USA into one giant ‘sacrifice zone’
“This is not a ‘red state’ or ‘blue state’ problem, this is a working class problem,” TRNN Editor-in-Chief Maximillian Alvarez says in his 2025 Izzy Award acceptance speech. “And it’s not just happening to the chemically poisoned residents living in and around East Palestine, Ohio—this life-destroying scourge is coming for all of us.”
What good is a union in Hell?
“Brothers, sisters, siblings, we stand here now on the precipice of oblivion… This isn’t just about fighting for better wages and working conditions… This is about who is willing to fight for life itself?”
How union organizing can change your life and the world: A conversation with Jaz Brisack
“I think it’s really important to present an idea of what the world could look like if we win and talk to people about what they could really change [by organizing] and how their lives would be different.”
‘Kill the bill before it kills us all’: Protesters put their bodies on the line to stop Trump’s ‘Big Disastrous Betrayal Bill’
“I personally feel in such a desperate state about all of this that I said, ‘I don’t care if I get arrested.’ I mean, what else are we going to do?”
‘The problem was created by Trump’: Three eyewitnesses describe what’s really happening in Los Angeles
“What I witnessed is primarily a peaceful protest. It never got violent until the police in riot gear and batons started firing munitions at protestors… This is an American protest. It was not an insurrection. I covered January 6, I know exactly what that looks like.”
Trump plans massive military parade while cutting veteran jobs, benefits, & healthcare
“Veterans are tired of being celebrated on Veterans Day… and forgotten about after election day… We’re tired of being thanked for our service in public and stabbed in our backs in private.”
Trump cuts leave VA hospital nurses and veteran patients in a crisis
“We need people to call their congressmen, tell them this is not right, fully fund the VA… Those veterans stood on the line for us, and it’s time for us to stand on the line for them.”
An update on the longest ongoing strike in the US: ‘Some things don’t change at the Post-Gazette’
“It’s extremely important that companies can’t do what the Post-Gazette is trying to do… If we have to be the last people to draw that line in the sand… so be it. We’ve been here this long, there’s no reason to go away now.”
‘We can echo the emptiness of their stomachs’: Why Oregon students are hunger striking for Gaza
“We will never understand what it feels like to be under constant bombing, under constant threat of displacement and murder, but we can understand a fraction of what the hunger feels like, and we can echo the emptiness of their stomachs and use that as our power and our advocacy.”
This new model for worker organizing could supercharge today’s labor movement
Less than 10% of American workers are now unionized. To reverse decades of decline and bring millions of new workers into the labor movement, unions need to embrace the worker-to-worker organizing model.
‘Like being tortured’: Texas residents living next to bitcoin mine are getting sick and being ignored
Republican Governor Greg Abbott said Texas “wears the crown as the bitcoin mining capital of the world.” But in small towns like Granbury, working-class residents living next to giant data centers are the ones paying the price for Texas’s crypto boom.
‘The raids happened Wednesday, finals started Thursday’: FBI agents raid homes of pro-Palestine students at University of Michigan
We speak with four graduate student-workers at the University of Michigan and Columbia University about how their unions are fighting back against ICE abductions, FBI raids, and McCarthyist attacks on academic freedom.
A bitcoin mine in Texas is ‘killing us slowly,’ local residents say
After a 300-megawatt bitcoin mining operation came to Granbury, TX, residents started suffering from hypertension, heart palpitations, tinnitus, migraines, and more—and they say their concerns are going ignored by the company and government officials. It’s “environmental euthanasia,” one resident tells TRNN.
Something went wrong. Please refresh the page and/or try again.
