Oil Can Eddie and the Battle for the Steelworkers’ Union

July 31, 2025July 24, 2025 ~ Walter P. Reuther Library, Wayne State University

Roger Biles and Mark Rose discuss the legacy of Eddie Sadlowski, a charismatic and progressive Chicago steelworker who, unhappy with the United Steelworker of America’s closed-rank authoritarian leadership and tepid support for rank-and-file members, led a highly visible yet unsuccessful dissident campaign in the contentious election for the USWA’s presidency in 1977.

Dr. Biles is a Professor Emeritus of history at Illinois State University. Dr. Rose is a professor of history at Florida Atlantic University. Their article, “’Oil Can Eddie’ and the Battle for the Steelworkers’ Union,” was published in the Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society.

Related Collections:
Edward Sadlowski Papers (LP000754)

Episode Credits
Interviewee: Roger Biles and Mark Rose
Producers: Dan Golodner and Troy Eller English
Music: Bart Bealmear

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The Worthy Wages Movement for Childcare Workers

April 17, 2025April 11, 2025 ~ Walter P. Reuther Library, Wayne State University

Dr. Justine Modica discusses the Worthy Wages movement centered in Seattle from the 1980s through the 2000s. Affiliated with SEIU, daycare directors and childcare workers in childcare centers and home-based daycares joined together to raise public awareness of the underfunding of daycare and lobby for increased state childcare subsidies, hoping to increase the wages and retention of skilled workers in a lowly-paid but critical field.

Modica is a Klarman Postdoctoral Fellow in History at Cornell University. She authored the article, “Worthy Wages in the Emerald City: Worker- and Director-Led Childcare Movements in Seattle, 1984–2006,” and is writing a book examining how the government, employers, and families have shaped childcare as wage labor.

Related Collections:
Center for the Child Care Workforce Records

Episode Credits
Interviewee: Justine Modica
Producers: Dan Golodner and Troy Eller English
Music: Bart Bealmear

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Awaiting Their Feast: Latinx Food Workers and Activism from World War II to COVID-19

February 20, 2025February 18, 2025 ~ Walter P. Reuther Library, Wayne State University

Dr. Lori Flores discusses food systems in the US and Northeast region specifically, illuminating how the nation has developed a growing appetite for both Latinx food and Latinx food laborers, who are often underpaid and under-nourished as they help grow, process, transport, prepare, and serve food across the country. Flores is an associate professor of history at Stony Brook University and author of Awaiting Their Feast: Latinx Food Workers and Activism from World War II to COVID-19..

Episode Credits
Interviewee: Lori Flores
Producers: Dan Golodner and Troy Eller English
Music: Bart Bealmear

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Building Power, Breaking Power: The United Teachers of New Orleans, 1965-2008

September 3, 2024September 3, 2024 ~ Walter P. Reuther Library, Wayne State University

Dr. Jesse Chanin describes how the United Teachers of New Orleans (UTNO) gained power and influence in a region hostile to unions from the mid-1960s to the mid-2000s by building trust in the community with transparent and democratic decision-making and a focus on racial and economic justice to improve the lives of the New Orleans community. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, however, politicians and charter school advocates fired 7,500 educators in New Orleans, dismantling the city’s public education system and decimating the union.

Dr. Chanin is a postdoctoral researcher at the Coalition for Compassionate Schools and the author of Building Power, Breaking Power: The United Teachers of New Orleans, 1965-2008.

Episode Credits
Interviewee: Jesse Chanin
Producers: Dan Golodner and Troy Eller English
Music: Bart Bealmear

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Detroit Industry and ‘The Mural’

July 25, 2024July 25, 2024 ~ Walter P. Reuther Library, Wayne State University

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, commissioned by Edsel Ford for the Detroit Institute of Arts in 1932, champions industrial and technological progress and the factory workers who fueled it. In contrast, Walter Speck and Barbara Wilson’s 1937 untitled mural, which originally hung in the UAW Local 174 union hall and now hangs behind the reference desk at the Reuther Library, champions the progress those industrial workers made laboring for their own welfare via union action.

Dr. Cephas is Assistant Professor of the History and Theory of Architecture at Princeton University. His essay “Detroit Industry and ‘The Mural’: Representing Labor and Reappropriating Care in the Museum and in the Union Hall,” was published in the 2023 volume, Architectures of Care: From the Intimate to the Common.

Episode Credits
Interviewee: Jay Cephas
Producers: Dan Golodner and Troy Eller English
Music: Bart Bealmear

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Hillbilly Highway: Charting White Migration from Appalachia to the Industrial Midwest

May 9, 2024May 3, 2024 ~ Walter P. Reuther Library, Wayne State University

Dr. Max Fraser shares the often overlooked story of the “hillbilly highway,” the route nearly eight million poor, rural, white Americans took in the 20th century from economically depressed areas in the Southeastern and Southern United States toward higher paying factory jobs in the Upper South and Midwest. He explains how the social advancement and marginalization they experienced transformed American culture, the labor movement, and today’s political landscape.

Dr. Fraser is an assistant professor of History at the University of Miami. His book Hillbilly Highway: The Transappalachian Migration and the Making of a White Working Class received an Honorable Mention for the Frederick Jackson Turner Award from the Organization of American Historians.

Episode Credits
Producers: Dan Golodner and Troy Eller English
Interviewee: Max Fraser
Music: Bart Bealmear

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Betty Friedan’s Labor Roots

March 28, 2024April 15, 2024 ~ Walter P. Reuther Library, Wayne State University

Rachel Shteir shares how Betty Friedan’s early experience as a labor reporter for the Federated Press informed her later work as a famed women’s rights activist, author of The Feminine Mystique, and co-founder of the National Organization for Women. Although Friedan’s activism shaped the American women’s movement in the latter half of the 20th century, Shteir also notes that her pugilistic attitude ignored or antagonized would-be allies, including non-white women and lesbians. Shteir is head of dramaturgy and dramatic criticism in the Theatre School at DePaul University and is the author of Betty Friedan: Magnificent Disrupter, a finalist in the biography category for the National Book Critics Circle Award.

Related Resources:
Betty Friedan: Magnificent Disrupter

Episode Credits
Producers: Dan Golodner and Troy Eller English
Interviewee: Rachel Shteir
Music: Bart Bealmear

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The UAW’s Southern Gamble in Foreign-Owned Factories

March 4, 2024February 27, 2024 ~ Walter P. Reuther Library, Wayne State University

Dr. Stephen Silvia explains how the UAW built a cooperative relationship with workers’ councils and unions at foreign automotive companies, but has nevertheless struggled to organize those companies’ vehicle factories in the southern United States since the 1990s due to anti-labor politics and the companies’ shared anti-union playbooks. Silvia is a professor in the School of International Service at American University and author of The UAW’s Southern Gamble: Organizing Workers at Foreign-Owned Vehicle Plants.

Episode Credits
Producers: Dan Golodner and Troy Eller English
Interviewee: Stephen J. Silvia
Music: Bart Bealmear

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Labor Radical Harry Bridges and the Cold War Ire of the US Government

November 9, 2023October 30, 2023 ~ Walter P. Reuther Library, Wayne State University

In the second of a two-part series, Dr. Robert Cherny recounts how immigrant Harry Bridges successfully led the powerful International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) for four decades beginning in the 1930s, even as his militant unionism and association with communists placed him at odds with the American government during the Cold War and at the center of several deportation hearings.

Cherny is professor emeritus at San Francisco State University and author of Harry Bridges: Labor Radical, Labor Legend.

Related Resources:
Harry Bridges: Labor Radical, Labor Legend

Episode Credits
Producers: Dan Golodner and Troy Eller English
Interviewee: Robert Cherny
Music: Bart Bealmear

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Labor Legend Harry Bridges and the Pacific Coast Longshore Strike of 1934

November 2, 2023October 31, 2023 ~ Walter P. Reuther Library, Wayne State University

In the first of a two-part series, Dr. Robert Cherny explains how the early life of Australian immigrant Harry Bridges prepared him to lead the groundbreaking 1934 Pacific Coast longshoremen’s and maritime workers’ strikes in the United States, later becoming the first president of the powerful International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU).

Cherny is professor emeritus at San Francisco State University and author of Harry Bridges: Labor Radical, Labor Legend.

Related Resources:
Harry Bridges: Labor Radical, Labor Legend

Episode Credits
Producers: Dan Golodner and Troy Eller English
Interviewee: Robert Cherny
Music: Bart Bealmear

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