E100: Vietnam War strike wave, part 2

Working Class History

Society & Culture, Education, History

5.0 • 813 Ratings

🗓️ 5 February 2025

⏱️ 40 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

With the background of the Vietnam war, rising prices and stagnant wages, workers in the US began to ignore calls to support the war effort and keep working, and instead launch a wave of wildcat strikes in key industries, while women homeworkers fought for lower prices. We tell the story of these struggles in this double podcast episode.
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This is an improved, re-edited version of our original episode 8. In conversation with Jeremy Brecher, author of the excellent book, Strike!, we learn about the support for the war from union officials, the responses from the rank-and-file, and lessons we can learn from them today.
In part 2, we look at strikes by postal workers, Teamsters, hospital workers and auto workers, and protests by women homeworkers

More information, sources, and eventually a transcript on the webpage for this episode: https://workingclasshistory.com/podcast/e99-vietnam-war-strike-wave/
Acknowledgements

Thanks to our Patreon supporters for making this podcast possible. Special thanks to Jazz Hands, Jamison D. Saltsman, Fernando López Ojeda, Jeremy Cusimano, Nick Williams and Old Norm.
Edited by Jesse French, with original editing by Emma Courtland.
Episode graphic: Postal workers on wildcat strike, 1970. Courtesy APWUcommunications/Wikimedia Commons CC SA 3.0
Our theme tune is Bella Ciao, thanks for permission to use it from Dischi del Sole. You can purchase it here or stream it here.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi and welcome back to part two of our double episode about the strike wave in the US during the Vietnam War.
0:06.0	If you haven't listened to part one yet, I'd go back and listen to that first.
0:10.0	At the matina,
0:15.0	Appen alzata
0:20.0	Oh, Bella, chow, bella,
0:23.6	chow, bella, chow,
0:25.6	chow, chow, all the matino.
0:30.6	Before we got onto the main episodes, we thought it was worth making a bit of an announcement
0:35.6	because this is our 100th episode,
0:38.3	which seems like quite a milestone, and one that is only possible because of support from you,
0:44.3	our listeners, on Patreon.
0:46.3	We don't have wealthy backers or get funding from any political party or government or corporation or anything like that.
0:53.3	All of our work is funded by you.
0:56.4	In return, patrons get exclusive early access to podcast episodes without ads, bonus episodes
1:02.3	every month, free and discount in merchandise and other content.
1:06.5	As we're recording this, we've got just under 900 patrons. If we could get up to 1,200 patrons, this would really help us cover our costs,
1:15.5	make our projects sustainable for the long term, and help us fund production of more regular episodes.
1:21.3	So if you can, please consider joining our community and keeping people's history alive in these trying times. Learn more and sign up at
1:30.2	patreon.com slash working class history. Link in the show notes. Let's talk about something that might be
1:36.9	keeping you up at night. Cyber security. According to Vanta's latest state of trust report,
1:42.8	it's the number one concern for UK businesses.
1:46.0	That's where Vanta comes in.
	...

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