Local • News & Public Affairs • Podcast
Heartland Labor Forum is Kansas City's only program about the workplace. It is produced by and for our working people. We have been agitating on the air since 1989. Find out who is busting unions and who is fighting back. We are a member of the Labor Radio Podcast Network #laborradiopod
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The Team
Heartland Labor Forum Programmers
The Heartland Labor Forum is produced by a group of volunteers who are labor and community activists who believe in workplace democracy, workers rights, and economic justice. We're the only show in Kansas City that focuses on working people: who is fighting on their side and who is not, what they need to know about the economy. We seek to educate and inspire.
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The Heartland Labor Forum is Kansas City’s only program about the workplace. It’s radio that talks back to the boss! Whether you’re a union member or your workplace isn’t organized, Heartland Labor Forum (HLF) has stories for you, guaranteed to inspire, educate, or enrage you. HLF is produced by a diverse group of working people. We have been agitating for the rights of working people on the KKFI airwaves since 1989.
Find out about labor struggles and strikes, organizing in Kansas City, global sweatshops, and how the economy is working from the point of view of working people. Listen to our monthly features: Know Your Rights, Safety First, Remember Our Struggle, and Washington Window on Workers. Heartland Labor Forum has won the International Labor Communications Association first prize for radio several times. We are members of the Labor Radio Podcast Network #laborradiopod. Other media have plenty of business news of, by, and for the 1%; HLF is for the rest of us.
Find our schedule of upcoming shows and our archive at www.heartlandlaborforum.org.
Jen Zaman Dream of an engineer. She’s J Zed–presenter of Mind The Gap, Saturdays 12AM GMT/6PM CST. Music/art lover, proud wife and fur-mom, and aunt to a French teen.
Feature Editors
- Michael Amash does Know Your Rights once a month. He is with the Blake & Uhlig labor law firm.
- Mark Gruenberg is on once a month with Washington Window on Workers. He is a full-time labor journalist with PAI-Press Associates Inc. which provides news to unions and labor publications.
Upcoming Episodes
January 27, 2022 Local, News & Public Affairs, Podcast
Who Is to Blame for the Current Inflation? We’ll Ask Richard Wolff and KC Google Workers Organize
As the mainstream media swells fears of inflation, blaming Biden, greedy workers, the supply chain and COVID, on the Heartland Labor Forum we’ll ask economist Richard Wolff what’s the real cause. He says none of the above. Then, Google customer service workers are organizing a union. KC was Google’s first wired city, so it figures its workers should be the first to organize.
Read MoreRecent Episodes
January 20, 2022 Local, News & Public Affairs, Podcast
Mapping the Current Strike Wave and Replacing Permanent Replacement
This week, it’s Johnnie Kallas from Cornell University about his new Labor Action Tracker strike map of the US. It will help you see who needs your solidarity. Then, since Ronald Reagan busted the air traffic controllers, employers have knocked themselves out trying to permanently replace strikers. Biden's National Labor Relations Board, however, wants to permanently replace the permanent replacement doctrine. We’ll talk to author and labor lawyer Robert Schwartz.
ListenJanuary 13, 2022 Local, News & Public Affairs, Podcast
KC’s New Wage Theft Ordinance and Duke on Biden
If you’re a wage earner in Kansas City, it’s very likely that you have been a victim of wage theft during your work life. This week on the Heartland Labor Forum, learn how wage theft impacts all of us and how the new KC Wage Theft Ordinance can benefit you. Then, Labor Council President Duke Dujakovich will discuss what President Joe Biden has done for working people since taking office.
ListenJanuary 6, 2022 Local, News & Public Affairs, Podcast
Why Stamping Out Racism Is Good for White People (and everyone else too) Heather McGhee in KC with Terrence and Bridgette from Stand Up KC
“Racism in our politics and in our policy making is why all of us can’t have nice things. And by we who can’t have nice things, I mean the white folks, the largest share of the impoverished and the uninsured, and I mean the folks of color who are disproportionately so,” says Heather McGhee, author of the Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone. By nice things she doesn’t mean a fancy car. She means things like childcare or a good education for your kids or a job that treats you with respect. Heather was in Kansas City in November in dialogue with Stand-Up KC’s Terrence Wise and Bridgette Hughes on how to build a multi-racial workers’ movement. This week, we’ll bring you that conversation.
ListenDecember 30, 2021 Local, News & Public Affairs, Podcast
New Union Leaders Series: Kevin Gard, Cement Masons & Who’s In the Working Class?
We’ll have another in our new union leaders series. We’ll talk to Kevin Gard, business manager of Cement Masons Local 518. His members do lots of stuff from tilt-up cement walls to the ornamental plastering of the ceiling at Union Station. Then, we hear a lot about the working class, but exactly who is in it and who is not? Why does it matter? Carl Redwood, Jr., civil and human rights activist from Pittsburgh Black Worker Center will be our guest.
ListenDecember 24, 2021 Local, News & Public Affairs, Podcast
Two Victories for Workers: Chilean Workers Can Now Purge the Pinochet Constitution and Autoworkers Vote for Democracy
This week on the Heartland Labor Forum, we’ll talk about two victories for working people. First, pro-worker leftist Gabriel Boric won Sunday’s presidential election in Chile and may finally exorcize the ghost of General Augusto Pinochet in Chile’s extremely anti-labor/anti-democratic constitution. Then, United Autoworker Rank and Filers just approved one man one vote in elections for top union officers, thus doing away with a rigged system which denied members real democracy.
ListenDecember 16, 2021 Local, News & Public Affairs, Podcast
Getting There for XMAS: Supply Chain Blues and Will Santa Deliver?
Will Santa be late for Christmas? Will his supply chain deficiencies leave your stocking empty? Some want to blame workers who don’t want to work or a global pandemic. This week we’ll explore the truth about "Supply Chain Blues". Then we’ll ask American Postal Workers Union president Mark Dimondstein if postal cutbacks are slowing Santa down and about needed legislation, and hopes for expansion of postal service.
ListenDecember 9, 2021 Local, News & Public Affairs, Podcast
Teamsters Vow to Organize Amazon and the Battle of Blair Mountain Centennial
It’s a hundred years since The Battle of Blair Mountain, the only union organizing attempt where the US government threatened to bomb workers. Hear about it, and find out where the term “red neck” comes from this week on the Heartland Labor Forum. Then, there are new startups in Amazon organizing, an NLRB decision overturning the union election at the Bessemer Alabama warehouse, and the Teamsters have a new Amazon organizing department headed by Randy Korgan. We talk to him.
ListenDecember 3, 2021 Local, News & Public Affairs, Podcast
A Labor Tribute to Herb Johnson (1943-2021)
The Kansas City labor community lost Herb Johnson on October 18th. Herb’s life was a non-stop fight for the rights of working people from his early days with the Machinists at TWA to his last role building the Alliance for Retired Americans. In between, he held the number two post with the Missouri AFL-CIO, fighting bills in the legislature aimed at fleecing workers. On this week’s Heartland Labor Forum, Herb’s union friends will pay tribute with lots of good stories.
ListenNovember 25, 2021 Local, News & Public Affairs, Podcast
Remembering Herb Johnson & Keith Nelson from the 2011 show on TWA
Twenty years ago, Transworld Airlines ceased operations, driven into bankruptcy by corporate raider Carl Icahn. The union that represented the thousands of Kansas City TWA maintenance base workers was Machinists Local 1650. Its president and vice president were Herb Johnson and Keith Nelson. Both died recently, and this week, we’ll remember their militant struggle against Carl Icahn to save the airline.
ListenNovember 18, 2021 Local, News & Public Affairs, Podcast
Unions and Vaccine Mandates and Is CRT: Turning Parents Against Teachers?
Vaccine mandates. Biden and OSHA are for them. Your company may be too, but what about unions and what about you? We’ll ask leaders of the Postal Workers and CWA what’s happening where they work. Then, the education privatizers are using the phony threat of Critical Race Theory to twist the teaching of history into a fairy tale. We’ll talk to KU’s David Roediger on why kids need to learn history as it really was.
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