Former chief steward and union organizer Gordon Simmons joins Michael Stauch to discuss his new book on the history of labor struggles by public sector workers in West Virginia since 1969. With an emphasis on rank-and-file rebellion expressed through wildcat strikes and other job actions, Simmons provides a sweeping account of the past that has rich lessons for the present.

Highlights include:

● A discussion of wildcat strikes and why West Virginia’s public sector workers waged them, again and again, in this period;

● How a teacher wearing blue jeans sparked a battle over expressions of the counterculture in workplaces across West Virginia;

● Why New Democrats like Joe Manchin sided against rank-and-file rebellion among public sector workers in Virginia;

● How West Virginia public school teachers in 2018 used Facebook to organize a walkout that defied the union and won significant concessions from the state;

● The joy of participating in “collective hell-raising” with co-workers and friends.

Guest: Gordon Simmons is a retired union organizer and president of the West Virginia Labor History Association. He is now employed as an investigator for the Human Rights Commission for the state of West Virginia and as an adjunct professor in philosophy at Marshall University.

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