Fresh off the latest national victory against Amazon’s failed Unpaid Time Off retaliation, I was keen to check in with Amazon Teamsters about how things were going with their campaigns. I caught up with Juan Mereles, Teamsters union member and docks department worker at KSBD, and Amazon Air Hub in San Bernardino, California.

On this episode of the Union Bug, we’re talking about the working conditions at Juan’s warehouse, organizing against a giant corporation like Amazon, living in the Inland Empire, and how best to build community with your coworkers and your neighbors.

Check out the Amazon Teamsters on Instagram.

Catch up with IE Amazon Workers here.

Host: Mel Buer

Production and Editing: Mel Buer

As you may have noticed, it’s been awhile since my last episode, and I am very stoked to be back behind the mic bringing you more conversations from the labor movement and beyond.

On the show this week is Daniel Gross to talk about his forthcoming book, Unions of Our Own: 8 Building Blocks to Change Work and the World. The book provides a “radical, step-by-step framework for workers who want to fight for the better workplaces they’ve always envisioned—and dream of bigger changes too.

Mark Bray, author of Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook, said in his praise of the book,

Daniel is a veteran labor organizer and cofounder of the IWW Starbucks Workers Union, former labor lawyer and co-author of the classic Labor Law for the Rank and Filer: Building Solidarity While Staying Clear of the Law.

Much of the conversations we see cropping up in today’s online labor discourse center around the labor movement’s need to create a more militant organizing framework within the established unions in the United States. In the last decade, unions have experienced a resurgence in the popular conversation, particularly since 2021, but have struggled to increase membership and create new inroads toward organizing victories, particularly in the wake of successive anti-labor administrations. What does it mean to reintroduce militant organizing strategies to organize labor’s toolbox, and can we look to examples from our own labor history to give us a blueprint?

In We Always Had a Union, Shaun Richman writes a meticulously researched history of the New York Hotel Workers’ Union, and the influence of their militant communist organizers on their organizing strategy from the 1910s through the 1950s. In his introduction to the book he writes,

With me today to discuss this history is Shaun Richman. Shaun teaches labor history at SUNY Empire State University and is the author of this and one another book, Tell the Bosses We’re Coming: A New Action Plan for Workers in the Twenty-First Century.

Editorial Note: This podcast was recorded in late December 2025. In a particular encouraging turn of events, the Minnesota AFL-CIO has endorsed a community stoppage action for TODAY Jan 23 in the wake of violent ICE raids in the Twin Cities area. We love militant organizing against repressive state forces, don't we folks?

Follow Shaun on Bluesky here.

Buy Shaun's Book here.