When we fight, we win.

When we fight, we win. 

The growing labor movement with Seth Hutchinson of CWA

Episode Notes

In the second episode host, Mimi Garcia, discusses recent attacks on workers' rights by the Trump administration and the importance of organizing labor movements with guest Seth Hutchinson, Senior Campaign Lead Organizer with the Communications Workers of America (CWA). 

The conversation covers the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) upheavals, strategic organizing in the tech and video game sectors, historical and personal motivations for labor organizing, and the challenges faced in right-to-work states like Texas. 

Hutchinson also shares insights on starting a union, overcoming setbacks in labor campaigns, and the significance of long-term community and institutional organizing. The episode concludes with discussions on the social and political dynamics of organizing in conservative areas and the vital need for ongoing worker advocacy.

About Seth Hutchinson

Seth Hutchinson is a regional lead organizer with the Communications Workers of America, District 6, which covers the states of Texas, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Missouri, and Kansas. Seth got his start organizing in college working in his college cafeteria and later began organizing with the CWA local union, the Texas State Employees Union. Seth has been an organizer for more that 15 years. 

About Mimi Garcia

Mimi is the host of the Tenacious podcast. She’s an organizer, storyteller, and strategist. She’s worked for over 20 years in issue and movement organizing including labor, healthcare access, reproductive health and voting rights. After more than two decades in the nonprofit advocacy world, Mimi founded Just Collaborative, a consulting firm that works with advocacy groups to build impactful strategies. She lives in Austin, TX with her family, two cats, and a very neglected garden. 

Resources discussed in this episode:

• Contact a union organizer via the AFL-CIO: https://aflcio.org/formaunion/contact
• Book recommendation: No Shortcuts: Organizing for Power in the New Gilded Age, by Jane F. McAlevey: https://janemcalevey.com/book/no-shortcuts-organizing-for-power-in-the-new-gilded-age/ 

Contact Mimi Garcia: 

• 
  https://www.thejustcollaborative.com/ 
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/justcollaborative
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mimi-garcia/ 

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Transcript

Season 1, Episode 2: When we fight, we win.

S102_SethHutchinson

 Hi, and welcome to Tenacious Conversations with Red State Progressives. I am your host, Mimi Garcia, and it's so great to have you here with our second episode. So, these last couple of weeks have been really rough, and when this episode airs, I am sure that we'll be talking about a whole new slate of, diabolical schemes from the White House In this episode, we're talking about labor and organizing workers.

And there have been some recent developments that as of the recording of this introduction, February 5th, 2025, um, Trump has been working on gutting the leadership of the National Labor Relations Board, we call it the NLRB .

And the NLRB is an independent federal agency that's in charge of protecting workers rights to organize and form unions, and they really do a lot of important work to investigate labor violations, settle disputes, certify union elections, Trump fired one of the NLRB board members, Gwen A. Wilcox. As well as the general counsel, Jennifer Abruzzo. And then within about a day later, fired deputy general counsel, Jessica Rudder.

 A little bit of background on the board itself, , it has five members and they are appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate for five year terms.

 Gwen Wilcox was still in her appointed five year term and it's pretty unheard of for anyone to be, fired because the president has the opportunity to name a new NLRB board member pretty much every year as their, terms are, are staggered., uh, every year a new one is sort of coming up. So, there are now only two board members remaining. That is in part because When Biden was trying to appoint members to the board, the Senate kept, , blocking confirmation for those board members. So these three have been sort of the holdouts for the NLRB. It's no big surprise that the Trump administration would want to limit workers abilities to organize.

Now, it's pretty clear to at least constitutional experts that this is probably unconstitutional.

It's not clear what's going to happen next, but we're definitely watching what's happening in that space.

But I am really pleased to be joined by a good friend of mine an organizer named Seth Hutchinson. Seth is the Senior Campaign Lead Organizer with the Communications Workers of America or CWA, and he leads organizing campaigns in what is CWA's District 6 that covers Texas, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Missouri, and Kansas.

 CWA has historically been a telephone company union. It started in the 1930s, and it really grew to include workers from a wide variety of sectors, including public employees, so people who work for state government or, um, um, State agencies, airlines, healthcare workers, people in banking, and more recently, folks in tech.

 A big part of our conversation actually focused on some recent organizing wins from this summer that CWA had with folks in the video game industry. We talk about developments in the field of labor organizing and also Uh, you can do if you want to form a union at your workplace. He also goes into some of his background on how he got involved in the labor movement and what keeps him motivated in this work after two decades of organizing.

 Just a quick note that you might hear some minor audio issues with a vacuum cleaner out in the hallway, , I just appreciate your patience with that.

As always, I'm going to have links to any of the websites and resources that we talk about in this episode in the show notes linked there and also on the podcast webpage. You can find that at thejustcollaborative. com slash tenacious. Thanks so much. And here's my conversation with Seth Hutchinson.

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Seth: After many decades of decline and stagnation in the labor movement we're seeing just a huge upsurge.

Strategically, CWA, decided to invest in organizing in the tech sector and video game sectors. And there, there's a few reasons for that. Video games in particular, like video games make more money than movies and TV in this country. There are hugely profitable industry. That is very much not union and unlike TV and movies, which are heavily unionized.

And so when you look at like wages in the industry, they're far below what they should be compared to what profits the companies are making. And there's a whole range of issues of people working there, not just pay. And so what it's meant now is there'...