ALTOONA, IA – AUGUST 21: Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) speaks at the Iowa Federation Labor Convention on August 21, 2019 in Altoona, Iowa. Candidates had 10 minutes each to address union members during the convention. The 2020 Democratic presidential Iowa caucuses will take place on Monday, February 3, 2020.(Photo by Joshua Lott/Getty Images)
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How would the workplace be different if the workers owned it? This question has been asked many times in many different ways over the centuries of capitalism, but it has once again moved to the center of political discussions with the rise of Jeremy Corbyn in the UK and Bernie Sanders in the United States. Today we’re talking with one of the thinkers behind new policies designed to change the way businesses are owned and run, giving workers a say in the profits they create and the processes they work under. Mathew Lawrence is the director of Commonwealth, a new think tank, and he joins us to talk about why ownership models matter in this moment of crisis.
We also hear updates from the Harland and Wolff occupation and ICE’s crackdown on workers who raise complaints in the workplace, and we look at Bernie Sanders’s sweeping labor law reform proposals and Trump’s crackdown on lower-income migrants. For Argh we consider why migrants pack our meat in the first place (spoiler alert: corporations like it that way) and consider the “birth strike.”