EXCLUSIVE: Is Labor Reporting On Life Support? Where Does One Get Reliable News From a Workers' Perspective?
Where Has The Labor Reporting Gone? Where do you go for your independent news about workers and their struggle against the owner class, from the perspective of the workers (not the union bosses)?
Where Is The Worker Perspective?
Where have all the independent publications focused on labor and workers gone?
Where do you go for your independent news about workers and their struggle against the owner class, from the perspective of the workers (not the union bosses)?
Sound off in the comments below, or
highlight the question above & “Re-stack with Note” on Notes, adding your favorite sources.
Today’s Labor Journalism Landscape
One successful podcaster once told me that “labor doesn’t get the kind of views other topics get,” so it gets kicked to the back burner much of the time. Having covered workers struggles across more than 20 industries the past 4 years, I have to sadly concur.
Most people who make a career in media want to keep their careers going, and most journalists & podcasters cannot survive on audience financial support alone.
Unfortunately, that means that in the moments when a strike or union contract becomes the story of the day the ground work isn’t laid to ask the right questions. There are too few trustworthy, reliable, independent labor sources to lean on who “get it right” on a range of issues a good percentage of the time. I’m talking about people who understand how labor fits in the economic landscape and figure out how to put the workers’ issues in context, so their audience sees what they see.
So few articles and outlets these days take the perspective of assuming ALL politicians and labor leaders are self-serving narcissists whom primarily serve the bosses - the ownership/nonprofit class - their donors - and work backwards from there. Equally as few use their platform to advocate, showcase & highlight workers’ issues and scrutinize union agreements signed with corporations from the perspective of the average worker and how it impacts their daily life. One thing to consider is that if the perception about other issues is off somehow, how does that skew their view of the entire landscape of the labor struggle? These outlets almost always accept the union’s PR, the spin, because they can get the sound bite and move on. There’s also been a similar trend in corporate outlets which uncritically regurgitate the articles pushed out by the wire services, using slightly altered headlines.
Corporate media is absolute dogshit and frames pretty much everything from the perspective of the necessity of prioritizing profits over people’s needs. They almost never report on organizing until a strike is about to happen or already ongoing. They generally swallow the union PR whole, as they did on the UPS-Teamsters deal. Name me one corporate media show focused on workers that doesn’t pat labor leaders on the head. And please, for the love of all things holy, don’t even get me started on “Undercover Boss.”
Independent news outlets I once considered award-winning - like Common Dreams & Truthout, I find often republish whatever the union PR tells them without really questioning, automatically assuming the union is speaking for all the workers. Often, they aren’t. Those outlets are struggling financially and have been clearly appealing to the a base of more progressive Democrats to stay afloat, which means getting in line on union PR, which aligns with Democrats (I’ll address that more below).
There is little-to-no reporting from within a union - from the rank-and-file workers - that isn’t sanctioned through the press office and homogenized for corporate media consumption. Doing so runs the risk of getting a worker fired. It’s not worth the risk to most employees, an average of 70% whom live paycheck to paycheck & literally can’t afford to lose their job.
I also can’t help but notice that there are no publications aligned with Republicans or “the right” (or, funded by wealthy donors - which funds the right, of course) that report from the perspective of the people “in the trenches” - unless it can be exploited for their political gain.
Looking The Other Way to Preserve a Career
The active choice of most media - both corporate and independent - is made out of fear of the repercussions for challenging the entire system and holding a mirror up to power. It IS an active choice - to NOT dig deeper and ignore the stories from the perspective of the people doing the hard work daily for the corporations that are earning record profits.
Even fewer articles these days come from outlets whom aren’t deferential to union leadership at orgs like Sean O’Brien at Teamsters, Shawn Fain at UAW and Sara Nelson at NNU. The AFT (American Federation of Teachers), run by DNC darling Randi Weingarten for almost 2 decades, is also an influential union that aligns closely with Democrats.
The problem with aligning with either corrupt, corporate-aligned political party is that you both attach yourself to that corruption as a union while simultaneously alienating most of the people who aren’t Democrats. Partisan Republicans feel they have zero representation within the teachers’ union, nor do independents.
People forget that the larger, most powerful unions (UAW, NNU, AFT, Teamsters, SEIU, AFL-CIO) have agendas of their own, since they represent workers from across multiple companies. It’s the union’s goal to simultaneously build its own brand and power - in addition to advocating to get the most possible for their members at the company level.
Sometimes, those two things don’t align, so sacrifices are made - and usually not on behalf of the individual. That means people who pay dues out of every check end up getting screwed over by their own unions. Rarely do stories like that ever come out in the press, but it happens more often than you’d think, as cited by Deepseek in examples around Teamsters, UAW, WGA and the Railroad Workers. “The gains for the collective often come with trade-offs that can leave some individual workers or subgroups feeling that their specific needs were not fully met…”
The perspective you pretty much NEVER hear is the argument that “unions are reformist in nature” and should not be the end-goal for workers. Owning the means of production and participating in the profits are much more effective ways of longer term retention and customer satisfaction, because the workers have a stake in the business’ reputation, as well as participating in the profit earned. Ever wonder why you never hear about it? Because it’s not nearly as profitable to the owner class or the union leadership.
Current Active Publications Covering Labor
This is a critical breakdown of the publications that are regarded as some of the best out there when it comes to representing workers. Keep in mind that their combined subscriber base is, sadly, a fraction of any corporate owned “mainstream” publication. I’ve read or referenced articles on livestreams from pretty much all these publications at some point in the past 4+ years.
Left Voice is usually pretty decent, and they actually has a part time UPS Teamster on staff (Luigi Morris) reporting from the perspective of the workers. They are the only Indie Media Awards honoree even on this list.
Payday Report is pretty good and genuinely tries to advocate and report on behalf of workers vs the union bosses, but has too much hope for Democrats to be any better for workers. Basically a one-man operation,
excitedly covered Kamala Harris’s anointed campaign in 2024 without addressing and confronting the issues behind how she became the candidate. To his credit, he published several big exposes about Shawn Fain and UAW last year that too many people missed. Full disclosure: I have frequently had private direct message conversations with Mike about labor and political issues in the past and I genuinely like him.Labor Notes is led by a former SEIU member and has adopted the DSA (Democratic Socialists of America) mentality and talking points, and are also aligned heavily with Teamsters for a Democratic Union.
Chris Brooks and
left Labor Notes and went to UAW as Chief of Staff and Communications Director, respectively. Furman’s wife also works for Dropsite News.
- is full of DNC hopium, with the occasional nugget of a good idea wrapped in the arrogance of a liberal. You would think he knows better about the Democrats at this point - but he has seen Lucy pull that football countless times and lines up for the next kick anyway.
Socialist Alternative seems to be very anti-Republican, not as much as anti-Democrat, which means they’re ignoring the Uniparty aspect of the duopoly. After election day 2025 they published an article begging DSA Mayor elect of NYC to break from the party and join them instead. It’s also more political than from a workers’ perspective.
WSWS never saw a contract between a union and management it didn’t call a sellout, which is likely true but hilariously predictable. They advocate for rank-and-file committees to organize workers in place of unions, but those don’t have the same protections or power that worker unions do currently. Until the laws change, that would actually REDUCE worker power. The likelihood of the laws changing while the owner class controls who is selected to even run for Congress is miniscule, sadly. Many WSWS writers also tend to be overly hysterical on other issues (COVID, January 6, taking Trump at his word regularly), causing people to dismiss their views entirely.
NLRB Edge was set up by
to track worker complaint filings with the NLRB, but Matt is also biased toward Democrats. It taints the entire thing as partisan, sadly. Matt’s think tank, the , uses DNC fundraising arm ActBlue (as well as Patreon) for fundraising. “I will simply try to determine who will carry the torch for the left in the next Democratic presidential primary and see if I can help them construct a well-designed social democratic policy agenda.” - (Election Musings - MattBruenig.com, November 7, 2024).More Perfect Union, while being a nonprofit, is a wolf in sheep’s clothing, in my opinion. It often does good work with hard hitting stories and well produced video content, which all costs money - who’s funding it? They have 3 dozen people on staff. It’s “funded through a combination of grassroots donations and values-aligned philanthropic organizations.” It was founded and still led by former Bernie Sanders campaign manager Faiz Shakir, who has been heavily DNC aligned in the past “In mid-January 2025, Shakir announced his candidacy for chair of the Democratic National Committee (DNC).” - Wikipedia
Democracy at Work is the brainchild of Professor
and focuses on organizing worker co-ops from an anti-capitalist perspective, but that structure isn’t right for every worker or business.Freelance Busting takes the completely opposite approach, advocating for independent contractors
Jacobin is the magazine of the DSA and they are very pro-union, but they swallow the PR propaganda whole and still advocate for Democrats at the end of the day.
Labor Union News shut down because the editor passed away on April 17, 2025. Thank you to
for correcting me. RIP Peter.
Even though I have issues with all of them, I will, at least, give them all credit for taking on a topic not amplified by the algorithm or focused on by most outlets & journalists. To quote a famous Congress person “it’s not sexy…”.
How Did We End Up Here?
Since Republicans have historically been opposed to labor unions, much of big labor decided to cozy up to the Democrats the past couple of decades. This abandoned the decades-long strategy of keeping all politicians at arms length to hold out their votes for actual concessions. This has cost the labor movement multiple times over the past 5 years, with major strikes avoided or ended prematurely, despite overwhelmingly being voted on by the workers. The Railroad Workers, UPS, Kellogg’s, Frito Lay, UAW, SAG-AFTRA and the Writers Guild of America are just a few examples.
Sean O’Brien from Teamsters, to his credit, at least attempted to play both sides, but the best move is to not play with either side and make them come to you. They need the union’s endorsement more than the union needs them.
That’s not to even talk about Amazon Labor Union, which was torpedoed from the outside-in by the Teamsters. Chris Smalls’ leadership was challenged until he walked away in July 2024 and handed them a giftwrapped, organized warehouse to start from. And nobody has EVER reported about it from that angle, that I’ve seen.
Some of these union “victories” using relatively toothless standup strikes or 1-day, or 3-day strikes, were sold by corporate and even “progressive” media as big wins with major concessions earned by the workers. The truth is that the union, in every case, sold the workers out prematurely, did not carry out the action they voted on, and took a shorter deal to avoid causing larger pain to mostly the organization (as well as the workers) - who, in spite of the fact that they voted to strike, understood what they were potentially enduring.
My advice: stay vigilant, hold all reporting on workers, unions and labor to the absolute highest scrutiny. Question EVERYTHING spun by these outlets and union PR shops. Most of the time, you’ll find that it’s intended to spin a narrative and push an agenda - not to get to the story of what’s going to happen to the workers as a result.
My Commitment to You
I will always try to get the story from the people on the ground to whom it’s happening. I’ve interviewed current and former Amazon workers about their experiences within the warehouses and attempting to organize. I did not rely on a PR office.
Where do you go for your independent news about workers and their struggle against the owner class, from the perspective of the workers (not the union bosses)?
Hi! I’m Indie. “Indie” is not just a person - but a persona and a project representing a fiercely independent, anti-corporate media operation. It’s the voice of a politically unaligned critic and curator who exists outside the traditional Left-Right duopoly. The mission is to seek a trustworthy alternative set of sources apart from the mainstream media (MSM) by championing and amplifying truly independent journalists and perspectives that are corporate-free.
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Labor Union News did not shut down for the reason you wrote. Its founder died unexpectedly.