Brian Lysell

The rich and powerful want nothing more than for you and your coworkers to remain unorganized and atomized from one another.

WQED lays off another 19 employees Following the May elimination of five employees, WQED laid off 19 employees on Wednesday, primarily in marketing, membership and production. In a statement, WQED president Jason Jedlinski said the lay...

TV Talk: More bad news out of @WQED which laid off an additional 19 employees today, via @triblive.bsky.social : triblive.com/aande/movies...

FCC Approves Paramount-Skydance Deal After Skydance’s CBS Ombudsman, Anti-DEI Pledges The FCC approved the transfer of CBS licenses to Skydance's ownership group, paving the way to the merger of Skydance and Paramount.

Bribes work!

LL COOL J drops out of Wawa Welcome America concert because of union strike LL COOL J said that he is not going to perform at Wawa Welcome America on July 4th in light of the AFSCME District Council 33 strike in Philadelphia.

LL Cool J said that he will not perform at Wawa Welcome America in Philadelphia on July 4th because of union strike

“There is absolutely no way I can perform across a picket line”

Think It’s Impossible to Find Community at Work? Try Joining a Union I went from “just thinking of myself to really caring so deeply about all of my colleagues.”

Young workers at Starbucks, Amazon, Sesame Workshop, Hearst Magazines, and Action Network talk about how organizing changed their relationship with work.

pittsburgh friends, a reminder: the writers and editors at the post-gazette are on strike. have been for well over 2 yrs. even if ~certain editors~ insist they're not part of the union, posting PG links is driving clicks / revenue to the paper, therefore undermining the strike. don't be a scab.

Democratic governor faces a choice: Siding with workers or "political suicide" Inside the intensifying battle over workers' rights in Colorado

NEW: Colorado Gov. Jared Polis has a big choice to make.

Sign the newly passed Worker Protection Act, which makes it easier to unionize

*or*

Commit "political suicide," as the state AFL-CIO leader put it to me.

"If he vetoes this, he's ‘Right to Work Polis’ from this point on. He's cooked."

National Institute for Occupational Safety & Health researchers work to protect miners from black lung disease, firefighters from cancer, and workers everywhere from dangerous workplace hazards.

Trump is planning to fire 85% of them.

Make no mistake: this will cost workers their lives.

Workers Memorial Day: Remembering those who lost their lives on the job—and fighting for safe jobs for every worker | AFL-CIO

On Workers Memorial Day, America’s unions mourn the workers who have lost their lives or been injured or ill on the job.

Every worker should be able to go home at the end of the day safe and healthy, and we’ll keep fighting like hell to make that a reality for EVERY worker.

Let’s Take a Look at the Children’s Books Sam Alito Is So Afraid Of Stories like "Uncle Bobby's Wedding" are only objectionable if you find the very existence of LGBTQ people to be objectionable.

The children's books that Sam Alito says convey "highly objectionable moral principles" are standard-issue storybooks with gay and trans characters. They don't teach anything about "gender and sexuality." Alito is just a homophobe who doesn't want to see it. ballsandstrikes.org/scotus/mahmo...

Meritocracy is when you’re a Fox News host and then get to run the military. It’s when you have zero experience in museums and get to overhaul the Smithsonian for impure ideology. It’s when you’re the richest man on Earth & buy your way into govt - and staff a dept w/ your own interns. Etc.

Congrats to TurboTax, which has worked for two decades to stop Americans from being able to file taxes for free.

www.propublica.org/article/insi...

BREAKING: The United Mineworkers and United Steelworkers unions are suing the Trump admin over its decision to delay enforcement of a lifesaving new silica rule meant to curb the black lung epidemic in Appalachia.

My exclusive for @inthesetimesmag.bsky.social: inthesetimes.com/article/trum...

RFK Jr Just eliminated #NIOSH.

So I guess environmental toxins don't count if they're just in the workplace.

And I guess RFK Jr doesn't consider workers to be Americans. Because he just left them all behind.

www.washingtonpost.com/health/2025/...

Trump Quietly Decimates a Pivotal Labor Relations Agency The Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service has been destroyed. It provided free collective-bargaining mediation and saved hundreds of millions of dollars in labor costs.

One of the lesser-known government agencies provides free mediation for collective bargaining. It has helped resolve some of the biggest labor disputes in recent history and saved the economy hundreds of millions of dollars.
Trump deleted it.
From our friends at @revolvingdoordc.bsky.social:

This is a wildly dangerous sign — the idea that there are only five SCOTUS votes for paying congressionally mandated invoices for work *already* done!? This should be as basic a test of Article I as you can get. And that does not bode well for decisions to come.

Pittsburgh based IRS agent speaks out after firing, "People are not going to benefit from these cuts." The Pittsburgh-based IRS agent was let go just prior to his one-year work anniversary and was working with companies to ensure they filed correctly.

New from me and @newsmanchris.bsky.social: a Pittsburgh IRS employee caught up in the federal layoffs says no one will be better off because of these cuts.

Listen up nerds:
* DEI is when vagina. Or dark skin.
* Merit is when you're a shithammered TV personality who gets handpicked to become the head of the military.

Facts matter, as a matter of fact.

Jon Burnett, beloved former KDKA-TV personality, dies at age 71 KDKA-TV is sad to report that Jon died of complications from suspected CTE. He leaves behind an incredible legacy.

To my Pittsburgh friends: we lost a giant today. I will forever be grateful to have called Jon Burnett my colleague, my mentor, and my friend. www.cbsnews.com/pittsburgh/n...

strongly agreed with Cara. some of y'all talk like you have hidden a spare population of unproblematic, unpropagandized people to build a mass movement out of under your couch cushions or something.

When we unionized a few years ago, a lot of peanut gallery types on social media wanted to tell me it would be the end of Wired.

Hope it’s now clear (thanks mostly to our insanely talented and hardworking politics team) that it does not work that way.

Unions are good.

The ranks of federal employee unions are swelling as they attempt to shield their members from a barrage of executive orders from President Trump, who with billionaire advisor Elon Musk, has launched an unprecedented assault on the federal workforce aimed at reducing its size and weeding out "disloyal" civil servants. The American Federation of Government Employees, the largest federal employee union, grew to a record size of 319,233 active members after adding more than 14,000 in the past five weeks. That's nearly as many as the union added in the previous 12 months, according to union spokesman Tim Kauffman.

the boss is the best organizer, federal edition

minnesotareformer.com/2025/02/07/f...

🚨NEWS: A temporary order has been issued blocking the Labor Dept. from sharing any data with DOGE, after a group of unions, including AFGE, sued DOGE and held a major protest outside DOL yesterday.

Here's the union's email:

Most of the unfilled positions are nurses and social workers, of whom this employee tells me they are in critical need. And not that "less qualified" is a good look for any position, but that's REALLY not something you want in your nurses and social workers.

You can’t be evenhanded when the choice on one side is basic liberal democracy, and the choice on the other is a takeover of the federal government by Silicon Valley techfascists.

hey, I'm a journalist and I'm trying to chase down more info on trans youth being denied healthcare in Pittsburgh; can you DM me?

There's good reason that practically every developed nation in the world subsidizes a national news service. The destruction of reliable sources of information will only benefit those who seek to capitalize on chaos and deception.

Herculean effort by the small-but-mighty WESA newsroom today reporting on the federal funding freeze and how it could impact southwestern Pennsylvania. Insight from state & local government, meds & eds, researchers & nonprofits.

Now is the time to support original reporting from local news outlets.

The Gwynne Wilcox NLRB firing actually means there are only two members of the board, meaning they lack a quorum to hear even routine cases.
Here's a statement from Wilcox.