After 21 years at radio station WEFT, the World Labor Hour radio program has moved its weekly 2-hour program to radio station WRFU (104.5 FM/wrfu.net) in the IMC/downtown Urbana Post Office building.
The World Labor Hour radio program (originally called “The Illinois Labor Journal” and then “The Illinois Labor Hour”) was begun in 1995 by Peter Miller and Bill Gorrell, in response to the lack of coverage—and biased corporate media coverage, when mentioned at all—of the three simultaneous Labor dispute lock-outs at the A. E. Staley, Firestone and Caterpillar factories in Decatur, Illinois during the period of 1992-1995, which gained international attention in the Labor community.
Realizing that Unions and working people in general needed their own media—by, for, and about working people—in order to present the truth and to discuss important issues of the day, that the corporate media does not want to even acknowledge, much less discuss.
In 2001, Peter Miller moved to New Hampshire and David Johnson became a co-Host with Bill Gorrell.
Over the years the World Labor Hour, in addition to Bill and David, have had some excellent fellow hosts, such as Larry Keller, Tom Thomas, Jason Koslowski and Patricia Simpson. From 2015 to the present, the incredible Augustus (Gus) Wood, originally from Atlanta, Georgia, has been a fellow host.
In the last several years The World Labor Hour has expanded its listening audience beyond east-central Illinois to regular listeners in Chicago; St. Louis; New York City; Oakland, California; Seattle; Tampa, Florida; and even to Canada, the U.K. and the Republic of Ireland. Not only has the listenership expanded geographically but the topics and controversies that it has covered have broadened as well: from local and national cases of police brutality and militarization to foreign policy and immigration, to rank-and-file democracy struggles inside various Unions.
As Host Bill Gorrell once said, “We are not always pro-Union official, but we are always pro-worker.”
And with that statement the World Labor Hour over the years has not shied away from local Union and community controversies.
The hosts of the World Labor Hour, Bill Gorrell, Gus Wood and David Johnson, are proud and excited to now be part of WRFU, and hope that you will tune in to our program, as well as other programs on WRFU, like “Not Another Sports Show” with Neal Parthun and “The People’s History Hour” with Grant, Neal and Nick.
The World Labor Hour broadcasts/webcasts every Saturday morning from 11 a.m.–1 p.m. Central Time.