Where can I listen to this podcast?

This podcast is available on 4 platforms including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and more. You can also use the RSS feed directly.

Does this podcast accept guests?

No, this podcast does not typically feature guests.

Asian Labor Futures Podcast

Claim This Podcast

by Kriangsak T., PhD

5.0(1 reviews)

14 episodes

Updated Daily

Accepts GuestsHas SponsorsLocation 🇰🇷

Podcast Overview

Asian Labor Futures is about reimagining labor and labor's power and redefining what the future of work mean from the standpoint of workers themselves. It is grounded in what I call “other-than-expert” knowledge. <a href="https://asianlaborfutures.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast">asianlaborfutures.substack.com</a>

Language

🇺🇲

Publishing Since

1/31/2026

View on Apple Podcasts RSS Feed

1 verified contact email on file for Asian Labor Futures Podcast

Pitch yourself as a guest, propose sponsorships, or reach out directly to the host.

See contact details

Recent Episodes

June 23, 2026

We Aren't All Samsung Workers

(Photo by <a target="_blank" href="https://unsplash.com/@mbuff?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText">Sung Jin Cho</a> on <a target="_blank" href="https://unsplash.com/photos/a-large-statue-of-a-woman-in-an-orange-dress-Ja7ICTTYXqk?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText">Unsplash</a>)Dear Friends,For the past few weeks, I’ve been reading media coverage of the Samsung Electronics union negotiation. I can’t remember the last time mainstream outlets paid this much attention to a labor struggle in Asia. But the more I read, the more uneasy I felt.Here’s what most reports didn’t say: this deal is an exception, not a norm in the labor movement. It’s a story of division. In this post, I want to invite us to cut through the “winner-take-all” mindset and move toward holding AI capital accountable to all workers, not only to the strongest unions, especially those invisible along the global AI supply chains. Beyond that, we must aim higher and fight for redistributing the AI wealth to everyone. Asian Labor Futures is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.A Success Story of DivisionAs the narrative goes, Samsung workers were on the verge of <a target="_blank" href="https://thecorner.eu/news-the-world/samsung-faces-biggest-strike-in-its-history-18-days-for-over-45000-employees-if-no-resolution-reached-today/125764/">a historic strike</a>, with 45,000 employees prepared to launch <a target="_blank" href="https://www.ft.com/content/61671fa3-9ad8-42d1-adc6-ffb3aeb7a9f8?syn-25a6b1a6=1">a 18-day strike</a> that threatened to halt operations at the tech giant’s critical manufacturing facilities. Faced with that pressure, management backed down in a late-night negotiation session <a target="_blank" href="https://www.japantimes.co.jp/business/2026/05/21/companies/samsung-union-deal-strike/">mediated by government officials</a> to avert a prolonged dispute and feared <a target="_blank" href="https://www.koreaherald.com/article/10735318">national</a> and <a target="_blank" href="https://aimagazine.com/news/ai-crisis-averted-samsung-workers-union-calls-off-strike">global crises</a>. Ultimately, the company signed <a target="_blank" href="https://qz.com/samsung-electronics-union-bonus-pay-deal-strike-052726">a deal </a>committing 10.5% of its semiconductor operating profit directly to worker bonuses for the next decade. For some chip workers, a worker earning an 80-million-won base salary could take home around <a target="_blank" href="https://qz.com/samsung-electronics-union-bonus-pay-deal-strike-052726">626 million won</a> in combined bonuses this year.Sensationalism aside, the media still paints AI as an incredible <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/samsung-ai-chip-trillion-dollar-boom-profit-sharing-worker-strike-2026-5#:~:text=Talks%20between%20Samsung%20and%20its,reports%20that%20negotiations%20had%20collapsed.">money-printing</a> magic. Crucially, the profit-sharing scheme only applies to Samsung’s semiconductor division, while workers in consumer electronics or smartphones are excluded. So you could have two groups of workers within the same company, with very different paychecks.What this does, even unintentionally, is to enforce a real hierarchy. A kind of “tech aristocracy” inside the industries. These are the top-tiers engineers who graduates from the top South Korean universities who benefit directly from the AI windfall, while those assembling everyday consumer products are excluded.This reflects a broader fragmentation within South Korean labor. Unlike the unions at <a target="_blank" href="https://startupfortune.com/samsungs-last-minute-bonus-deal-signals-that-ais-productivity-windfall-is-becoming-a-labor-negotiation-rather-than-a-corporate-perk/#:~:text=After%20threatening%20a%20strike%20involving,profit%20will%20flow%20directly%20to">rival SK hynix</a>—where technical and office workers are organized under the militant Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU) and full-time production workers are <a target="_blank" href="https://biz.chosun.com/en/en-it/2026/05/31/JAMRB6OMRBDCXF7NPL5IXC7IWI/">affiliated</a> with the Federation of Korean Trade Unions (FKTU)—the Samsung Electronics Union operates largely in isolation, rather than as an integrated part of a cross-industry labor movement.Why Not Socializing The AI Wealth?During the Samsung strike episode, progressive policymakers and labor leaders in South Korea began discussing this profit-sharing mechanism through the lens of a <a target="_blank" href="https://www.koreaherald.com/article/10772379">citizen’s dividend</a>. In fact, <a target="_blank" href="https://www.ajupress.com/view/20260611091270849">the KCTU</a> has formally raised the need to socially redistribute these massive excess AI profits to subcontracted workers and local communities via a “social solidarity wage.” Instead of letting AI windfalls flow only to executives and a lucky tier of specialist workers, we must tax a portion of those excess corporate profits and redistribute them universally to everyone.The wealth being generated by AI rush doesn’t come from the “ingenuity” of tech companies or the labor of chip workers. The AI wealth depends heavily on the physical exploitation of our public infrastructure and natural resources. Across Southeast Asia, the rapid expansion of hyper-scale AI data centers is putting an unprecedented strain on local electrical grids, consuming massive amounts of water for cooling, and absorbing valuable land.If the semiconductor hubs are the chokepoints controlled by labor, the data centers are the chokepoints controlled by people and their governments. In a very real sense, AI profits are built on a physical and digital commons that belongs to all of us.Reimagining What Labor Power MeansNone of this discounts the Samsung union’s incredible leverage. The Samsung deal proved that workers have real power when they position themselves at the bottlenecks of global capital. But it also exposes the limits of fighting company by company or industry by industry.If we limit our vision of labor power to a highly organized tier of “skilled” semiconductor workers winning historic payouts, we have already lost the battle. What about ghost workers and AI trainers across the Global South? And the communities hosting their data centers who bear the ecological and economic costs alone?As I have already repeated several times in this newsletter, we must connect the struggles of the workers inside the AI supply chain with the struggles of the communities outside the data centers. The ultimate goal of the Asian labor movement must be about asserting collective power over the ownership and control of technology. That requires deep movement- and coalition-building far beyond the traditional scope of individual union battles.The AI boom will continue to divide us unless we view infrastructure as a public utility and technological windfalls as a collective inheritance. The wealth generated by this moment should, and must, belong to all of us!Until next time,Kiang Get full access to Asian Labor Futures at <a href="https://asianlaborfutures.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4">asianlaborfutures.substack.com/subscribe</a>

June 9, 2026

One Year of Asian Labor Futures: the New Chapter

Dear friends,This July, Asian Labor Futures turns one, and this milestone alone deserves reflection and recognition.When I first launched this Substack, I didn't have a complete roadmap. To be completely honest, I still don’t. Up until now, I’ve treated this space as a conduit for my curiosity and creativity. It has been an invaluable space for me to hone public communication skills and connect fragments of thoughts.I only have a few paid subscribers, all of whom I know personally, and I want to sincerely thank their foundational support. Also, to every single person who has left a comment, shared a post, or engaged in solidarity: I really appreciate you!In this post, I want to take a moment to look back at what this year of writing has brought me and share some exciting updates about where Asian Labor Futures is heading next.Asian Labor Futures is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Groundedness and GratitudeEvery now and then, I succumbed to the platform’s algorithmic nudges—the seductive idea of rapid growth or generating a steady stream of income. But reality has a way of grounding us.I have felt that Substack’s libertarian vibe is a poor fit for “my people”. Moreover, its algorithm seems designed to keep creators busy with superficial chitchat rather than focusing on substantive work. This is a social platform inherently at odd with my worker-centric, movement-building approach. Lately, subscriber count has plateaued, and despite being here for almost a year, I have learned very little about who my readers actually are.Despite these roadblocks, building this Substack has both deepened my thinking and reshaped other areas of my work. My favorite pieces to write are those that cross-pollinate ideas, like blending adrienne maree brown’s Emergent Strategy or Robin Wall Kimmerer’s work on moss ecology with my own research on labor activism. This synthesis has led to breakthroughs in how I understand adaptation and resilience, both in grassroots organizing and organizational structure. I hope these insights offer some value to you.I recently wrapped up the “Reimagining Asian Labor Futures” course with the Asian Labor School, while many early posts have become central discussion points for Season 3 of the Continent of Resistance podcast—my collaborative project that I have been a co-producer and co-host since 2024. I can’t wait for the new season to be available!The Next ChapterThis July also marks a significant milestone for me. I am wrapping up my Just Tech fellowship, bringing an incredible two-year journey to a close. As I prepare for the next chapter in my personal and professional life, I’m also excited to share that applications for the next cohort are officially <a target="_blank" href="https://www.ssrc.org/programs/just-tech/just-tech-fellowship/">open</a>! If you work on labor and technology, and are interested to apply, please feel free to reach out. I’d be happy to answer any questions about the fellowship.While Asian Labor Futures has taken a slow but steady pace, big things have been brewing behind the scenes. I am very excited to share two major updates about the future of this project.A New Digital HomeI’ve been working with an incredible group of designers from Taiwan to build a dedicated website for Asian Labor Futures. They are from <a target="_blank" href="https://coassembly.work/">Co-Assembly Cooperative</a>, the very first design cooperative in Taiwan. I highly encourage you to check them out! Working with like-minded Asian creators who share a deep commitment to social and labor justice has been an absolute joy.A New Research CollectiveIn parallel, my collaborator Pei Palmgren and I are building a small collective of seasoned Asian researchers deeply embedded in grassroots organizations. Envisioned as a worker-owned cooperative, it will provide research consultancy and strategic advisory at the vital intersections of labor, migration, technology, and climate justice. With the funding landscape shifting rapidly—as traditional nonprofit aid dries up and private capital rushes in—it is more urgent than ever to build a grounded, collective effort that shapes regional strategy from the bottom up.It is still in the very early stages, but I am incredibly energized by this new journey. Drop me a line if you’re interested to partner or connect with us.What would happen to this Substack?I haven’t fully decided on the fate of this newsletter just yet. Once our new digital home is properly built and decorated, I will reach out to ask all of you—my subscribers and followers—whether you’d like to migrate with me to the new space.Thank you for being part of this journey. Stay tuned for what’s next!With gratitude,Kiang Get full access to Asian Labor Futures at <a href="https://asianlaborfutures.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4">asianlaborfutures.substack.com/subscribe</a>

May 30, 2026

Spirituality, AI, and Illusion of Separation

Dear friends,Life has a way of arriving all at once. I’ve been yearning to write, but illness got in the way. Since recovering, I've been catching up with our ongoing Reimagining Asian Labor Futures course. It is a heavy world to witness right now: migrants on hunger strikes in the US, escalating strikes in Iran, and the relentless killing of Palestinians despite the so-called “ceasefire.”Lately, I’ve found myself thinking deeply about wholeness. Specifically, what it means to live and work as complete human beings in a world that constantly tries to separate us. My own research on automation makes me acutely aware of its limitations; because AI relies entirely on our past data, it lacks the living presence required to teach us about futures.Inspired by Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee’s recent piece on AI and spirituality in Emergence Magazine, I want to invite us to view our collective resistance to AI and automation not merely as a defensive fight, but as a reclamation of labor as a sacred site of human dignity and shared liberation.Asian Labor Futures is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Wholeness and The Tragedy of ModernityCarl Jung once warned that modern society risked becoming dangerously one-sided: cultivating the intellect while cutting itself off from the unconscious depths of the soul. For Jung, human wholeness depended on the difficult and lifelong process of integration, or the reconciliation of consciousness with the unconscious, reason with feeling, or intellect with spirit. The tragedy of modernity is not simply that we have become rational, but that we have mistaken rationality for completeness.This fragmentation is deeply embedded within capitalist society. We are trained to identify with the ego alone: the productive or the measurable self. We learn to value speed over slow reflection, and efficiency over relationship. The parts of ourselves that cannot be quantified: grief, intuition, care, and spiritual longing, are treated as irrational residues to be managed or eliminated.Artificial intelligence emerges from this worldview and intensifies it. It reflects a civilization increasingly unable to distinguish intelligence from wisdom, or data from consciousness. They reproduce language without embodiment, and simulation without soul.What inspired all of this reflection came from an insightful article on AI and spirituality by Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee in Emergence Magazine. Vaughan-Lee points to the interlocking crises we face, spiritual and ecological, as posing an existential danger to our species. In capitalist society, we have lost our way, cultivating only the growth of the ego while suppressing and stunting the soul. AI, as the apotheosis of consumerism and extractivism, accelerates us toward that cliff. And it does so hand in hand with the destruction of our planet, our only home.The Illusion of Separation and AutonomyYet, the soul has always resisted domination. Human beings are not machines to be optimized. We are contradictory, emotional, relational, and unfinished. When societies suppress the dimensions of life that cannot be instrumentalized, they create profound alienation.This alienation deepens when we forget what our teacher Thich Nhat Hanh called interbeing—the profound truth that nothing exists in isolation, and that we are all fundamentally interconnected. To understand interbeing is to recognize that the worker, the community, the soil, and the tools we use are part of a singular, living web.Technological reductionism, by contrast, relies on the illusion of absolute separation. It seeks to chop up our lives into discrete, exploitable metrics, stripping away the “inefficient” elements of our existence: our need for deep rest, our messy emotional realities, and the slow, unquantifiable time required to build genuine relationships of care.Reclaiming Labor as a Sacred and Collective ActBoth the lens of interbeing and Vaughan-Lee’s analysis expose the inherent limitations of AI: it is a machine of the past, a calcification of accumulated historical data. The work we are called to do, by contrast, must be future-oriented, transformative, and deeply human.Labor, at its core, is the way we participate in interbeing. It is how we care for one another, shape our material reality, and sustain life. When we engage in purposeful labor—whether through formal employment, organizing on the ground, or the invisible, vital work of care within our communities—we are exercising our capacity for collective wisdom, empathy, and agency.The ultimate danger is not just that machines may displace human hands. It is that entire societies are being reorganized around values that render human beings disposable, replacing the vibrant, relational nature of labor with a hollow, mechanical efficiency.As we move forward, let us reject the illusion that AI can save us, or that progress is measured by the speed of our extraction. The real change, or the kind that heals our social and ecological polycrisis remains deeply, quietly human. It lives in our souls, and our collective will to demand a world that honors our whole selves.Our task is to defend labor as a site of human dignity and collective resistance. We must cultivate a practice of work and struggle that refuses to be quantified, structured around the real needs of our communities rather than the demands of capital.We are here to be awake, to care for one another, and to build a future where our labor is an expression of our shared liberation.In solidarity,Kriangsak (Kiang) Get full access to Asian Labor Futures at <a href="https://asianlaborfutures.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4">asianlaborfutures.substack.com/subscribe</a>

14 total episodes available

Deep-dive analytics for Asian Labor Futures Podcast

Frequently asked questions

Have a different question and can't find the answer you're looking for? Reach out to our support team by sending us an email and we'll get back to you as soon as we can.

What is Asian Labor Futures Podcast?: Asian Labor Futures is about reimagining labor and labor's power and redefining what the future of work mean from the standpoint of workers themselves. It is grounded in what I call “other-than-expert” knowledge. <a href="https://asianlaborfutures.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast">asianlaborfutures.substack.com</a>
How often does this podcast release new episodes?: This podcast updates daily.
Where can I listen to this podcast?: This podcast is available on 4 platforms including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and more. You can also use the RSS feed directly.
Does this podcast accept guests?: No, this podcast does not typically feature guests.

Legal Disclaimer

Pod Engine is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or officially connected with any of the podcasts displayed on this platform. We operate independently as a podcast discovery and analytics service.

All podcast artwork, thumbnails, and content displayed on this page are the property of their respective owners and are protected by applicable copyright laws. This includes, but is not limited to, podcast cover art, episode artwork, show descriptions, episode titles, transcripts, audio snippets, and any other content originating from the podcast creators or their licensors.

We display this content under fair use principles and/or implied license for the purpose of podcast discovery, information, and commentary. We make no claim of ownership over any podcast content, artwork, or related materials shown on this platform. All trademarks, service marks, and trade names are the property of their respective owners.

While we strive to ensure all content usage is properly authorized, if you are a rights holder and believe your content is being used inappropriately or without proper authorization, please contact us immediately at hey@podengine.ai for prompt review and appropriate action, which may include content removal or proper attribution.

By accessing and using this platform, you acknowledge and agree to respect all applicable copyright laws and intellectual property rights of content owners. Any unauthorized reproduction, distribution, or commercial use of the content displayed on this platform is strictly prohibited.