By Bob Hennelly

We kick off National Nurses Week with an update from Debbie White, RN and president of HPAE, New Jersey’s largest nurses’ union, which is in major contract negotiations revolving around getting local hospitals to establish and abide by safe staffing levels. 

By Bob Hennelly

On this episode of the Moral Monday Labor Radio Hour with Rev. Dr. William Barber & Bob Hennelly, we are on the Atlantic Coast in southeast Florida, a state where over 42 percent of the voters are low wage and low wealth, and who, as Rev. Dr. William Barber reminds us, could change the course of history this year if they mobilize.

It’s all Bitsy Finnigan’s fault. Bitsy Finnigan was a childhood neighbor kid who would come over to our house and wreck things.

By Joe Maniscalco

In this Work-Bites video, New York City municipal retirees fighting the City of New York’s campaign to push them into a profit-driven Medicare Advantage health insurance plan pledge their solidarity with home health aides demanding Speaker Adrienne Adams allow the “No More 24” bill to come to the floor for a vote.

By Joe Maniscalco

Intro. 615 — the bill aimed at freeing local home health aides in New York City from mandatory 24-hour workdays — has enough votes to sail through the New York City Council if it were put on the floor for a vote today. All Speaker Adrienne Adams has to do is get out of the way and let it happen.

By Joe Maniscalco

In 2020, with much of the nation biting its fingernails wondering what to do if Donald J. Trump refused to leave office after losing the presidential election — David Van Deusen, then head of the Vermont State Labor Council, was ready to lead a general strike across his state to help kick him out if needed. It was a bold and defiant move that late AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka hated so much, he threatened to take over the VSLC.

By Bob Hennelly

On this episode of the Tuesday Stuck Nation Labor Radio Hour, we’re talking about what’s happening at the Columbia University protest; people of color dying on the job; and 1199SEIU waking up Sleepy Hallow Hospital.

By Bob Hennelly

On this week’s episode of the Moral Monday Labor Radio Hour with Rev. Dr.  William Barber, we’re talking about breaking the petrochemical industry’s  death grip on Mississippi, the weekly UAW Update, and New Jersey’s USW Local 6129 on strike against the world’s leading food can maker.  

By Steve Wishnia

The 12 most unsafe employers in the U.S. encompass corporate behemoths like Walmart and Tyson Foods; tech titans Uber, Lyft, and Elon Musk’s SpaceX; and a Wisconsin lumber mill that hired a 14-year-old to run power saws, according to the National Council for Occupational Safety and Health.

By Bob Hennelly

On the same day labor unions gathered in lower Manhattan to memorialize workers who died on the job the previous year, the AFL-CIO released an alarming new report finding workers of color are dying on the job at increasingly higher rates — and fatalities for Black workers hit the highest level in nearly 15 years.

The Clock is Ticking

We returned to the bargaining table several days later and began by telling management we had nothing further to discuss until they withdrew three additional proposals:

Deleting the guarantee of two Sundays off per month

Forfeiting the right to argue grievances based on past practice

Permitting management to drug test at will without probable cause

By Steve Wishnia

The Supreme Court’s far-right majority seems to be leaning toward narrowing the grounds on which the National Labor Relations Board [NLRB] can ask federal courts to order employers to reinstate fired union supporters while their unfair-labor-practice cases are pending.

By Joe Maniscalco

This year’s Labor Notes Conference in Chicago featured workshops reflecting labor’s support for single payer health care. What could not be ignored, however, are those powerful forces within the house of labor itself who not only oppose single payer — but who are actively pushing the privatization of traditional Medicare through so-called Medicare Advantage plans.

Or as one prominent single payer advocate Work-Bites spoke to called it — the “bastardization of Medicare.”

By Bob Hennelly

On this episode of the Stuck Nation Tuesday Labor Radio Hour, we visit with Fran Ehret, executive director of CWA of New Jersey. The union represents 70,000 workers in the private and public sector, as well as most of the workers who work for the State of New Jersey for a myriad of agencies that cover everything from environmental to health care and social services.

By Bob Hennelly

It’s the Moral Monday Labor Radio Hour’s special Earth Day Edition. On this week’s episode, we revisit one of Rev. Dr. William Barber’s most significant speeches on the climate crisis. We’re also reflecting on Worker Memorial Day, and exploring how the UAW is moving mountains in the deep south.

By Bob Hennelly

New York State’s $237 billion dollar budget is a kind of Rorschach test. What you see in it depends very much on who you are. For the unions that represent essential workers, it’s a barometer of their clout in Albany a year after COVID was declared over — and after it sickened or killed so many of their members.

By Joe Maniscalco

In this Work-Bites video, New York City Organization of Public Service Retirees President Marianne Pizzitola denounces the ongoing campaign to push New York municipal retirees into a profit-driven Medicare Advantage plan as “abhorrent” — and vows to put a stop to it.

By Joe Maniscalco

In this Work-Bites video, TWU Local 100 Retirees member Anita Clinton speaks out agains her union’s attempts to push retired transit workers into a profit-driven Medicare Advantage plan.

By Joe Maniscalco

New York City municipal retirees fighting to retain the Medicare coverage they were promised when they entered civil service rode Albany-bound buses for more than 150 miles and plied the halls of state power for over two hours on April 15, all in support of legislation aimed at protecting what they’ve already earned.

By Bob Hennelly

On this episode of the Stuck Nation Labor Radio Hour, we’re discussing ongoing calls for Gaza ceasefire; the New York City municipal retirees’ battle to save Medicare going national; RWDSU pressing stores to protect retail workers and customers from violence; and Rutgers Unions fighting layoffs and program Cuts.