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By Bob Hennelly

We are in Philadelphia for this week’s edition of the Stuck Nation Labor Radio Hour covering the Service Employees International Union’s national convention. Yesterday, delegates elected April Verrett, the first Black president of the almost 2 million member union. Verrett was previously the international’s secretary-treasurer and led SEIU Local 2015, California’s leading union in the longterm care sector. Vice-President Kamala Harris addressed the gathering of over 3,000 at the convention today.

Here in the City of Brotherly Love, as in New York City, homelessness is a major issue and poverty is at 21.7 percent, one of the highest rates in the nation.  The brutal impact of Washington’s decision to end things like the Expanded Child Tax Credit and the cruel so-called “unwinding” of Medicaid, has stripped well over 10 million people of their health care, including over three million children. Here in Pennsylvania, a half-million were knocked off the life-line program. That’s our Covid take away.  

Last week, New York State Comptroller Tom DiNapoli issued a devastating report that showed the Empire State has one of the highest rates of childhood poverty in the country, with rates that are “alarmingly” high in some cities. In New York City, one in four children live in poverty, at a time of the greatest concentration of wealth since the Gilded Age.

In November, the Friends Committee on National Legislation released a report on the 10 states with the highest poverty rates. That list includes Mississippi, Louisiana, West Virginia, New Mexico, Arkansas, Kentucky, Alabama, Oklahoma, Texas, and New York—which had a higher poverty  than Texas.

In a state that prides itself on one of the highest union densities in the nation that’s just not acceptable. Could it be that there’s a kind of complacency, even in some union circles, that takes the attitude, “I got mine, good luck getting yours?”

Yesterday, Rev. Dr. William Barber, the co-host on our Moral Monday Labor Radio Hour, renewed his call for a mass assembly and march of Poor and Low Wage Workers in Washington, D.C. on June 29th ahead of the Republican and Democratic Conventions. More on that here on the busy weeks ahead.

We start off this week’s show interviewing 32 BJ President Manny Pastreich about this moment in American labor history and the critical role the SEIU will play in the 2024 election, perhaps our most critical since the Civil War.

We also introduce Ana Maria Hill, the incoming New Jersey Director for 32 BJ SEIU.

In the final part of the show, we catch up with Joey Colangelo, longtime president of Local 246 SEIU, the mechanics who keep the City of New York’s fleet of vehicles running, including its fire engines. He will be joined by Joe Puleo, president of DC 37’s Local 983 which represents thousands of blue collar workers. He’s got some alarming news about cuts to the City’s Parks Department.

Colangelo and Puleo discuss the Adams administration’s policy of only hiring one civil servant for every two leaving city employment, a policy both men say degrades the quality of critical services New Yorkers rely on and undermines succession planning in the skilled trades.

Listen to the entire show below: