Editor’s Note: This is Part II of “The Conveyor Belt Incident.” Check out Part I here.

Fighting for Cicero

At noon on June 1, I sat at the long table in the plant conference room with Cicero and the executive board to prep for the president’s grievance hearing. An hour later, management took their places across from us.

By Ryn Gargulinski

Not unlike “jumbo shrimp” or “friendly hamster,” the term “work utopia” may seem like an oxymoron. But it’s not. Or at least it doesn’t have to be. There are multiple ways our work could be transformed from a ho-hum drag to a happy place where we actually enjoy where we are, what we’re doing, and who we’re doing it with.

By Phil Cohen

You can’t live by the golden rule in a crowd that don’t play fair – Nathan C. Heard

Right-to-Work is the most corrupt and hypocritical law in the industrialized world, allowing states to make union membership voluntary but requiring unions to provide nonmembers with equal representation. Twenty-eight states have currently enacted the toxic legislation, which is enforced on their behalf by the National Labor Relations Board.

By Joe Maniscalco

Four years ago, the police crackdown on New York City demonstrators protesting the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota was so bad, some people of color making their way home from late night jobs in the building service industry openly feared having problematic run-ins with cops.

By Phil Cohen

On the evening of January 4, I met with the committee and proposed a more dramatic return to Sam’s Club that would garner headlines rather than brief mentions by the press. Playing it safe doesn’t generate three-minute spots on the evening news.

By Joe Maniscalco

The 70th anniversary rerelease of Akira Kurosawa’s classic “Seven Samurai” in newly restored 4K opens on the supine occupants of a 16th century village in civil war-torn Japan literally groveling in the mud as a mounted band of homicidal bandits assembled on a high ridge hungrily surveys the scene below.

By Phil Cohen

I distributed a leaflet scheduling a union meeting for November 11, at 5:30pm.  Beneath the headline it read:

“Despite Starlite’s games, lies, and efforts to confuse workers, the union remains!  Starlite is making the same mistake as every sleazy union busting company. They are underestimating their workers. They underestimate our common sense. They underestimate our courage. They underestimate our determination.”

By Phil Cohen

Serta doesn’t manufacture mattresses. They sell their brand name and designs to licensees who produce their products and market directly to retailers.

On May 8, 1998, workers at Starlite Bedding, a licensee in Greensboro, North Carolina voted to join UNITE (formerly ACTWU and now Workers United.)  A bargaining committee was elected and UNITE’s Southern Regional Director Harris Raynor initiated contract negotiations with a company attorney in what promised to be an amicable and productive process.

By Ryn Gargulinski

Being burdened with a 24-hour workday is a surefire way to end up burnt-out, groggy and cranky as hell. But alas, the situation exists. It’s long been the case with New York City home care workers (who, outrageously, only get paid for 13 of those hours). And you can still find even lengthier shifts in the medical world. Nothing like a burnt-out, groggy and cranky-as-hell doctor-in-training being assigned to your hospital bedside, right?

Editor’s Note: This is Part Two of Phil’s three-part saga about his days driving an illegal taxi [otherwise known as a “gypsy cab”] on the streets of New York City back in the late 1960s when he was still just a teen. 

By Phil Cohen

The Lower East Side began at 3rd Avenue and 14th Street, becoming progressively more dangerous as it approached the East River. Once you hit Alphabet City the transition accelerated. Avenue D bordered the river.

By Jenn Coffey

My name is Jenn and I am from Manchester, New Hampshire. At one time, I was a fully functioning EMT and holding down multiple jobs at once, one of which was as a State Representative.

I was a Republican and the Vice-Chair of Commerce and Consumer Affairs. For twenty years of my life, I served my community as a medical tech in the hospital, and as an EMT in the field.

I thought we could “fix” healthcare.

By Ryn Gargulinski

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

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 Phil Cohen

There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy – William Shakespeare

During the spring of 1995, ACTWU (now Workers United) scheduled a blitz of nonmembers at the unionized Cone Mills textile plant in Greensboro, North Carolina. Organizers, accompanied by an activist from one of Cone’s three union shops, would be issued house-call packets containing addresses and information regarding workers that would be visited in specified neighborhoods.

Dear President Biden,

My name is Marianne Pizzitola. I am a retired member of the FDNY EMS and participant in the 9/11 World Trade Center Health Program. For the last few years, I have been president of the New York City Organization of Public Service Retirees that we organized when New York City’s Municipal Labor Committee and then Mayor Bill de Blasio decided to force 250,000 retired civil servants off of our traditional Medicare and onto a predatory for-profit Medicare Advantage Plan.

By Ryn Gargulinski

It starts by pretending to be your friend, seeming to make your life seem easier, less stressful and way more fun. In fact, you’re having such a blast that you start to hang out with it more and more. And then some more…

By Joe Maniscalco

Right now, there are people in industries across the United States working very hard to raise their families, but who are openly worrying they have…maybe…one year left before AI takes their jobs. 

By Phil Cohen

During 1993, the Kmart Distribution Center in Greensboro, North Carolina became the company’s first hard goods warehouse to be organized. The newly-opened facility offered lower wages and benefits than its Northern counterparts and unlike them, the majority of workers were nonwhite. Focusing on economics and racism had given ACTWU (now Workers United) a decisive organizing victory, led by Assistant Southern Director Ernest Bennett.

By Joe Maniscalco

What do you make of two of the most powerful union leaders in the country when one of them essentially tells Donald Trump to go pound sand — and the other one basically goes to Mar-a-Lago and kisses his big fat fascist ass?

By Ryn Gargulinski

Since language is supposedly what sets people apart from animals, you’d think we’d be ideal specimens for exceptional communication. But we’re largely not.

In fact, lack of communication is a common enough bother in the workplace to rank as one of the top reasons people hate their job.