By Robert Hennelly

On this week’s edition of the Stuck Nation Labor Radio Hour we zero in on two prolonged strikes in New Jersey. We hear from Patrick Ashton with UAW Local 2326 that’s been on strike since June at Westrock LLC, a cardboard box manufacturer in Dayton, New Jersey that makes shipping packaging for corporate giants like Amazon and Frito Lay. In 2021, the CEO of the company made over $21 million, a 333 to one ratio to the median employee pay.

They have been out since June. Patrick is joined by Judy Danella, president of the United Steelworkers Nurses Local 4-200, on strike for safer staffing at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital  in New Brunswick since Aug. 4. The Middlesex County Level 1 Trauma center is part of the multi-billion-dollar Robert Wood Johnson Barnabas non-profit chain that paid its CEO $17 million dollars in the second year of the pandemic and has spent $130 million on replacement nurses since the start of the strike.

In the second half of the show, we will speak with Vincent Variale, president of DC 37 Local 3621, which represents FDNY EMS officers. He is joined by Joe Puleo, president of DC 37 Local 983, which represents a myriad of New York City blue collar titles in just about every agency that runs the city.

Vinnie and Joe will talk about the real world impact of Mayor Eric Adams' mid-year budget cuts to close a $7 billion dollar budget gap. The city is already struggling to deliver services with the average response time for a city ambulance to answer a life-threatening emergency now exceeded ten minutes. That’s ten minutes and 43 seconds to be precise — or 36 seconds longer than the previous year, according to the Mayor’s own Management Report.

Rather than further undermine the city’s civil service with cuts, the two veteran labor leaders suggest that it’s time for New York State to resume collecting the Stock Transfer Tax  that Albany has been rebating back to Wall Street since the early 1980s.

Listen to the whole show below:

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