Listen: Retirees! Nurses! Editors! Different Fights - One Working Class Struggle!
Scholastic workers picket outside company headquarters in NYC last week. Photo by Steve Wishnia
By Bob Hennelly
On this episode of the Stuck Nation Labor Radio Hour, Retired FDNY EMT Marianne Pizzitola, president of the New York City Organization of Public Service Retirees updates listeners on her group’s campaign to prevent the Adams administration and the heads of the MLC from forcing 250,000 retired civil servants off traditional Medicare and onto a predatory Aetna Medicare Advantage Plan.
Noted labor historian Joe Wilson, who also joins the discussion, notes how tens of thousands of city employees who worked in lower paying titles like FDNY EMS, rely on their existing retiree healthcare to get by.
“One day longer, one day stronger!” In the second half of the show, Judy Danella, president of United Steelworkers Nurses 4-200 offers the latest on her union’s strike for safer staffing at the Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick, NJ.
News Guild members Alexandra Wee and Alison Colby from Scholastic Publishing, the world’s leading publisher of children’s books and magazines, also reflect on their one day strike last week for a living wage. While the billion dollar company executed a $42 million stock buy back just two years ago, management has been resisting the union’s demand for a $65,000 threshold wage to help workers cope with New York City’s sky high rents and cost of living.
Listen to the entire show below: