By Bob Hennelly

On this episode of the Stuck Nation Labor Radio Hour we visit with Jonathan Smith, president of the New York Metro Area Postal Union, which represents thousands of United States Post Office employees at facilities in both New York and New Jersey. We will ask Jonathan about how the recently ratified United Autoworkers contract impacts postal workers who, like the autoworkers, for years saw new hires treated as second class citizens with lower pay and fewer benefits. 

Judy Danella, president of the United Steelworkers Nurses Local 4-200, which has been on strike since Aug. 4 for safer staffing at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick, New Jersey, also returns with some fresh news about the ongoing struggle. 

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 close to $130 million on replacement nurses since the start of the strike.

In the second half of the program, we will hear from New York State Assemblyman Phil Steck who represents Schenectady and parts of Albany County. He sits on the Labor Committee and chairs the Committee on Alcoholism and Drug Abuse and has been the prime sponsor of legislation to end the decades old practice of rebating back billions of dollars in the New York State Transfer Tax to Wall Street.

The renewed interest in the restoration on the nickel per hundred dollar transaction tax comes as New York City Mayor Eric Adams seeks across-the-board budget cuts in basic services like police, fire, sanitation, education, and emergency services — even as the average response times for life threatening medical emergencies exceeds ten minutes.

Listen to the entire show below.

Thanks for reading! If you value this reporting and would like to help keep Work-Bites on the job, please consider donating whatever you can today. Work-Bites is a completely independent nonprofit news organization dedicated to our readers — and we need your support!