By Phil Cohen

During the 1980’s, Cone Mills was one of America’s largest textile corporations with plants sprawled across the Carolinas, manufacturing denim for Levis and other jean companies. In 1984, a hostile takeover by Western Pacific was thwarted through a leveraged buyout by 47 Cone executives who acquired all shares of stock and took the company private.

By Joe Maniscalco

Between trying to chase down cagey MTA spokespeople to quiz them on potentially deadly working conditions in the subways, and various local elected officials on why they seem all too happy to sell out New York City municipal retirees and steal their healthcare — I lean back, pick up my cheap Squier Mustang, and appreciate a little band from Seattle playing through the laptop speakers.

Mudhoney. Great stuff.

By Joe Maniscalco

It’s Martin Luther King, Jr. Day again, and what’s uppermost in my mind right now is how he’s not here. He could be. Sure, he’d be 95, but Martin Luther King, Jr. could still be around walking the earth today. Instead, he’s long since dead — gunned down — murdered before even making it to 40.

By Bob Hennelly

This Martin Luther King Day comes just weeks after a year that’s been dubbed “the year of the strike” because in 2023 there were well over 300 such work stoppages involving 450,000 union workers willing to take the risk of walking out on their employer, a 900 percent increase from just a few years earlier.

By Robert Ovetz

Although I do not make new year’s resolutions, I do set goals. My goals this year are focused on the workers movement. If we are going to build on the momentum of the labor movement over the past two years and bring about real change, we need to radically alter our perspective.

By Joe Maniscalco

Imagine watching an affluent white lady so giddy about the shipment of legal cannabis she just ordered online that she immediately empties every bottle of red wine in the house down the Kitchen sink, and the next second is on the phone inviting the rest of the gals over because — woohoo — they’re gonna be getting high without the hangover!

By Phil Cohen

Cornelius, North Carolina is located between Statesville and Charlotte. The small towns in this region have long been a Klan stronghold. During 1987, a Foamex plant in Cornelius signed a union contract with ACTWU (currently named Workers United.) The driving force among employees throughout the organizing campaign had been three Klansmen who worked as mechanics.

By Phil Cohen

Editor’s Note: In case you missed it, here’s Part I and Part II of this special “War Stories” series.

On February 21, I attended a labor management meeting with plant manager Justin Scarbrough and the Local 294-T committee to discuss Jessie’s situation. Sometimes, it’s easier to resolve certain issues during an informal meeting before the polarizing impact of a grievance hearing.

By Phil Cohen

Jessie called during December, 2019. “I got notified I got to go see Dr. Yates, who did my surgery. I was wondering if you could come with me.”

I asked why and she said, “There’s things I need you to see.”

I agreed to the unusual request and the appointment was scheduled for January 2. I told her to present me as an old friend, accompanying her for moral support. The doctor would be on his best behavior if he even suspected I was her union rep.

By Phil Cohen

Editor’s Note: Phil Cohen is a union organizer and author who’s seen a lot during his many years in the labor movement. He has graciously agreed to share some of his “War Stories” with Work-Bites. Here is the first installment in an ongoing series…

On August 11, 2018, I attended a victory picnic in Eden, North Carolina with members of Workers United Local 294-T. We were celebrating the defeat of their employer’s illegal union busting plot at the Mohawk Industries plant where they worked. Committee members tended the grills. Some brought side dishes.

By Ryn Gargulinski

The day came when I absolutely, positively, no-bones-about-it hated my desk. I hated it so much I could no longer even sit there. That day arrived after I parted ways with a work-from-home job that had kept me chained to that desk for 10-hour days with tracking software — for two years straight.

Ugh. My mind was numb. My body was probably showing signs of that sitting disease thing. And my soul rebelled in a big way, refusing to sit at that desk for even a minute!

By Ryn Gargulinski

“Deck the halls, my ass.” That used to be my attitude toward the holidays, and I was lucky enough to find another person who felt that way. So we’d get together in December and mope.

Then she mentioned how the thought of moping all December made her depression creep into November. So we started commiserating even earlier.

By Bob Hennelly

Courtesy of InsiderNJ

America’s hospitals are in the throes of a workforce crisis that’s driven by the lack of safe nurse to patient ratios that’s forced tens of thousands of veteran nurses to flee the profession and one in five new nurses to leave in their first year, according to witnesses who testified before a field hearing convened by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) on Oct. 27,  on the New Brunswick’s Rutgers University campus.

As a consequence, even though hospitals are scrambling to find nurses, over one million nurses are opting to stay sidelined with just half of New Jersey’s 140,000 licensed nurses choosing to work in the state’s hospitals.

By Bob Hennelly 

This week, a permanent memorial at the site of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire in New York City will be dedicated to the mass casualty event that killed 146 mostly young immigrant women garment workers on March 25, 1911 and sparked a national movement for workplace safety and worker rights.

By Robert Ovetz

The August Cemex ruling by the National Labor Relations Board has stirred up hope among the labor movement. After 40 years, the board finally responded to employer union-busting by requiring that the company recognize the union and begin bargaining.

By Joe Maniscalco

Yesterday, on the social media platform-formerly-known as Twitter, I noted a few interesting posts from the Work-Bites news feed referencing the UAW’s strike against the Big Three auto giants and a video clip of Starwood Capital Group CEO Barry Sternlicht, in particular, earning his money.

By Ryn Gargulinski

Krissie was easily Boss Man’s most favorite employee – and by far my least. We worked side-by-side at a New York City ice cream shop in the early 1990s. She was blond, perky and went to NYU. I was gruff, brunette and went to the bar. I also had dirt under my nails and liked to wear ripped-up tank tops to work.

By Joe Maniscalco

One night, just before Halloween, Rachel Rivera heard an alarming crack come from her 4-year-old daughter’s bedroom. She immediately raced in, scooped up the child in her arms and got out quick — right before the ceiling fell in on their Brooklyn apartment. Hurricane Sandy killed some 50 New Yorkers in 2012. Rivera and her daughter Marisol just missed being counted among the deceased.

By Joe Maniscalco

Something ugly and very troubling recently happened on the picket line outside the Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick, New Jersey that should tell us a lot about the ongoing strike at that particular institution.

But more importantly, it should also serve as a sobering warning about the class struggle working people throughout this country now face — and have, indeed, always faced when they collectively stand up to the bosses. 

By Bob Hennelly

The United Auto Workers strike against the nation’s big three automakers is a high stakes gambit that comes at a time when an increasing number of Americans support the union movement but the percentage of them actually in one is at an all time low.