Break Time By Ryn Gargulinski

Let’s say you find a new home that’s perfect for you. The right price, the right size, and a beautiful interior sporting your favorite color paint. You’ll take it, right?

So you put down your deposit and wait for the move-in date, only to find “advancements” and “exciting updates” have been made to your once-perfect abode.

By Bob Hennelly

On Friday, lawyers for Mahmoud Khalil—the Columbia University peace activist and Green Card holder who was arrested by ICE and sent to Louisiana—were in federal court in Newark, New Jersey without any charges being filed. Khalil’s wife, Noor Abdallah, who is due to give birth next month, was also in court. Outside, several hundred protestors turned out to support the Khalil family. 

We share our reporter's notebook. We also talk with Amy Arundell about her bid to grab the UFT leadership away from current President Michael Mulgrew.

By Joe Maniscalco

District Council 37 Executive Director Henry Garrido continues to scare the bejesus out of the New York City Council.

In 2023, the head of the largest public sector union in town threatened to “withdraw support…money…endorsements—everything” from any New York City Council member blocking his attempts to help Mayor Eric Adams push the city’s 250,000 municipal retirees into a profit-driven Medicare Advantage health insurance plan.

And he hasn’t let up since.

War Stories By Phil Cohen

I scheduled a war council with committee members and stewards for Thursday afternoon. “Talk is getting us nowhere so we’ve got to up the ante to get their attention. I want to schedule shift meetings for next week and use them to organize a picket line the following week.”

By Joe Maniscalco

Municipal workers—both active and retired—are being urged to rally outside New York State Governor Kathy Hochul’s Third Avenue offices on Thursday, March 27, to protest a new money-saving scheme many fear could blow holes in their pensions.

War Stories By Phil Cohen

During the shutdown period, I received a Cone Mills document filed in court for the purpose of justifying bankruptcy despite a recent return to profitability, explaining its primary liabilities:

A huge debt and huge dividend payouts to class A shareholders are bleeding the company. Interest rates and preferred dividends are exorbitant, and prevent the company from paying off $145 million in debts.

There was no reference to labor costs.

By Steve Wishnia

Last weekend, I read my 5-year-old granddaughter Brave Girl: Clara and the Shirtwaist Makers’ Strike of 1909, Michelle Markel’s children’s book about Clara Lemlich, the young woman who helped lead the “uprising of the 20,000”—the 1909-10 strike by women garment workers in New York.

By Bob Hennelly

This week on the Stuck Nation Labor Radio Hour we mark the anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in lower Manhattan when 146 mostly young immigrant women died a gruesome death back in 1911.

War Stories By Phil Cohen

For over a century, Cone Mills was an iconic denim manufacturer, spinning bales of raw cotton into yarn which was then woven into enormous rolls of cloth. Once the material had gone through the final stages of finishing, it was sold to large jean companies. Levi Strauss was their largest customer.

By Steve Wishnia

AUSTIN, Tex.—Carrying signs that read “Some Cuts Never Heal,” about two dozen nurses and supporters marched up to Sen. John Cornyn’s office in downtown Austin March 20, protesting the Trump-Musk administration’s proposed massive cuts to Medicaid.

By Joe Maniscalco

In an exclusive interview with Work-Bites in Times Square on Tuesday night, UAW Local 2710 President Grant Miner said the Trump administration’s naked attempt to crush the Columbia University’s student worker union is all part of an overall attack on labor and First Amendment rights. 

In other words: We’re all next.

By Steve Wishnia

When National Labor Relations Board general counsel Jennifer Abruzzo was fired on Jan. 27, she received an email on behalf of Donald Trump. It said he had no confidence she would faithfully execute his objectives.

Work-Bites

WBAI’s “What’s Going On?” program and host Bob Hennelly devoted a special three-hour live broadcast on March 15 to New York City labor’s march against the Department of Government Efficiency’s cuts. We bring you the exclusive coverage in its entirety below:

By Joe Maniscalco

On Saturday March 15, scores of trade unionists, retirees, laid off workers, and their families took to the streets of NYC to march against the Trump administration's draconian cuts to the federal workforce. Here’s what the scene looked like on Broadway…

By Joe Maniscalco

“We definitely need to do something.”

Scores of working class New Yorkers—including laid off federal workers and anxious retirees—already pushed to the wall three months into the new Trump administration took to the streets of Lower Manhattan this weekend in a rebellious act of defiance that helped dispel some of the fear many have been experiencing.

By Joe Maniscaclo

On Wednesday, March 12, New York City home attendants forced to work round-the-clock shifts, while being paid for roughly half the time, attempted to deliver a letter to Governor Kathy Hochul calling out her role in perpetuating "violence against women." Building security outside the governor's Third Avenue offices refused to accept their letter. This is what the scene looked like:

By Joe Maniscalco

New York City home care workers hoping on Wednesday afternoon to deliver a direct appeal to Governor Kathy Hochul to declare round-the-clock work in the industry as “violence against women” were instead told to take their letter and walk it over to the nearest Post Office.

By Joe Maniscalco

New York City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams launched her mayoral campaign over the weekend hoping to distinguish herself from that other Adams already in office.

By Joe Maniscalco 

Arguably the most potent and powerful figure in the labor movement today has just declared that American workers—no matter what you do or what sector you’re in—now have “very few options but to join together to organize for a general strike.”

By Joe Maniscalco

The Chinese-American Planning Council, the highly influential social services organization at the heart of NYC’s battle to end round-the-clock shifts in the home care industry, may insist those slavish 24-hour shifts are unfair to workers—at least 80 home attendants working for its subsidiary are still doing them.