By Steve Wishnia

About 50 retired city workers, some with canes, a few with walkers, and some wearing prop “screws” going through their heads, made their way to the Brooklyn Bridge this morning for a face-off with New York City Mayor Eric Adams.

By Bob Hennelly

Is the MTA’s Addiction to Tax Exempt Borrowing Making Wealth Inequality Worse?

Talks are making progress this week between the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and the Transport Workers Union Local 100 which represents the 40,000 workers who run the city’s vast subway and bus network, according to John Samuelsen, TWU international president.

Work-Bites.com

On this episode of “Labor This Week,” host Mark Harrison welcomes Marianne Pizzitola, president of the New York City Organization of Public Service Retirees and Jeff Johnson, co-president of the Puget Sound Advocates for Retirement Action in Washington State, who talk about how the coast-to-coast drive to strip municipal retirees of their traditional Medicare benefits is actually all part of a powerful nationwide agenda to further privatize healthcare throughout this country.

By Joe Maniscalco

The powerful political machine bent on bulldozing New York City municipal retirees into a profit-driven Medicare Advantage program is kicking into high gear ahead of a special “People’s Hearing & Rally” set for Wednesday, May 24, outside City Hall.

By Bob Hennelly

Raising Hell and Money For Labor Radio — it’s the May Pledge Drive Edition of the Stuck Nation Labor Radio Hour. On this special episode, Marianne Pizzitola, president of the FDNY EMS Retirees Association and NYC Organization of Public Service Retirees joins nationally syndicated progressive radio host Arne Arnesen who explore how the resistance against Mayor Eric Adams’ campaign to strip municipal retirees of their traditional Medicare benefits and push them into a profit-driven Aetna Medicare Advantage program is actually part of national fight back against the Wall Street-ization of healthcare.

By Steve Wishnia

The job of laying metallic lath in the heat of a Texas summer is about to get harsher and more dangerous — while in Florida, Governor Ron DeSantis is quickly making himself the Crown Prince of Union-Busting. 

Work-Bites

No matter where you and your family happen to be right now — we know you can relate to the following sentiment: “Way too much month, and not enough food.” That’s what the theme of “This Is Working” Episode 8 from creator Jen Grace is all about. We hope you enjoy it.

By Bob Hennelly

A class action lawsuit that alleges New York City engaged in discriminatory employment practices in how it compensates hundreds of its probation officers may proceed over the objections of the Adams administration, federal Southern District Judge Ronnie Abrams ruled on May 5.

Courtesy of InsiderNJ

By Bob Hennelly

On May 11, the day President Joe Biden declared an end to the COVID emergency, hundreds of nurses were in Trenton demanding enactment of nurse-to-patient staffing ratios as was done in California in 2004 which studies have documented greatly improved patient outcomes, workplace safety, infection control and nurse retention.

By Steve Wishnia

Fed up with chronic conditions of low pay, understaffing, and disrepair, workers at a for-profit nursing home in the Buffalo suburbs will go on strike for 24 hours on Wednesday, May 17.

By Bob Hennelly

The corporate news media has been working overtime to drum up fear and anxiety in the population alternating between their fixation on the border and the supposed great perils of undocumented immigration — and breathless stories about the completely manufactured beltway crisis over the impending debt ceiling. They want us to be fearful and in the insecure mindset where we see a world of scarcity.

Work-Bites

Municipal retirees being stripped of the Medicare benefits they were promised after decades of service; home care attendants forced to work 24-hour shifts at half the pay; public sector nurses grappling with chronically low wages and increasingly untenable patient ratios — the list of economic injustices heaped on working people goes on and on. And why? A supposed lack of money.

By Joe Maniscalco

Stripping New York City municipal retirees of their traditional Medicare benefits and pushing them into a profit-driven Medicare Advantage program will not deliver the $600 million savings Mayor Eric Adams’ administration claims it will.

By Steve Wishnia

“We don’t want pizza parties. We want pay raises so we can stop the hemorrhaging of staff,” Sonia Lawrence, the New York State Nurses Association’s director for New York City Health + Hospitals facilities, told several hundred nurses and supporters gathered in Foley Square May 10.

By Bob Hennelly

On Thursday, May 11 President Biden will end the COVID public health emergency which was declared three years ago by then President Trump.  It has been widely reported that as many as 15 million Americans will lose their health insurance as the states reevaluate their Medicaid status now that the pandemic is declared over. 

By Bob Hennelly

Later this week, President Joe Biden is expected to declare the nation’s COVID pandemic emergency over, even as the nation’s healthcare system is in a deepening access and affordability crisis Washington is in active denial because the medical industrial complex is paying them to look the other way.

Work-Bites.com

On this episode of the Iron Bill Hohlfeld show labor writer Robert Ovetz talks about the “Stockholm Syndrome” impacting too many labor leaders today where they start to “think about the issues from the perspective of the boss” — and how that sad reality correlates to the fight retired trade unionists in New York City are having trying to save their traditional Medicare benefits from being stripped and privatized.

By Joe Maniscalco

New York City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams [D-28th District] is crying foul this week after angry calls for her resignation erupted at a May Day rally outside City Hall on Monday in support of exploited home care attendants across the five boroughs.

By Bob Hennelly

On this episode of the Stuck Nation Labor Radio Hour, Marianne Pizzitola, head of the NYC Organization of Public Service Retirees and Michelle Keller, head of the NYC Coalition of Labor Union Women connect the legacy of May Day to the ongoing battle to preserve the traditional Medicare benefits municipal retirees were promised as active duty workers.

By Steve Wishnia

“Why do you all spend so much money on union-busting?” Laura Rosario, a barista at a Starbucks in Montclair, N.J., demanded May 1, as a group of 15 to 20 Starbucks Workers United members filled the entrance room at the company’s New York regional office near Penn Station.