By Bob Hennelly

On this episode of the Stuck Nation Labor Radio Hour, Rev. Dr. William Barber joins Sara Nelson, president of CWA’s Association of Flight Attendants, in full support of United Steelworkers Nurses Local 4-200 on strike for safer staffing at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick, NJ since Aug. 4.

The hospital’s parent RWJBaranabas, which is self-insured, terminated the nurses’ health insurance earlier this month and has embarked on an expensive anti-union drive.

Is a major occupational health issue for essential workers just being ignored?

By Bob Hennelly

For only the second time since the FDNY absorbed the city’s EMS workforce in 1996, the average response time for a city ambulance to answer a life-threatening emergency exceeded ten minutes. At 10:43, that response time was 36 seconds longer than the previous year, according to the Mayor’s Management Report [MMR] looking at fiscal year 2023 — and a 1:21 longer than what was reported four years ago.

By Steve Wishnia

Two massage workers at a New York City spa are trying to get their jobs back after the National Labor Relations Board formally accused their employer of having fired them illegally last November.

“They have consistently treated us unfairly,” Tian Xiao May Qing, speaking through a translator, told reporters outside Liangste Wellness at 150 East 55th St. on Sept. 19. “When we complained, he fired us.”

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 Bob Hennelly

Striking nurses at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick, New Jersey have voted overwhelmingly to continue their job action even after the self-insured nonprofit hospital chain cut off their healthcare.

By Bob Hennelly

On this action-packed episode of the Stucknation Labor Radio Hour, we’re talking about the UAW’s “Stand Up” strike; United Steelworkers Nurses Local 4-200’s strike for safer staffing at the Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Jersey and what at stake for the general public — and SAG-AFTRA video gamers eyeing their own strike vote.

But that’s not all…

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.

By Timothy Sheard

Dear nursing sisters and brothers,

You have to be tender and tough if you are going to stay in the nursing profession for very long. Tender, because our patients are so vulnerable. So at risk of injury and death. So afraid.

And tough, because the work is so demanding, the bosses so disrespectful, and the pain of losing a patient so deep.

By Bob Hennelly

A month-and-a-half into the United Steelworkers Nurses Local 4-200 strike for safer staffing at the Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick, New Jersey and a settlement continues to be elusive as the rhetoric is heating up on both sides.

By Robert Ovetz

During the Cold War, the demand for higher pay became the demand for “income equality.” The reason appeared obvious: for the past five decades the income gap between the top and bottom has grown rapidly.

By Bob Hennelly

On this 22nd anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 attack on the World Trade Center which killed close to 3,000 people, we look at the public health fallout from U.S. EPA and New York City officials telling the world the air was "safe to breathe" following the attack when testing actually showed it was not. 

Thousands more have died following the initial attack from their exposure to that toxic air. 

Video follows story…

By Joe Maniscalco

This weekend’s New York City Labor Day Parade saw municipal retirees fighting to retain their Medicare coverage tangle with the heads of both the state AFL-CIO and NYC Central Labor Council over the duo’s opposition to Intro. 1099 — the City Council bill aimed at shielding traditional health insurance from Medicare Advantage and privatization.   

By Steve Wishnia

A National Labor Relations Board [NLRB] decision expanding when employers must recognize unions might be a landmark with far-reaching effects — but it is already being contested in the federal courts.

Courtesy of InsiderNJ

By Bob Hennelly

On Sept. 11, 2001, 749 residents of New Jersey perished in the attack on the World Trade Center. Today, over 10,000 first responders and survivors from the state are enrolled in the World Trade Center Health Program as a consequence of their exposure to the air in lower Manhattan and portions of western Brooklyn.

By Joe Maniscalco

A letter sent to New York City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams and signed by 35 retired union leaders — largely from the uniformed services — is calling further BS on claims that pending legislation aimed at protecting municipal retiree healthcare from privatization would somehow impinge on collective bargaining rights.

By Bob Hennelly 

As hundreds of thousands of students returned to school in New York State and New York City this week, Governor Kathy Hochul told reporters the state’s teachers still face major challenges as a consequence of the COVID mass death event that killed 1.1 million people including over 77,000 in New York.

By Joe Maniscalco

Let’s be honest, wherever you’re working today — behind a computer, up on an I-beam, in front of classroom or the back of a delivery bike — how much time have you actually spent thinking about auto workers and their impending strike against the Big Three automobile manufacturers?

By Bob Hennelly

New York State employers will no longer be able to force employees to attend so-called “captive meetings,” which corporations like Starbucks and Amazon use to undermine union organizing.   

Work-Bites Network

Artificial Intelligence is here. But despite some lofty talk about the supposed potential benefits of AI for working people — what we, and every striking WGA and SAG-AFTRA member, now understands — is how multi-national corporations are using AI to maximize profit and minimize — or eliminate  — one of their most irksome business liabilities: the people they employ.