By Joe Maniscalco

New York City home health aides would like to brand City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams as a “Grinch” or a “Scrooge” this holiday season for stubbornly suppressing a bill outlawing exploitive 24-hour work shifts — but they really can’t.

Both of those twisted characters had a change of heart come Christmas Day. Adams’ heart will likely remain two-sizes too small this year because of…machine politics.

By Steve Wishnia

“We have had four bargaining sessions and made no progress,” 32BJ SEIU president Manny Pastreich told a a sea of purple wool hats and yellow banners and signs that filled half of Sixth Ave. for several blocks south of West 50th Street on Dec. 20. “Time is running short for them to make a deal.”

By Bob Hennelly

Editor’s note: This story has been revised to reflect the latest developments in TWU Local 100 Retirees’ fight to obtain a Temporary Restraining Order and stop the privatization of their traditional Medicare benefits. 

In a legal reversal for TWU Local 100 retirees hoping to head off being forced into an Aetna Medicare Advantage Plan, a New York State Judge has rolled back a TRO he issued Dec. 18 which prohibited the MTA and the union from advancing their plan which the retirees lawyer says kicks in on Jan. 1. In an order issued Dec. 21 vacating the TRO, Judge Shahabuddeen A. Ally referenced filings he received from the legal team representing the union and the MTA in response to the TRO filed on Dec. 20.

By Steve Wishnia

Almost 5,500 workers in the U.S. died from on-the-job injuries in 2022, the highest number in the past 10 years, according to a report released Dec. 19 by the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The bureau’s 2022 Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries counted 5,486 deaths from “sudden workplace trauma,” a 5.7% increase over 2021. The rate of deaths, 3.7 per 100,000 full-time equivalent workers, was also the highest recorded in the past 10 years.

By Bob Hennelly

Late last week, United Steelworkers Nurses Local 4-200 voted overwhelmingly to ratify their contract with Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital and should be back to work in the first week of January after a bitter four month strike for safer staffing.

By Joe Maniscalco

When the United States government finally decides to an end the systemic slaughter of Palestinian people in Gaza, it’ll largely be because the American labor movement has finally decided to flex its collective muscle and fully reclaim its role as “the conscience of America.”

By Bob Hennelly

New York City is a complicated place where several million people make life work for themselves and their families every day. It’s a place where on the same day a seven-story apartment building can collapse with no one injured, and a few hours later an 11 year-migrant boy can hang himself with his shoelaces.

It’s a mélange of the miraculous and the despairing.

By Robert Ovetz

One of my unions’ current CBAs has a new form of compensation for excess workload. This new language recognizes that faculty, counselors, librarians and coaches are performing unwaged labor “mentoring, advising, and outreach, to support underserved, first-generation, and/or underrepresented students” and provides temporary release time to do the work.

By Steve Wishnia

New York City’s 20,000 commercial-building cleaners will vote Dec. 20 on whether to authorize a strike, 32BJ SEIU announced Dec. 13.

“This is a very challenging negotiation,” 32BJ vice president Denis Johnston says of the union’s contract talks with the owners of 1,300 commercial buildings. “There’s a different tone.”

By Bob Hennelly

This week on the Stuck Nation Labor Radio Hour, we visit with Antoinette Miles, the interim director of the New Jersey’s Working Families Alliance. Last month, she was the master of ceremonies at a rally in front of the Legislative Annex down in Trenton that drew a couple of hundred labor, social justice and environmental activists protesting Gov. Phil Murphy’s plan to let the state’s 2.5 percent Corporate Business Tax Surcharge lapse on corporations that make more than a million dollars in annual profits—not exactly your small businesses. 

By Steve Wishnia

Two massage workers at a midtown Manhattan spa who were fired after they complained to their boss about pay and scheduling have won their jobs back.

Under a settlement agreement overseen by the National Labor Relations Board, Xiaoqing Tian and Shulian Feng, who were fired from Liangtse Wellness in November 2022, have been reinstated and will get “almost all” of the pay they lost,

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 Bob Hennelly

Courtesy of InsiderNJ

The parking below the Trenton State House that accommodates all of the legislature’s late model SUVs and cars was filled to capacity on Nov. 30 during a jam packed lame duck session day. Out in front of the Legislative Annex a couple of hundred labor, social justice and environmental activists protested Gov. Phil Murphy’s plan to let the state’s 2.5 percent Corporate Business Tax Surcharge lapse on entities that post more than a million dollars in annual profits.

By Bob Hennelly 

The Biden administration’s failure to address the immigration crisis — as it was ending billions in local COVID aid — is deepening an urban crisis that’s continued to get worse as COVID receded, according to John Samuelsen, international president of the Transport Workers Union. Samuelsen’s union represents 155,000 workers across the country in the airline, railroad, transit, university, utility, and service sectors.

The TWU president warns there’s ample evidence this beltway inattention to America’s urban centers is causing a major political realignment on the ground that could kneecap Democrats’ prospects in 2024…

By Steve Wishnia

Some 1,800 workers at two branches of the University of Rochester Medical Center in New York State will go on strike for 17 hours on December 13, after little progress in more than three months of contract talks.

The main sticking point, 1199SEIU lead negotiator Tracey Harrison told Work-Bites, is that URMC management has so far refused to raise the starting wage at the lowest pay grade, now $15.45 an hour. Management is “not interested in paying a living wage,” he says.

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 Bob Hennelly

On this episode of the Stuck Nation Labor Radio Hour, we welcome NYC Comptroller Brad Lander; New York City Organization of Public Service Retirees President Marianne Pizzitola; Be A Hero Co-Executive Director  Jamila Headley; and NYCCouncil Member Alexa Aviles [D-38th District] to the program.

Together, we talk about the life and legacy of Ady Barkan, the universal healthcare activist and lawyer who died last month at 39 from ALS complications…

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 Bob Hennelly

Courtesy of InsiderNJ

Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital and the United Steelworkers Nurses Local 4-200 — on strike since Aug. 4 — have reached a tentative contract deal, the union and hospital confirm.

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!