By Bob Hennelly

Courtesy of InsiderNJ

This past Monday night, as I was watching MSNBC’s hyped up coverage of the Iowa Republican caucus and Steve Kornaki offering a county-by-county breakdown of how former President Donald Trump had carried the day with around 56,000 votes, not even ten percent of the state’s 752,000 registered Republicans, I flashed back to another GOP primary night here in New Jersey almost twenty years ago.

By Bob Hennelly

The 9/11 responder and survivor community are mourning the death of retired North Arlington, New Jersey Police Chief Joe Zadroga, a powerful voice in the campaign to pass and then to extend the James Zadroga 9/11 WTC Health and Compensation Act, named for his son, an NYPD Detective who died in 2006 as a consequence  of his exposure to the air in lower Manhattan in the months after the attack.

By Bob Hennelly

In this special Martin Luther King Jr. Day edition of the Stuck Nation Labor Radio Hour we examine the essential role that the MLK played in the American labor movement and how his 20th century campaign based on disciplined non-violent collective action laid the  foundation for the 21st century revival of the American labor movement.

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 Steve Wishnia

More than 200 Carpenters Union members picketed the Manhattan offices of an Australian real-estate developer Jan. 11, demanding that it stop using nonunion labor on a massive luxury development on the Brooklyn waterfront.

“It’s not only that it’s a nonunion contractor,” Michael Piccirillo, area standards manager for the New York City & Vicinity District Council of Carpenters, told Work-Bites. “It’s someone who in the past defrauded a union pension fund.”

By Bob Hennelly

This week, after two independent agencies flagged the accuracy of the Adams administration’s budget projections and reporting on critical data like the number of homeless, Mayor Adams reversed course on several controversial budget cuts that were part of his November austerity budget plan to close what he said was a $7 billion budget shortfall.

By Bob Hennelly

On this episode of the Stuck Nation Labor Radio Hour, we welcome UAW Local 259 President Brian Schneck and Vice President Mike Digiuseppe who talk about the union’s fight for first contracts at City World Ford in the Bronx and EmPower Solar in Bethpage — in addition to the election of UAW President Shawn Fain and their union’s demand for a ceasefire in Gaza. 

We also look at the controversy surrounding migrants being bussed into the Tri-State area and the reasons behind it all.

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 Bob Hennelly

Courtesy of InsiderNJ

Over the holidays, New Jersey Gov. Murphy, Lieutenant Gov. Way, Senate President Scutari, and Assembly Speaker Coughlin put out a self-congratulatory press release saying how “incredibly proud” they were that the state’s minimum was set to increase to $15.13 an hour with the New Year. In their statement the state’s leaders said that because of a 2019 change in state law the increase was “indexed annually to inflation” guaranteeing that “working families won’t fall behind when prices go up.”

You have to wonder what planet these people occupy.

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 Bob Hennelly

On the New Year’s edition of the Stuck Nation Labor Radio Hour, we celebrate a tentative contract between 32 BJ SEIU, representing 20,000 commercial building service workers, and New York City’s Realty Advisory Board that averts a major strike and the creation of an exploitative two tier workforce. Over the next several weeks, union members will weigh in on the tentative four year agreement that raises wages, safeguards healthcare coverage, and enhances pension benefits.  

By Ryn Gargulinski

As I was sloshing through the extraordinary amount of junk mail that somehow makes it into my email inbox these days, I saw one that was a big red flag.  

The message started: “Dear Amazon Prime Member.” Uh oh. Anytime there’s an email starting with a “Dear” followed by a “Member” it usually means whatever you’re a member of is jacking up the rates. 

By Joe Maniscalco

Photojournalists and reporters documenting the tiny white bundles being set down solemnly on the sidewalk near West 40th Street and Broadway on Thursday afternoon were warned the numbers would soon grow into the hundreds and quickly fill the space.

By Bob Hennelly

Nothing says depression and anxiety like being New York City parents of three small children and having to deal with an eviction notice that’s effective between Christmas and New Year’s Day when the rest of the world is celebrating abundance.

By Steve Wishnia

Commercial-building cleaners in New York City and hospital and university service workers in Rochester have won significant raises and averted threatened strikes this week.

By Bob Hennelly

Courtesy of InsiderNJ

Angels and demons ride the rails and New Jersey Transit conductors and collectors have to collect tickets from them all. And on too many occasions, the rail workers get verbally and physically abused in the process.

Work-Bites News Network

Courtesy of Madison Labor Radio

Happy Yuletide Season, everyone - check out this exclusive report on the “breakthrough” labor deal recently secured just before Christmas Day:

By Steve Wishnia

Just before 3 p.m. on the Friday before Christmas, workers at the Barnes & Noble flagship bookstore on Union Square walked out for two hours to protest management’s refusal to bargain with their recently formed union. Shoppers approaching the store’s dark-green doors got greeted with chants of “Picket Line Means Don’t Cross!”