Watch: NYC Council Member Chris Marte Decries ‘Silence’ Around 24-Hour Workdays
By Joe Maniscalco
In this Work-Bites video, NYC Council Member Chris Marte challenges the City Council's so-called "progressive" bona fides, while denouncing the legislative body's continuing inaction on ending mandatory 24-hour work days for home health aides.
Why is NYC Paying to Defend Eric Adams in a Sexual Assault Lawsuit?
By Bob Hennelly
At the end of New York City Mayor Eric Adams’ weekly media availability on March 19, decorum went out the window as photographers swarmed him in the hunt for the image that might capture the essence of what had just gone down during the high stakes press conference.
Listen: Tackling the Gender Pay Gap/Celebrating the Life of Jane LaTour…
By Bob Hennelly
On this episode of the Stuck Nation Labor Radio Hour, we’re honoring the life of Labor Historian Jane LaTour, author of “Sisters in the Brotherhoods,” and we’re also examining the enduring Gender Pay Gap.
AFSCME’s DC 37 Retirees Hearing Didn’t Settle Anything…
By Joe Maniscalco
Nope. The hearing ostensibly called to decide if AFSCME President Lee Saunders acted appropriately in taking over control of the DC 37 Retirees Association and suspending its officers in February has only sparked more questions about the contentious action and the legitimacy of the subsequent hearing process itself.
Phil Cohen War Stories: ‘My Strangest House Call’
By Phil Cohen
There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy – William Shakespeare
During the spring of 1995, ACTWU (now Workers United) scheduled a blitz of nonmembers at the unionized Cone Mills textile plant in Greensboro, North Carolina. Organizers, accompanied by an activist from one of Cone’s three union shops, would be issued house-call packets containing addresses and information regarding workers that would be visited in specified neighborhoods.
Starbucks Threatens to Shutter its ‘Community Store’ in Trenton
By Bob Hennelly
Courtesy of InsiderNJ
It’s everywhere and impacting everything and yet we rarely discuss it because we have come to accept it as the natural order of things, a kind of Machina ex Deus conveyor belt to a “profitable” tomorrow no matter how miserable that future might be. Yet, we still have free will and when something isn’t working, or it could work better, we have to summon the character to act.
Bronx Landlords Threaten to Cancel Union Contract…
By Steve Wishnia
Seeking concessions from hundreds of New York City building-service workers, the trade group representing Bronx landlords has threatened to terminate its four-year contract with 32BJ SEIU — but it has agreed to delay doing so for 30 days beyond the original deadline of March 31
NYC Mayor: ‘My Goal is to Rectify and Correct’ FDNY EMS Pay Inequity
By Bob Hennelly
New York City Mayor Eric Adams this week reiterated his support for full pay parity between the FDNY EMS workforce, which is mostly composed of women and people of color — and the firefighting side of the department, which is mostly white males.
Listen: Workers Press the Fight for Equity and Pay Parity
By Bob Hennelly
The Stuck Nation Labor Radio Hour marks the second week of Women’s History Month by welcoming New York City Council Member Alexa Aviles (D-38th District), who talks about the decades-old gender and race-based pay discrimination that still plagues the FDNY’s EMS workforce.
The Women Making History During Women’s History Month…
By Joe Maniscalco
Here it is, another Women’s History Month — the officially sanctioned time of year when, after enough decades have passed, we’re all encouraged to enthusiastically applaud the achievements of marginalized working class heroes from a safe and non-threatening distance.
‘We Can’t Continue to Work Like This’ - NYC Transit Workers Demand Safer Conditions
By Steve Wishnia
Subway station agent Benjamin Welcome was working in the 2/3 line part of the Wall Street station on Feb. 16, the day Noreen Mallory, a station agent in the 4/5 line section, got her eye socket broken by an enraged man who punched her repeatedly in the face until passengers on an arriving train intervened.
“If the train hadn’t come in, she would have been on the tracks,” he told Work-Bites.
An Open Letter to President Joe Biden…
Dear President Biden,
My name is Marianne Pizzitola. I am a retired member of the FDNY EMS and participant in the 9/11 World Trade Center Health Program. For the last few years, I have been president of the New York City Organization of Public Service Retirees that we organized when New York City’s Municipal Labor Committee and then Mayor Bill de Blasio decided to force 250,000 retired civil servants off of our traditional Medicare and onto a predatory for-profit Medicare Advantage Plan.
Mayor Adams Embraces Encryption to Protect NYPD; Cuts Out Press and Endangers EMS
'Operational Security’ Trumps the Right to Know
By Bob Hennelly
New York City Mayor Eric Adams this week dismissed concerns the NYPD’s encrypting of its radio communications will undermine transparency and the ability of the press to report on breaking news — but did say he would look into issues raised by the union that represents FDNY EMS officers about the initial rollout of encryption in Brooklyn North precincts.
NYC Retirees Stand Strong With Ousted DC 37 Officers…
By Joe Maniscalco
Angry municipal retirees do not care what AFSCME Retirees Director and newly-appointed DC37 Retirees Association Administrator Ann Widger says — the union’s decision to put the retirees chapter in receivership last month, they insist, is retribution for fighting back against ongoing efforts to privatize their health care.
Plain and simple.
Listen: FDNY’S Black History Month Mess/NYPD Scrambles Radio Traffic in Brooklyn North
By Bob Hennelly
We’re starting off this year’s Women’s History month with a candid conversation with FDNY firefighter Regina Wilson, president of the Vulcan Society — the African American support group for the New York City Fire Department. Regina updates us on the FDNY’s last minute cancellation of its Black History Month commemoration and the premiere of a documentary the FDNY produced on the life of Robert O. Lowery, the FDNY’s first Black fire commissioner who was promoted by Mayor John Lindsay in the 1970s.
NYC Mayor: Encrypt NYPD Radio Traffic… And Hide 9/11 WTC Files
By Bob Hennelly
The day after City & State published an analysis of the Adams administration lack of transparency, City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams blasted the Mayor’s encrypting of NYPD radio traffic and his continued suppression of the City’s 9/11 WTC files that would shed light on what the city knew and when it knew it about the toxic air in and around lower Manhattan.
Hochul ‘Locking Out Black Mothers and Black Babies!’ in Brooklyn
By Steve Wishnia
“We’re here for one reason. Brooklyn needs Downstate,” United University Professions leader Frederick E. Kowal told a rally of several hundred people outside the hospital Feb. 29. Many in the crowd protesting the state’s plan to close the East Flatbush facility carried signs or wore T-shirts with the same slogan, in the white-on-black team colors and font of the Brooklyn Nets.
DC 37 Retirees: AFSCME Takeover is All About Medicare Advantage
By Joe Maniscalco
AFSCME, under union President Lee Saunders, says the emergency decision to suspend DC37 Retirees Association officers and lock them out of their offices on February 22, has everything to do with the group’s problematic finances — and nothing to do with them helping the New York City Organization of Public Service Retirees successfully beat back the Medicare Advantage push in town. But does it?
Retired Transit Workers Launch Class Action Suit: Refuse to Be Railroaded into Privatized Health Care
By Steve Wishnia
A group of nine retired transit workers has filed a class-action suit in New York State Supreme Court, seeking to get their access to traditional Medicare restored after they were switched to a private Medicare Advantage plan on Jan. 1.
Why Are More Transit Workers Being Attacked on the Job!?!
By Steve Wishnia
“If it keeps going the way it’s going, there’s going to be a murder,” subway-train operator Evangeline Byars tells Work-Bites.
On Feb. 16, a 58-year-old station agent in the Wall Street station suffered a fractured eye socket when she was attacked by a man she’d woken up from sleeping under a bench.