The Answer to Workplace Retaliation…
By Bill Barry
Courtesy of Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee
It happens all the time: a supervisor suddenly approaches one of your best organizing committee members, screams a lot of false accusations about bad work, bad attendance, or bad attitude at them, and then tells them that they are fired.
EMS is a Meat Grinder That Needs Emergency Aid
By Bob Hennelly
Courtesy of InsiderNJ
It was more than a year ago that President Joe Biden declared the national emergency sparked by the Covid mass death event over—but here in New Jersey, and throughout the nation, our local Emergency Management Services find themselves in a deepening crisis as professionals leave this vital profession.
NYC Council Speaker Seeks ‘Closure’ on Medicare Advantage Fight
By Joe Maniscalco
New York City Mayor Eric Adams may believe the highest court in the state will still let him push 250,000 municipal retirees into a profit-driven Aetna Medicare Advantage health insurance plan if he asks the judges nicely enough, but City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams says it’s time for “closure.”
Phil Cohen War Stories: The Siege
By Phil Cohen
I received a call from Mill Chair Clara Moser the next morning at 8 am. She frantically told me security guards had been stationed at the plant entrance to prevent me from entering. Management claimed to have video showing me kicking a hole in the wall as I exited on Thursday.
Are These Guys Crazy!?! Adams Keeps Pushing Medicare Advantage in NYC Despite Latest Court Defeat
By Joe Maniscalco
The City of New York’s decision to keep trying to push 250,000 municipal retirees into a profit-driven Medicare Advantage health insurance plan following yet another crushing court defeat on Tuesday has convinced many in the fight that Mayor Eric Adams and his privatization allies must be crazy.
Listen: Labor’s Role in the 2024 Election/Mayor Adams Cuts Hundreds of NYC Jobs
By Bob Hennelly
We are in Philadelphia for this week’s edition of the Stuck Nation Labor Radio Hour covering the Service Employees International Union’s national convention. Yesterday, delegates elected April Verrett, the first Black president of the almost 2 million member union.
Listen: Labor Needs a 50 State Organizing Strategy
By Bob Hennelly
On this episode of the Moral Monday Labor Radio Hour with Rev. Dr. William Barber and Bob Hennelly, we are live from SEIU Convention in Philadelphia talking with George Gresham, president of 1199SEIU, America’s largest healthcare union, about his union’s deep ties to the civil rights movement and how it’s continued to grow even in the south which has historically resistant to the union moment.
Fain Defiant After GOP Governors’ Plot to Defeat Alabama Union Drive
By Bob Hennelly
The UAW’s winning streak, including a lopsided union recognition vote last month at a Volkswagen plant in “right-to-work” state Tennessee, came to an end at a Mercedes plant in Alabama thanks to a flagrantly illegal counter-campaign led by plant management and backed up by a powerful coalition of southern Republican Governors.
Phil Cohen War Stories: The Textile Cowboys
By Phil Cohen
In 1976 the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America and the Textile Workers Union of America merged to form the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union. It was a marriage of convenience, rooted in necessity, between very disparate cultures.
Listen: Trump Fascism on the March; Workers in Peril; and More!
By Bob Hennelly
Last weekend, former President Donald Trump held a rally in Wildwood, New Jersey where his racist anti-immigrant messaging appears to have drawn thousands. While the Associated Press reported tens of thousands attended, other reliable outlets have put the actual crowd size as much smaller.
Multibillion- Dollar Cannabis Industry Gets High on Union-Busting
By Steve Wishnia
The union campaign at the Bloom Medicinals medical-marijuana dispensary in Akron, Ohio began in the break room early last year. Dispensary agents Krispin Horner and Ev Lindrose were both angry that a coworker had just been fired, Lindrose recalls.
Listen: Postcards From Alabama…Making Union History in Montgomery
By Bob Hennelly
The Republican Party will hold its national convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin July 15 through 18. A month later, August 19 to 22, the Democratic Party will convene in Chicago. So far, the 2024 Presidential campaign has been entirely about President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump—two elderly white guys.
DC 37 Retirees Say AFSCME’s April Zoom Meeting Violated the Association’s Constitution
By Joe Maniscalco
Propaganda session? Some kind of weird one-way webinar where attendees agonizing over the privatization of their traditional Medicare benefits were first encouraged to go get a flag and recite the pledge before getting any answers?
Union: Columbia University Failed to Deescalate Campus Protest
By Bob Hennelly
Four days before protestors took over Columbia University’s Hamilton Hall on April 30, trapping building service workers from TWU Local 241 inside for a harrowing half-hour to 45 minutes, their union wrote university officials to flag their concerns.
Listen: Profit-Driven to Extinction?
By Bob Hennelly
We kick off National Nurses Week with an update from Debbie White, RN and president of HPAE, New Jersey’s largest nurses’ union, which is in major contract negotiations revolving around getting local hospitals to establish and abide by safe staffing levels.
Listen: ‘A Cry to Stop All of This Killing’
By Bob Hennelly
On this episode of the Moral Monday Labor Radio Hour with Rev. Dr. William Barber & Bob Hennelly, we are on the Atlantic Coast in southeast Florida, a state where over 42 percent of the voters are low wage and low wealth, and who, as Rev. Dr. William Barber reminds us, could change the course of history this year if they mobilize.
Does Your Workplace Have a ‘Blame Machine?’
By Ryn Gargulinski
It’s all Bitsy Finnigan’s fault. Bitsy Finnigan was a childhood neighbor kid who would come over to our house and wreck things.
Watch: ‘My Fight is Your Fight; Your Fight is My Fight’
By Joe Maniscalco
In this Work-Bites video, New York City municipal retirees fighting the City of New York’s campaign to push them into a profit-driven Medicare Advantage health insurance plan pledge their solidarity with home health aides demanding Speaker Adrienne Adams allow the “No More 24” bill to come to the floor for a vote.
‘No More 24’ Bill Would Pass in NYC If Put on the Floor For a Vote, Lead Sponsor Says On May Day
By Joe Maniscalco
Intro. 615 — the bill aimed at freeing local home health aides in New York City from mandatory 24-hour workdays — has enough votes to sail through the New York City Council if it were put on the floor for a vote today. All Speaker Adrienne Adams has to do is get out of the way and let it happen.
In ‘Insurgent Labor,’ David Van Deusen Details How Union Reformers Turned Things Around in Vermont…And How You Can, Too
By Joe Maniscalco
In 2020, with much of the nation biting its fingernails wondering what to do if Donald J. Trump refused to leave office after losing the presidential election — David Van Deusen, then head of the Vermont State Labor Council, was ready to lead a general strike across his state to help kick him out if needed. It was a bold and defiant move that late AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka hated so much, he threatened to take over the VSLC.