By Phil Cohen

Serta doesn’t manufacture mattresses. They sell their brand name and designs to licensees who produce their products and market directly to retailers.

On May 8, 1998, workers at Starlite Bedding, a licensee in Greensboro, North Carolina voted to join UNITE (formerly ACTWU and now Workers United.)  A bargaining committee was elected and UNITE’s Southern Regional Director Harris Raynor initiated contract negotiations with a company attorney in what promised to be an amicable and productive process.

By Ryn Gargulinski

Being burdened with a 24-hour workday is a surefire way to end up burnt-out, groggy and cranky as hell. But alas, the situation exists. It’s long been the case with New York City home care workers (who, outrageously, only get paid for 13 of those hours). And you can still find even lengthier shifts in the medical world. Nothing like a burnt-out, groggy and cranky-as-hell doctor-in-training being assigned to your hospital bedside, right?

By Bob Hennelly

The Stuck Nation Labor Radio Hour is in Milwaukee this week for the Republican National Convention where Donald Trump has picked Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio, a key labor state, as his vice-presidential pick.

By Steve Wishnia

The Heritage Foundation has a plan for Donald Trump’s “deep state.” As he has minimal command of policy issues and details, he relies on the far-right think tank to come up with specific proposals. They know what “concerted activity” is and have ideas about how to weaken Section 7 of the National Labor Relations Act.

By Bob Hennelly

Dozens of attending physicians with Doctors Council SEIU made the trip up to Gracie Mansion this week to deliver a petition signed by over 1,000 of their colleagues to Mayor Eric Adams, warning that a lapsed contract is undermining recruitment and retention of staff.

Editor’s Note: John Hsu is a former congressional candidate from New Jersey’s 6th District

By John Hsu

Since April 22, over 100 workers from Silgan Containers, makers of steel cans for food products such as soup and dog food, have been on strike at the company’s 135 National Road location in Edison, N.J. after failing to come to terms on a new contract. The workers are unionized with United Steel Workers (USW) local 6129.

By Joe Maniscalco

New York City municipal retirees and home care workers heroically fighting for what they’ve already earned know the deck has been heavily stacked against them—so, why aren’t some of their staunchest allies willing to do anything about the systemic conditions underpinning that institutionalized inequity?

By Bob Hennelly

As we get farther into the 2024 campaign cycle, WBAI and the Pacifica Radio Network are committed to raising the issues that impact health and safety of the broad swath of America’s 330 million people, all too many of whom are marginal to the campaign conversation curated by the corporate news media.

A case in point would be the risks and dangers that are posed to so-called corridor communities like East Palestine, Ohio or Paulsboro, New Jersey…

By Steve Wishnia

Worker-safety advocates hailed the proposed federal heat-protection standards released by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration July 2—but they also warn that they must be adequately enforced.

By Steve Wishnia

The basic principle of American democracy, if summed up in one sentence, is: THE PRESIDENT IS NOT A KING.

Three days before the Fourth of July, the Supreme Court retroactively crowned King Donald I.

By Bob Hennelly

This past weekend, thousands of union members, low wage workers and social justice activists turned out in support of the Mass Poor People’s and Low Wage Workers Assembly in Washington D.C., convened by Rev. Dr. William Barber and Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis.

By Joe Maniscalco

Forcing older immigrant women of color to work punishing 24-hour shifts as home care workers is not fair and should stop, the head the agency responsible for assigning many of those same jobs told Work-Bites this week.

Editor’s Note: Building on the success of its  Moral Monday Labor Radio Hour With Rev. Dr. William Barber & Bob Hennelly, the Pacifica Radio Network [PRN] is launching real time coverage of the seminal live events from the 2024 election cycle starting with the June 29th “Mass Poor People’s and Low-Wage Workers’ Assembly and Moral March on Washington, D.C. and the polls.”

By Steve Wishnia

Working people’s issues barely got mentioned in the presidential debate June 27.

Well, in the first minute, President Joe Biden declared “working-class people are still in trouble,” when asked a question about the economy, and blamed inflation on “corporate greed” and the “chaos” he inherited from Donald Trump after COVID.

By Steve Wishnia

The February 2023 derailment of a freight train in East Palestine, Ohio, that forced the evacuation of more than 2,000 people was caused when an overheated wheel bearing on a hopper car caused the axle to separate, the National Transportation Safety Board said in a summary of its forthcoming report released June 25.

By Bob Hennelly

On this episode of the Stuck Nation Labor Radio Hour, UFT President Michael Mulgrew talks about his decision to pull UFT support from the ongoing scheme to push 250,000 New York City municipal retirees into a profit-driven Medicare Advantage plan, as well as “current healthcare negotiations for in-service and pre-Medicare retirees.”

By Bob Hennelly

As we gather for this episode of the Moral Monday Labor Radio Hour with Rev. Dr. William Barber and Bob Hennelly, the Israeli assault on Gaza continues. Since Oct. 7, when at least 1,200 Israelis were killed and 240 taken hostage, 37,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, 70 percent of them women and children, according to the American Friends Service Committee.

By Joe Maniscalco

All eyes in NYC’s Medicare Advantage fight should be on Mayor Eric Adams today, after UFT President Michael Mulgrew’s announcement over the weekend that he’s reversing course and no longer supporting the plan to push 250,000 municipal retirees into a profit-driven Medicare Advantage health insurance program.

By Phil Cohen

Editor’s Note: This is Part Three of Phil’s three-part saga about his days driving an illegal taxi [otherwise known as a “gypsy cab”] on the streets of New York City back in the late 1960s when he was still just a teen.

I returned to New York out of money and learned that the landlords of The Apartment had refused to renew the lease. Desperate to reorganize my life, I found what appeared to be a professionally run taxi stand on Sutphin Boulevard in Jamaica.

By Steve Wishnia

Workers at four rural nursing homes in Western New York voted to ratify a two-year contract, 1199SEIU announced June 21. The agreement, reached just before a strike deadline of June 13, covers about 300 workers at facilities in Allegany, Aurora Park, Orchard Park, and Westfield operated by the for-profit Absolut Care/RCA Servicer  chain.