By Phil Cohen

Part III – Labor Board Crisis

During the bargaining period and through September, I made countless trips to Winston-Salem, presenting a total of thirty-four witnesses, some of whom had to return with me to provide supplemental affidavits in regard to information discovered during the Board’s own investigation.

By Joe Maniscalco

The annual Workers Unite! Film Festival is back in New York City for its 13th season this week, presenting another rare opportunity to shift the focus away from the corporate bosses—and place it squarely on the real world struggles and triumphs of working people everywhere.

By Phil Cohen

Confronting ‘Anti’s’ in the Breakroom

We learned that anti-union leader Billy Key was planning to take vacation and visit the breakroom on all three shifts to gather signatures on decertification cards. This would be in violation of a strict company policy prohibiting non-scheduled employees (whether on vacation or off-shift) from entering the building. I discussed this with Joe Wells, Rory Ford, and the corporate attorney, all of whom assured me the rules would be enforced.

By Bob Hennelly

As of this broadcast, there’s just 21 days left until the November 5, General Election. Early voting has already started in Virginia, Minnesota, South Dakota, Vermont, and Illinois. California, Indiana, New Mexico, Wyoming and Ohio all came online last week. This week, early voting gets underway in Georgia, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, North Carolina, Rhode Island, Tennessee, and Washington State. 

By Phil Cohen

Editor’s Note: This is Part I of Phil’s three-part saga looking back at the earlier 1990’s battle against Kmart’s decertification campaign in North Carolina. 

He who is skilled in attack flashes forth from the topmost heights of heaven like a thunderbolt – Sun Tzu (The Art of War)

In 1992, Kmart opened a distribution center in Greensboro, North Carolina. Within a year, its workers had been organized by ACTWU (currently Workers United). Management refused to negotiate in good faith, resulting in a bitter three-year-long first contract fight.

By Bob Hennelly

This episode of the Stuck Nation Labor Radio Hour comes to you on Indigenous Peoples’ Day—previously known as Columbus Day—a federal holiday named for the Italian explorer who falsely claimed to have discovered America when it was already inhabited by indigenous people  he violently attacked and enslaved.

By Bob Hennelly

On this episode of the Stuck Nation Labor Radio Hour, we visit with New York City Central Labor Council President Vinnie Alvarez about the significance of last week’s big win for the International Longshoremen’s Association [ILA]. The union’s 3-day strike earned workers a 62 percent wage hike. 

By Steve Wishnia

More than 2,500 workers at a Brooklyn-based home health-care agency, along with another 880 at a medical lab in Nassau County, have added themselves to the ranks of 1199SEIU.

By Ryn Gargulinski

If you start having nightmares about your job, it’s time to get a new job. That’s one of the self-imposed rules I created some 25 years ago when one of my bosses showed up as Satan in a hallucination while I was going through the DTs.

By Joe Maniscalco

This week, New York City municipal retirees donned chilling death shrouds and held a mass “die-in” in front of Aetna’s Manhattan offices at One Soho Square to dramatize their opposition to Mayor Eric Adams’ ongoing Medicare Advantage push—and the need to finally pass the New York Health Act.

By Joe Maniscalco

New York City Mayor Eric Adams has been hit with a 57-page, 5-count federal indictment, been called unfit to serve, and urged to resign—but he’s still determined to push 250,000 municipal retirees into a profit-driven health insurance plan experts and the courts say diminishes existing Medicare benefits.

By Bob Hennelly

Over the weekend, indicted New York City Mayor Eric Adams continued to express his intention to remain in office as he fights multiple corruption charges that could get him 45 years in prison. In this episode of the Stuck Nation Labor Radio Hour, we speak with New York City Comptroller Brad Lander about his take on this unprecedented crisis in city governance. 

By Phil Cohen

Editor’s Note: This is Part III of Phil’s three-part sequel to his previous Work-Bites series centering on his dangerous days scratching out a living as a New York City cabbie. Read Parts I and II.

I met with Morris and Herb on the morning of my first official day as manager. They handed me two keys; one for the desk compartment containing the books and rent money, and the other for the basement which I had to inspect on a weekly basis to see if the boiler or plumbing needed servicing.

By Bob Hennelly

Courtesy of InsiderNJ

This past week, our region and the great world beyond woke up to reports of the indictment of Mayor Eric Adams on what turned out to be corruption charges. This unprecedented development comes amidst the climax of the most consequential presidential election since 1864 when our nation was caught up in the Civil War.

By Joe Maniscalco

“UFT, DC37 have to stop f——-g with our healthcare…stop selling out our retirees…stop f——-g over actives.”

A couple of weeks ago, a group New York City municipal retirees fighting the City of New York’s ongoing campaign to strip them of their existing Medicare benefits and push them into a profit-driven “Medicare Dis-Advantage” plan took to the streets of Manhattan to denounce the scheme and to advocate passage of the New York Health Act.

By Bob Hennelly

On this episode of the Stuck Nation Labor Radio Hour, we talk to DC 37 Local 3621 FDNY EMS President Vinnie Variale about a really alarming increase in EMS response times for medical emergencies that are now averaging over ten minutes. Only one in five heart attack victims is actually surviving—the worst survival rate in more than ten years. 

By Bob Hennelly

Another weekend, another Adams administration bombshell served up late on Saturday night with an NYPD tweet from interim police commissioner Thomas Donlon that “federal authorities executed search warrants” at his residences and that they “took materials that came into my possession approximately 20 years ago and are unrelated to my work with the New York City Police Department.”

By Rebecca Wishnia

On Sept. 19, I was to review the opening-night performance of the Verdi Requiem at the San Francisco Symphony. The downbeat never came: The performance was canceled due to a strike by the chorus singers—members of the American Guild of Musical Artists. I went to the picket lines.

By Joe Maniscalco

After helping to spearhead the ongoing campaign to push 250,000 New York City municipal retirees into a profit-driven Medicare Advantage plan, UFT President Michael Mulgrew now says the union is “firmly against a Medicare Advantage plan for our retirees.”

By Steve Wishnia

“We will not stand for racism, bias, and discrimination,” Brooklyn Assemblymember Stefanie Zinerman told about 100 health-care workers on the sidewalk outside Interfaith Medical Center September 18. “We love pets. We do not eat pets!”