By Bob Hennelly

CVS Health has named Brian Kane as the Executive Vice President and President of Aetna, effective September 1. He will report to CVS Health President and CEO Karen S. Lynch. Last month, New York City Mayor Eric Adams signed a contract with Aetna as part of the administration’s campaign to strip 250,000 municipal retirees of their traditional Medicare benefits and push them into a profit-driven Medicare Advantage program.

By Joe Maniscalco

Labor writer and activist Bill Fletcher Jr was on a bus in Cuba back in 1999 as part of a special delegation to that country which also included actor Danny Glover and author Walter Mosley, when he was inspired to share an idea he had percolating in his head for a murder mystery.

By Bob Hennelly

On this episode of the Stuck Nation Labor Radio Hour, we get an update from Marianne Pizzitola, retired FDNY EMT and head of the New York City Organization of Public Service Retirees, and trailblazing FDNY Captain Brenda Beckman who explain why hundreds of New York City retired civil servants will be converging on City Hall at Noon today to protest Mayor Adams forcing them into a privatized Aetna Medicare Advantage program, as well as the the threat the elimination of traditional Medicare poses to 9/11 survivors.

By Joe Maniscalco

Jane LaTour was a soft but powerful voice — one that the Labor Movement could ill afford to lose in these increasingly hard times. But she’s gone now, succumbing last week, like so many other good people, to the working class scourge of cancer. She was 76.

By Helen Klein

Tehmina Brohi spent several years working in the nonprofit sector before deciding to try something new, founding a small clothing manufacturing company that would bring the centuries-old traditions of her Pakistani homeland to modern American consumers.

By Bob Hennelly

While professional beltway Democrats urge their party to be more moderate as the country steels itself for 2024, there’s evidence the labor movement, which acts as the arms and legs of the party, is growing increasingly militant and more willing to strike to upend the status quo.

By Bob Hennelly

This week marks the 55th anniversary of the assassination of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in Memphis, Tennessee. Dr. King was in Memphis as an act of solidarity with Memphis Sanitation workers who had been out on strike since early February after sanitation workers Echol Cole and Robert Walker were crushed by their malfunctioning trash compactor.

Work-Bites

On this episode of the “Iron Bill” Hohlfeld Show, Bill welcomes Vermont Labor Council, AFL-CIO President David Van Deusen for a lively discussion about the conflicting streams of thought within the labor movement today, and what might be some ways to resolve those conflicts.

By Steve Wishnia

Michigan has repealed its 2012 law banning the union shop and restored prevailing-wage requirements for public construction projects. But Texas is considering a bill that would void local labor laws that are stronger than the state’s, such as those in Austin, Dallas, and San Antonio that employers must give construction workers 10-minute water breaks every four hours.

By Bob Hennelly

This year’s commemoration in lower Manhattan of the Triangle Factory Fire on March 25, 1911, which claimed the lives of 146 mostly young immigrant female garment workers, drew a larger, younger, and more energized crowd than it has in previous years.

By Joe Maniscalco

Cross-Union Retirees Organizing Committee [CROC] member Julie Schwartzberg was right on the money a few weeks ago in New York City when she called the ongoing campaign to strip municipal workers of their traditional Medicare health benefits and push them into a profit-driven Medicare Advantage program a “national issue.”

On this episode of the “Iron Bill Hohlfeld Show” Bill talks with Clayton Sinyai, executive director of the Catholic Labor Network about “Cathonomics” and what that’s really all about…

Work-Bites

On this episode of the “Iron Bill” Hohlfeld Show, Bill talks with legendary labor activist Frank Emspak about making trouble — the kind of trouble that empowers working class people, overcomes oppressive bosses, and improves working conditions for everyone.

By Steve Wishnia

The Florida legislator who recently introduced a bill to ban the state Democratic Party — on the grounds that it supported slavery before 1865 — is now taking aim at its public-sector unions.

By Joe Maniscalco

The City of New York, like other places around the country, is plowing ahead with its long, laborious campaign to push municipal retirees into a for-profit Medicare Advantage program. The Municipal Labor Committee [MLC] — the umbrella organization representing public sector unions in the city — is set to present members with a “side-by-side comparison” between what retirees already have and “summary of the proposed contract” on Thursday, March 2.

By Bob Hennelly

On the last Monday of Black History Month, it’s important for the labor movement to reflect on the sad reality that in the half a century since the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. America's vast racial wealth divide has endured and, in some regards, gotten worse.

Work-Bites.com

On this inaugural episode of the “Iron Bill” Hohlfeld Show, we jump right in and confront the issue of union member malaise in the post-Covid era economy with Gina Liberti, adjunct professor and president of the Rockland Community College Adjunct Faculty Association in New York.

By Bob Hennelly

While the abused residents of East Palestine, Ohio packed their local high school gym on Wednesday night to sort through the contradictory messaging from officials, freight trains with vast quantities of toxic chemicals rumbled through equally vulnerable and unprepared corridor communities across America. 

By Bob Hennelly

Throughout the recent hazardous chemical freight train derailment in Ohio and the four-day ordeal that followed while the flaming wreck was stabilized, the one perspective that was consistently missing from the reporting was that of the union railroad workers. It didn’t matter if it was the New York Times, the Washington Post, or the Associated Press , the reporting relied on interviews with local, state and federal officials as well as statements from the Norfolk Southern, the rail carrier but not the perspective of their union workers.

Special to Work-Bites.com

Being the leader of the pack certainly has its perks. But as the protagonist of Jennifer Bateman Grace’s latest installment of ‘This Is Working’ relates, it can also tear your freakin’ heart out and trample it on the ground — especially around the holidays. But it’s all in a day’s work for the working class. Enjoy!