Bosses Already Challenging New Rule Making Unionizing Less Difficult
By Steve Wishnia
A National Labor Relations Board [NLRB] decision expanding when employers must recognize unions might be a landmark with far-reaching effects — but it is already being contested in the federal courts.
The Toxic 9/11 Cloud That Still Lingers Even West of the Hudson
Courtesy of InsiderNJ
By Bob Hennelly
On Sept. 11, 2001, 749 residents of New Jersey perished in the attack on the World Trade Center. Today, over 10,000 first responders and survivors from the state are enrolled in the World Trade Center Health Program as a consequence of their exposure to the air in lower Manhattan and portions of western Brooklyn.
In the Fight Against The Big Three…the UAW Can Win Even Bigger - For All of Us
By Joe Maniscalco
Let’s be honest, wherever you’re working today — behind a computer, up on an I-beam, in front of classroom or the back of a delivery bike — how much time have you actually spent thinking about auto workers and their impending strike against the Big Three automobile manufacturers?
Listen: How Do Working People Confront the Threat of AI?
Work-Bites Network
Artificial Intelligence is here. But despite some lofty talk about the supposed potential benefits of AI for working people — what we, and every striking WGA and SAG-AFTRA member, now understands — is how multi-national corporations are using AI to maximize profit and minimize — or eliminate — one of their most irksome business liabilities: the people they employ.
‘Death Star’ Law is Struck Down in Texas!
By Steve Wishnia
AUSTIN, Tex.—On Aug. 30, at the end of a summer in which the temperature in Austin topped 100° for a record 45 consecutive days, a local judge ruled unconstitutional a new state law intended to nullify local ordinances that require water breaks for construction workers.
‘The Man Who Changed Colors’: A Multi-Layered Working-Class Suspense Thriller
Courtesy of People’s World
By John Bachtell
In The Man Who Changed Colors, storyteller Bill Fletcher Jr. offers readers a many-layered political suspense thriller that had me enthralled from cover to cover. The story, told through the eyes of David Gomes, an undaunted reporter for the Cape and Islands Gazette, is set in Cape Cod, Mass., in the late 1970s and unfolds amid the dynamics and tensions of the Portuguese and Cape Verdean communities, the latter of which Gomes is a part.
Listen: Striking NJ Nurses Have National Importance; Inside the Teamsters UPS Contract
By Bob Hennelly
It’s the Strike Summer Edition of the Stuck Nation Labor Radio Hour as we talk with U.S. Sen. Cory Booker on why the nurses' strike at Robert Wood Johnson University in New Brunswick, New Jersey is of national significance in the battle over safe staffing that puts people ahead of profits.
Tracking Software Ruined My Life (Or At Least One of My Jobs)
By Ryn Gargulinski
The worst boss I ever had was a robot. Well, not a robot in “The Terminator” sense that would blow your head off if you didn’t hand in an assignment on time. But a robotic time-tracking software that recorded and shared my every single move.
Inside the GOP Presidential S#/t Show: Teachers More Dangerous Than UFOs!
By Steve Wishnia
Sometimes I see my role as a journalist as being a forensic scatologist: What kind of s—t is falling towards us? Whose butt is it coming from? What pathogenic bacteria does it contain?
This is How the Next Great American General Strike Happens…
By Joe Maniscalco
The next great general strike to captivate the United States will not be organized — it’ll be organic. And it could be the most transformative general strike this country has ever seen
Strikers to Corporate Bosses: ‘What Do You Wanna Do - Wipe Out the Human Race?’
By Steve Wishnia
It was not an AI-generated crowd scene. It was all humans.
This week in New York City, hundreds of striking actors and screenwriters, joined by supporters from numerous other unions, packed two blocks of Tenth Avenue, across from the offices of HBO and Amazon in the plutocratic slab of Hudson Yards. It was part of a national day of solidarity with the strikes by SAG-AFTRA and the Writers’ Guild of America.
NYC’s Fighting Retirees: ‘A Wake Up Call to the National Labor Movement’
By Joe Maniscalco
Despite some very strange efforts to obscure the fact, Medicare remains one of organized labor’s all-time greatest achievements 58 years after President Lyndon Baines Johnson first signed it into existence with Harry and Bess Truman proudly standing by.
Revitalized Union Power Helped Crush Attempts to Rig the System in Ohio
By Bob Hennelly
It is said that history is written by the winners. But when it comes to big wins by organized labor, the corporate news media, itself fighting unionization at all costs, tends to ignore unions even when they are shaping history.
Work-Bites Working Class Spotlight on Comic Book Artist Dean Haspiel
By Joe Maniscalco
Brooklyn comic book creator Dean Haspiel is sort of like a construction worker — both really enjoy the inherent tangibility of the work — whether it’s pointing to a building on the corner they helped put up, or grabbing a graphic novel off the shelf they helped produce.
D.C. Welcomes NYC Retirees as Heroes in the Fight to Save Medicare
By Bob Hennelly
The New York City Organization of Public Service Retirees [NYCOPSR] were given a hero’s welcome at a ‘save Medicare’ rally in front of the U.S. Capitol on July 27. Roughly 70 members shared the spotlight with Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), and several other members of the House of Representatives who blasted for-profit Medicare Advantage insurance companies for delaying and denying health care treatment to seniors which they said resulted in an estimated 10,000 deaths a year.
Strike-Ready Teamsters Reach Deal; Force UPS to Scrap Baloney Two-Tier System
By Steve Wishnia
The Teamsters Union has reached a tentative contract deal with UPS it is calling “overwhelmingly lucrative” and “the most historic tentative agreement for workers in the history of UPS” — and it’s crediting intensive rank-and-file organizing and readiness to strike for the victory.
An Open Letter to SAG-AFTRA President Fran Drescher…
By Joe Maniscalco
To SAG-AFTRA President Fran Drescher:
Before launching Work-Bites last fall, I covered the Labor Movement for more than a decade, delivering countless stories on wage theft, worker safety, pay parity, the Fight for $15, you name it.
WATCH: Wendell Potter on how Wall Street’s Greed Threatens Your Health
Work-Bites Network
On this episode of Labor This Week with Host Mark Harrison, former healthcare industry insider turned traditional Medicare advocate Wendell Potter, talks about how “Wall Street’s greed” is now determining “whether or not we get the care our doctors say we need” — or “even the power to see the doctors of our choice.”
LISTEN: Why is Union Density Declining? NYC Retirees Champion Medicare/And More!
By Bob Hennelly
On this episode of the Stuck Nation Labor Radio Hour, we visit with noted labor historian and author Joshua Freeman, a distinguished professor emeritus at CUNY’s Queens College, to discuss the significant increase in union organizing and strike activity across the country. We ask with all of this union activity why is union density actually going down?
CVS/Aetna Out to Steal All They Can While Hurting Public Employees…
By Ray Rogers
COMMENTARY: Ray Rogers is a pioneering labor strategist & organizer, and founder of CorporateCampaign.org
CVS Health Corporation (CVS), headquartered in Woonsocket, Rhode Island, is the world's largest healthcare company. It owns CVS Pharmacy, a retail pharmacy chain; CVS Caremark, a pharmacy benefits manager; Aetna, a health insurance provider, and many other brands.