By Ryn Gargulinski

As I was sloshing through the extraordinary amount of junk mail that somehow makes it into my email inbox these days, I saw one that was a big red flag.  

The message started: “Dear Amazon Prime Member.” Uh oh. Anytime there’s an email starting with a “Dear” followed by a “Member” it usually means whatever you’re a member of is jacking up the rates. 

By Joe Maniscalco

Photojournalists and reporters documenting the tiny white bundles being set down solemnly on the sidewalk near West 40th Street and Broadway on Thursday afternoon were warned the numbers would soon grow into the hundreds and quickly fill the space.

By Joe Maniscalco

When the United States government finally decides to an end the systemic slaughter of Palestinian people in Gaza, it’ll largely be because the American labor movement has finally decided to flex its collective muscle and fully reclaim its role as “the conscience of America.”

By Robert Ovetz

One of my unions’ current CBAs has a new form of compensation for excess workload. This new language recognizes that faculty, counselors, librarians and coaches are performing unwaged labor “mentoring, advising, and outreach, to support underserved, first-generation, and/or underrepresented students” and provides temporary release time to do the work.

By Phil Cohen

Editor’s Note: In case you missed it, here’s Part I and Part II of this special “War Stories” series.

On February 21, I attended a labor management meeting with plant manager Justin Scarbrough and the Local 294-T committee to discuss Jessie’s situation. Sometimes, it’s easier to resolve certain issues during an informal meeting before the polarizing impact of a grievance hearing.

By Bob Hennelly 

The Biden administration’s failure to address the immigration crisis — as it was ending billions in local COVID aid — is deepening an urban crisis that’s continued to get worse as COVID receded, according to John Samuelsen, international president of the Transport Workers Union. Samuelsen’s union represents 155,000 workers across the country in the airline, railroad, transit, university, utility, and service sectors.

The TWU president warns there’s ample evidence this beltway inattention to America’s urban centers is causing a major political realignment on the ground that could kneecap Democrats’ prospects in 2024…

By Phil Cohen

Jessie called during December, 2019. “I got notified I got to go see Dr. Yates, who did my surgery. I was wondering if you could come with me.”

I asked why and she said, “There’s things I need you to see.”

I agreed to the unusual request and the appointment was scheduled for January 2. I told her to present me as an old friend, accompanying her for moral support. The doctor would be on his best behavior if he even suspected I was her union rep.

By Phil Cohen

Editor’s Note: Phil Cohen is a union organizer and author who’s seen a lot during his many years in the labor movement. He has graciously agreed to share some of his “War Stories” with Work-Bites. Here is the first installment in an ongoing series…

On August 11, 2018, I attended a victory picnic in Eden, North Carolina with members of Workers United Local 294-T. We were celebrating the defeat of their employer’s illegal union busting plot at the Mohawk Industries plant where they worked. Committee members tended the grills. Some brought side dishes.

By Ryn Gargulinski

The day came when I absolutely, positively, no-bones-about-it hated my desk. I hated it so much I could no longer even sit there. That day arrived after I parted ways with a work-from-home job that had kept me chained to that desk for 10-hour days with tracking software — for two years straight.

Ugh. My mind was numb. My body was probably showing signs of that sitting disease thing. And my soul rebelled in a big way, refusing to sit at that desk for even a minute!

By Steve Wishnia

Swedish postal workers are refusing to deliver mail or packages to Tesla facilities in order to support a strike by mechanics at the company’s service centers there. It is one of many solidarity actions by Swedish unions that would be illegal under U.S. law.

By Joe Maniscalco

More Americans are taking their demand for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza to the streets — but it continues to be a different story in the workplace where many are feeling pressure from their their bosses — and sometimes, their unions — to keep their heads down and their mouths shut.

By Joe Maniscalco

Underneath the fight municipal retirees are waging in New York City and other places around the country to save their traditional Medicare benefits from the onslaught of privatized Medicare Advantage plans lies a systemic defect in today’s labor movement that if not finally corrected guarantees some harder times ahead — for retirees and active workers alike.

By Ryn Gargulinski

“Deck the halls, my ass.” That used to be my attitude toward the holidays, and I was lucky enough to find another person who felt that way. So we’d get together in December and mope.

Then she mentioned how the thought of moping all December made her depression creep into November. So we started commiserating even earlier.

By Steve Wishnia

Under a gray sky on Brooklyn’s Red Hook waterfront, several dozen Teamsters picketed Amazon’s new delivery station Oct. 30 in solidarity with striking workers in Southern California.

The 84 drivers and dispatchers from Amazon’s DAX8 delivery station in Palmdale, north of Los Angeles, have been on strike since June. Amazon refused to recognize a contract that their union, Teamsters Local 396, had reached with Battle-Tested Strategies, a “delivery service partner” the company hires to deliver packages for the “last mile” to customers.

By Steve Wishnia

New House Speaker Mike Johnson has an “atrocious” record on labor issues, major unions said after he was elected to the post in a strict party-line vote Oct. 25.

“It is absolutely shameful that every single Republican member of Congress voted for this unqualified, anti-worker extremist,” Communications Workers of America President Claude Cummings Jr. said in a statement Oct. 26. “Among other things, Johnson has called the PRO Act an ‘outdated way of thinking,’ co-sponsored the National Right to Work Act, endorsed overturning the ban on company unions, and proposed raising the retirement age and lowering COLAs for Social Security beneficiaries.”

By Bob Hennelly

Members of the Memphis union on strike since June at a protein processing plant owned by International Flavor & Fragrances are hoping to raise the visibility of their prolonged struggle at a protest held outside the multinational’s 521 West 57th Street headquarters in Manhattan on Oct. 18, at 1 p.m.

By Bob Hennelly

Tens of thousands of union healthcare workers who work for Kaiser Permanente in several states have won a 21 percent pay increase over four years following a three-day strike earlier this month, the largest such action in U.S. history. The tentative deal includes restrictions on outsourcing and measures to promote staff retention, a key concern of the coalition of unions led by SEIU.

By Steve Wishnia

If the minimum wage had gone up as much as event-ticket fees in the past 50 years, it would now be almost $70 an hour.

In 1973, when I was a teenager, the minimum wage was $2 an hour, and tickets were $6.50 to see Frank Zappa at the old Nassau Coliseum or Mott the Hoople and the New York Dolls at the theater in Madison Square Garden. There was also a 50-cent fee if you bought them from Ticketron, the pioneering electronic ticket-selling company that was acquired by Ticketmaster in 1991.

By Steve Wishnia

“A hideous little bundle was slowly lowered from a window of what had been the ninth floor of the scab shop the Triangle Waist Company,” Carrie W. Allen wrote for the New York Call, a socialist newspaper, on March 28, 1911. “It swirled and flapped grotesquely in the wind as it made its lonely journey to the street. Spinning round and round, it kept up a goblin dance as it went down, down, down, and finally lay in eternal quiet upon the ground.”

By Bob Hennelly 

This week, a permanent memorial at the site of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire in New York City will be dedicated to the mass casualty event that killed 146 mostly young immigrant women garment workers on March 25, 1911 and sparked a national movement for workplace safety and worker rights.