By Steve Wishnia

With the Teamsters the only large U.S. union that has not endorsed Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris, many members are seething at General President Sean O’Brien for speaking at the Republican national convention in July.

Editor’s Note: This is Part I 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. The story picks up a year after those events...

By Phil Cohen

To live outside the law you must be honest – Bob Dylan

In March, 1970 I returned to New York City flat broke after a year of bumming around the country, confident in my ability to easily find work and slide back into my old lifestyle. Instead, I found myself homeless and without options.

By Bob Hennelly

WBAI, Pacifica Radio in New York City, presents a radio screening of Bridget Gormley's award-winning film, "Dust: The Lingering Legacy of 9/11” on September 8, from 1 to 3 p.m.  The program will also be rebroadcast on September 11, from 9 to 11 a.m.

By Joe Maniscalco

Imagine how much better the challenge of organizing the workplace would be if there was a strong sense of collective action and common cause already instilled in the workforce.

By Joe Maniscalco

Monday night saw national union leaders at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago cheer on the Harris/Walz ticket as working class heroes—but sidestep the U.S.-made bombs that continue to blow apart working class families by the tens of thousands in the Gaza Strip.

By Phil Cohen

You can’t live by the golden rule in a crowd that don’t play fair – Nathan C. Heard

Right-to-Work is the most corrupt and hypocritical law in the industrialized world, allowing states to make union membership voluntary but requiring unions to provide nonmembers with equal representation. Twenty-eight states have currently enacted the toxic legislation, which is enforced on their behalf by the National Labor Relations Board.

By Steve Wishnia

If Project 2025—the blueprint for a second Donald Trump administration drawn up by the Heritage Foundation think tank—gets the green light, people signing up for Medicare would be automatically put into a profit-driven “Medicare Advantage” health insurance plan unless they made a special effort to sign up for regular, non-privatized Medicare coverage.

By Joe Maniscalco

Roughly the same number of American voters who helped Joe Biden best Donald Trump in 2020 decided not to vote at all in that same election. That’s a lot of people—about 81 million, in fact—some of whom could, nevertheless, now be moved to help prevent King Donald I from returning to the throne in November. But that’s only if the Democratic National Committee actually gave them reason enough to get out and vote this time out. 

Editor’s Note: This is Part 2 of a special two-part Work-Bites report on the increasing dangers across the nation’s freight rail system and the growing calls for public ownership of those lines.

By Steve Wishnia

The “Putting America Back on Track: The Case for a 21st Century Public Rail System” report released earlier this month lays out several arguments for public ownership of freight railroads.

Courtesy of InsiderNJ

By Bob Hennelly

I started writing this at Milwaukee’s Mitchell Airport waiting to catch a long delayed flight back to Newark having spent the full week covering the Republican National Convention. I am stationed on the floor near an electrical outlet to recharge my phone.

Editor’s Note: This is Part 1 of a special two-part Work-Bites report on the increasing dangers across the nation’s freight rail system and the growing calls for public ownership of those lines.

By Steve Wishnia

Corporate ownership has messed up freight rail in the U.S. and Canada so badly that public ownership is the only way to save it, argues a study released this summer

By Phil Cohen

On the evening of January 4, I met with the committee and proposed a more dramatic return to Sam’s Club that would garner headlines rather than brief mentions by the press. Playing it safe doesn’t generate three-minute spots on the evening news.

By Phil Cohen

I distributed a leaflet scheduling a union meeting for November 11, at 5:30pm.  Beneath the headline it read:

“Despite Starlite’s games, lies, and efforts to confuse workers, the union remains!  Starlite is making the same mistake as every sleazy union busting company. They are underestimating their workers. They underestimate our common sense. They underestimate our courage. They underestimate our determination.”

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 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.

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 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.