By Bob Hennelly

Labor opposition to New York State Governor Kathy Hochul's selection of Judge Hector LaSalle to become New York State’s top jurist continued to intensify over the Christmas holiday. With no signs of either side backing down, the controversy was poised to devolve into a bruising battle exposing the Democratic State Senate caucus along its ideological fault lines once it reconvenes early next month.

By Joe Maniscalco

“Medicare Advantage is a complete and total sellout,” 78-year-old retired Highway Transportation Specialist Fred Newton told Work-Bites earlier this week.

By Bob Hennelly with Joe Maniscalco

While other major cities in America including Boston are moving to confront an alarming shortage of municipal workers, New York City Comptroller Brad Lander this week warns the Stuck Nation Radio Labor Hour “rather than taking an aggressive approach to fill vacancies — we’ve really done the opposite as part of an effort to balance gaps in the city budgets. We’re just leaving positions vacant regardless of whether they are really critical or not.”

By Joe Maniscalco

New York City Mayor Eric Adams and the heads of the Municipal Labor Committee [MLC] can expect to catch a lot more hell from municipal retirees refusing to be pushed into a for-profit, privatized, Medicare Advantage plan.

By Joe Maniscalco

Collusion.

That’s what the campaign by New York City Mayor Eric Adams and the heads of the Municipal Labor Committee [MLC] to push municipal retirees into a privatized for-profit Medicare Advantage healthcare program looks like to the many thousands who’ve spent more than a year trying to stop the plan.

By Bob Hennelly with Joe Maniscalco

Take a hard look around at some of the most incendiary labor struggles taking place in the nation right now — rail workers fighting the bosses over sick days; the demise of the Expanded Child Tax Credit; public sector workers watching their hard-fought contract gains vanish before their eyes — look closer and you’ll find the prohibitively high cost of healthcare is never far from the mix.

By Joe Maniscalco

The New York City Council — celebrated for being the most progressive in NYC history — is reportedly still searching for “clarity” on the campaign to push municipal retirees into a privatized for-profit Medicare Advantage health plan. Retired Delaware State Senator Karen Peterson has some.

“Your medical care can really go off the rails,” Peterson recently told Work-Bites.

By Joe Maniscalco

Sometimes, jobs can get so bad they kill. Ivan Frias, went to work last Monday November 28, and never came home again after plunging off the 15th Floor of a 23-story building located at West 72nd Street and West End Avenue in Manhattan.

By Bob Hennelly

Courtesy of InsiderNJ

Tuesday of next week will be the last public hearing being held by New Jersey’s Coronavirus Disease Pandemic Task Force on Racial and Health Disparities where people can offer their first-hand account of their COVID tribulation that at last count killed over 35,110 New Jersey residents and 1.1 million Americans nationally.

By Joe Maniscalco with Dana Jacks

From New York City adjunct professors striking for a living wage to US railroad workers fighting for the right to call in sick — working class people across the country are increasingly feeling the power of collective action.

By Steve Wishnia

A group of retired city workers is asking state courts to stop the $15 copayment for medical treatment the city and its health-insurance companies began charging in January.

By Bob Hennelly with Joe Maniscalco

Despite two consecutive losses in court and ample evidence that Medicare Advantage is a bad deal for seniors — the City of New York continues to push it’s municipal retirees into a privatized for-profit health insurance plan.

The Adams administration and the heads of the Municipal Labor Committee insist healthcare costs are bleeding the city dry.

By Joe Maniscalco

New York City Mayor Eric Adams and the heads of the Municipal Labor Committee have been unable to take away traditional Medicare from the municipal workers who’ve earned it because retirees keep beating them in court — and on the streets.

By Bob Hennelly

A state appeals court has upheld a lower-court ruling the Adams administration can’t switch retired workers from Medicare to a private Medicare Advantage plan and force those who want to keep their traditional Medicare to pay more has added more pressure on the City Council to weigh in on the controversy while increasing the leverage of the the retired civil servants who successfully sued the city to stop the move.

By Steve Wishnia

A state appeals court on Nov. 22 unanimously upheld a lower-court ruling that the city administration can’t legally switch retired workers from traditional Medicare to a private Medicare Advantage plan, and can’t force those who want to keep Medicare to pay more.

By Joe Maniscalco

Is there a more consequential issue facing the folks in city government today than the plan backed by the mayor and the heads of the Municipal Labor Committee to push New York City’s retirees into a for-profit private health insurance plan calling itself “Medicare Advantage?”

By Joe Maniscalco

Colleges and universities have for years employed an economic system that’s allowed them to get the most talented and dedicated academics this country has to offer on the cheap — but students at The New School School and Parsons School of Design in New York City are calling bullshit on the whole operation.

By Bob Hennelly

Courtesy of InsiderNJ

In response to an unprecedented spike in healthcare insurance premium hikes for essential workers, some of the Garden State’s largest unions, healthcare advocates and social justice nonprofits are forming the New Jersey Coalition for Affordable Hospitals (NJCAH) to press for more transparency on the runaway healthcare pricing. 

By Joe Maniscalco

Starbucks worker Joel Foote already had seven write-ups hanging over his head when Work-Bites talked to him outside the company’s Reserve Roastery in Chelsea this past Thursday. One more and he would be fired. “Fear is a tool of the boss,” the 24-year-old said. “The power lies within our labor — and once we understand that we don’t need to be afraid.”

By Joe Maniscalco

There are better cost-saving alternatives to rewriting New York City’s Administrative Code and pushing a quarter of a million municipal retirees into a for-profit health insurance plan that’ll only make corporate fat cats fatter while delaying and denying vital medical care to people who worked for the city all their lives.