By Bob Hennelly

The City Council will not advance a controversial bill being pushed hard by Mayor Adams and the Municipal Labor Committee to change the city’s Administrative Code 12-126 that covers how the city covers its 300,000 active-duty employees and 250,000 retirees.

By Bob Hennelly

Several New York City Council members at the Jan. 9 Civil Service and Labor Committee hearing on the future of healthcare for the city’s active and retired civil servants appeared to stump the expert panel sent by the Adams administration who repeatedly had to commit to following up later with their answers.  

By Bob Hennelly

The tentative agreements reached between the New York State Nurses Association, Mt. Sinai and Montefiore Hospitals include a 19.2 percent pay raise over three years as well as groundbreaking and enforceable patient nursing staffing ratio requirements. The 7,000 union nurses, on strike since Monday, headed back to work today as details on the deals, that still need to be ratified, continued to emerge.

By Joe Maniscalco

FDNY retiree Ken Dolan’s wife suffers from Parkinson’s and the 80-year-old knew he really should be at home looking after her, but here he was standing outside City Hall on Jan. 9 with hundreds of other senior citizens trying to convince members of the New York City Council not to touch their traditional Medicare health insurance plan.

By Bob Hennelly with Joe Maniscalco

Were you one of those New Yorkers who were banging on pots and pans or hanging out your window applauding overworked nurses and doctors at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic? Well, striking nurses at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx and Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan need you on the picket line today.

By Joe Maniscalco

You know your for-profit, privatized Medicare Advantage health insurance plan really sucks when right-wing Republicans and left-wing Democrats actually unite to defeat its imposition on municipal retirees.

By Steve Wishnia

More than 7,000 nurses went on strike at 6 a.m. Jan. 9 after failing to reach a contract agreement with Mount Sinai Hospital in East Harlem and Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx, two of the largest privately owned hospitals in New York City.

By Steve Wishnia

Three New York City private hospitals have reached tentative contract deals with nurses, but more than 10,000 nurses at five others are still scheduled to strike on Jan. 9.

By Joe Maniscalco

After nearly 40 years working for the City of New York retired municipal employee Roberta Gonzalez expected to be traveling the world right about now.

“I always wanted to go to Israel,” the 70-year-old Sheepshead Bay resident told Work-Bites this week.

By Bob Hennelly

No members of the City Council spoke in favor of a controversial bill introduced Jan. 4 that would alter the city’s Administrative Code that covers the provision of health insurance for its employees that’s being advanced by the Adams administration and the Municipal Labor Committee.

By Joe Maniscalco

New York City Retirees opposing ongoing efforts to push them into a disastrous privatized health insurance plan aren’t buying Speaker Adrienne Adams’ sudden rationale for attempting to scrap the law that’s protected municipal healthcare for decades.

By Bob Hennelly 

On the eve of the introduction of controversial legislation to alter the city’s Administrative Code that covers the provision of health insurance for active and retired civil servants, the City Council’s Democratic leadership issued a statement asserting that no matter how they act on the legislation, Mayor Adams and the Municipal Labor Committee will be “moving forward to implement Medicare Advantage.”

By Joe Maniscalco

There are a lot of things about the campaign to push New York City municipal retirees into a scandal-plagued, for-profit Medicare Advantage insurance plan that stinks to workers who’ve risked everything — from 9/11 to Covid-19 — to help keep their city running.

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.