By Bob Hennelly

Dozens of outraged New York City retired civil servants dialed into a teleconferenced public hearing convened by the city’s Office of Labor Relations on March 21, a legal perquisite to advance the controversial $200 million Aetna Medicare Advantage contract being promoted by the Adams administration and the Municipal Labor Committee [MLC].

By Steve Wishnia

A group of seven New York City municipal retirees protesting NYC’s plan to privatize their Medicare coverage slipped into the Conrad Hilton hotel today in Battery Park City where the Aetna insurance company was about to hold a session to prepare union staff on how to tell retirees about the company’s Medicare Advantage plan.

By Bob Hennelly

City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams said that City Council will not take up legislation proposed in a letter from the New York City Organization of Public Service Retirees to prevent the city’s retirees from being forced into a controversial Aetna Medicare Advantage plan that was approved earlier this month by the Municipal Labor Committee.

Editor’s Note: Harry Weiner is lifelong New Yorker who devoted more than 30 years of his life working for the New York City Housing Authority. As as an IBT Local 237 member, Harry feels his union betrayed him when it voted in favor of stripping NYC municipal retirees of their traditional Medicare benefits and pushing them into a profit-driven Medicare Advantage plan with Aetna.

This is his open letter to NYC Comptroller Brad Lander urging him to investigate the Municipal Labor Committee’s Medicare Advantage contract with Aetna.

By Joe Maniscalco

Retired New York City librarian Dana Simon was in an Aetna managed care plan back in 2007 when the night before she was scheduled to have her cochlear implant replaced — she received a call from the for-profit health insurance company warning her to cancel the surgery because they weren’t covering the operation.

By Joe Maniscalco

The Municipal Labor Committee’s [MLC] ability to legitimately represent public service unions across New York City is openly being called into question this week following Thursday’s weighted vote helping Mayor Eric Adams’ administration strip civil service workers of their traditional Medicare health benefits and push them into profit-driven Medicare Advantage program run by insurance giant Aetna.

By Joe Maniscalco

New York City’s Municipal Labor Committee [MLC] may be poised on Thursday to endorse an agreement with Aetna to privatize health care for hundreds of thousands of city employees — but it’s hard for Patrick Ferraiuolo, president of the Correction Captains’ Association, to comprehend why any union would be endorsing a profit-driven scheme like Medicare Advantage.

By Joe Maniscalco

To no one’s surprise, but to the absolute horror of many — Mayor Eric Adams’ administration and the heads of the Municipal Labor Committee [MLC] have gone ahead and thrown back the blast doors on the nukes pointed at traditional Medicare health insurance in New York City and started the countdown to launch.

By Bob Hennelly

It came as no surprise to Maurice Walls, a proud TWU Local 100 elevator mechanic, that a recent City Council analysis found the MTA and its union workforce did a much better job keeping its escalator and elevators operating than the contractors doing that work for sites where real estate developers are responsible for their operation.

By Steve Wishnia

Better pay and job security, especially for adjunct and lower-paid full-time staff, are among the main priorities for the Professional Staff Congress as it prepares to negotiate a new contract with the City University of New York.

By Bob Hennelly

A New York City Council bill that aims to bring transparency and accountability to NYC’s opaque hospital pricing via a consumer-friendly website is a step closer to consideration by the full body after a Feb. 23 hearing.

By Steve Wishnia 

The city has reached a tentative contract deal with District Council 37, the union representing more than a quarter of the municipal workforce, Mayor Eric Adams announced Feb. 17.

By Joe Maniscalco

The prospect of Bill de Blasio succeeding Marty Walsh as U.S. Labor Secretary immediately sparked incredulous feelings of horror and hilarity amongst working class New Yorkers who know the former mayor’s record best.

By Bob Hennelly

On this episode of the Stuck Nation Labor Radio Hour FDNY firefighter Regina Wilson — president of the Vulcan Society, the fraternal organization that represents Black firefighters, EMS, fire inspectors and civilian employees — discusses what’s been accomplished and what’s left to do after the City of New York’s 2014 settlement of a federal racial discrimination lawsuit.

By Bob Hennelly

Speculation in the New York Post that former Mayor Bill de Blasio and former Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney were both angling to succeed outgoing U.S. Secretary Marty Walsh was received with a mix of laughter and outright disdain during an informal survey of several New York City union leaders.

By Steve Wishnia

State Sen. Jessica Ramos (D-Queens) and Assemblymember Latoya Joyner (D-Bronx), the chairs of the labor committees in their houses of the Legislature, have introduced a bill to require employers to take measures to protect their workers against extreme heat and cold.

By Steve Wishnia

SALAMANCA, N.Y.— Sandra Lamacchia, a licensed practical nurse at a nursing home in Salamanca, about 60 miles south of Buffalo, says she wishes her employer would hire temporary laundry workers.

By Joe Maniscalco

New York City Mayor Eric Adams, when he announced his support of a plan to push municipal retirees into a privatized Medicare Advantage program last year, said “the city has had, and will continue to have, your best interests at heart.” 

Why then does convening a Blue Ribbon Panel where those interests would be directly represented by retirees themselves appear to be the last thing Hizzoner wants to talk about?

By Bob Hennelly

The deadline for the City Council to change its Administrative code that covers how the city provides healthcare insurance for its active-duty workforce and retirees came and went last month without the Council opting to act after a marathon Jan. 9 public hearing where scores of city retirees blasted the proposal.

By Joe Maniscalco

Their chief antagonists may happen to be some of the most influential union leaders in New York City — but municipal retirees refusing to be stripped of their traditional Medicare health insurance and pushed into a scandalous for-profit Medicare Advantage program are exercising as much labor power as any Amazon warehouse worker or Starbucks barista — and that’s how they ought to be celebrated this week.