By Steve Wishnia

Some 1,800 workers at two branches of the University of Rochester Medical Center in New York State will go on strike for 17 hours on December 13, after little progress in more than three months of contract talks.

The main sticking point, 1199SEIU lead negotiator Tracey Harrison told Work-Bites, is that URMC management has so far refused to raise the starting wage at the lowest pay grade, now $15.45 an hour. Management is “not interested in paying a living wage,” he says.

By Bob Hennelly

Courtesy of InsiderNJ

Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital and the United Steelworkers Nurses Local 4-200 — on strike since Aug. 4 — have reached a tentative contract deal, the union and hospital confirm.

By Bob Hennelly

Just before the Thanksgiving holiday, New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy and his chief of staff Diane Gutierrez-Scaccetti held a zoom session with the leadership of the United Steelworkers Nurses Local 4-200 that’s been on strike for safer staffing at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital. It was the first such meeting  with the union that represents 1,700 nurses that have been out since Aug. 4.

By Bob Hennelly

While most all of the nation is at home enjoying the joys of their families at Thanksgiving, members of United Steelworkers Nurses Local 4-200 will be out on the picket line in front of the Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick, New Jersey on strike for safer staffing as they have been since Aug. 4.

These 1,700 dedicated healthcare professionals have been stripped of their healthcare coverage by RWJBarnabas, which is self-insured. The multi-billion dollar “non-profit” hospital chain paid its CEO $17 million in the second year of the COVID pandemic, and has shelled out well over $100 million to pay replacement nurses in their full court press to break the union, according to the union.

By Bob Hennelly

On this week’s edition of the Stuck Nation Labor Radio Hour, we zero in on two prolonged strikes in New Jersey, as well as New York City’s ongoing struggle to deliver basic services. The average response time for a city ambulance to answer a life-threatening emergency now exceeded ten minutes. It’s time to start collecting the Stock Transfer Tax  — is it also time to strike, too? 

By Joe Maniscalco

Advocates pushing for passage of the “No More 24” bill in the New York City Council put 200 or more people in the streets outside City Hall on Thursday, Nov. 16, loudly demanding Speaker Adrienne Adams stop blocking the measure or step down. They promise to be back and be even louder — next month.

Merry Christmas, Feliz Navidad, and Shèngdàn Kuàilè, indeed, Adrienne!

By Bob Hennelly 

New York City public sector unions are blasting Mayor Eric Adams’ mid-year budget cuts aimed at closing a $7 billion dollar budget gap Hizzoner says was created by a confluence of addressing the migrant crisis, the ending of federal COVID aid and the slowing of tax revenues.

By Bob Hennelly

Courtesy of InsiderNJ

As expected, this last election voter turnout was abysmal and I suspect that in New Jersey, where elected officials have been known to look to get their family members into office, the power structure likes to keep it that way.

By Bob Hennelly

New York City’s dual homelessness and migrant crisis could be poised to get much worse as the Adams administration presses ahead with mid-year austerity measures as federal COVID aid dries up and tax revenues lag.

By Joe Maniscalco

“If I hear the damn stabilization fund one more time, I'm going to scream,” New York City Organization of Public Service Retirees recently told Work-Bites.

Pizzitola was reacting to CWA Local 1180 President and Municipal Labor Committee trustee Gloria Middleton’s recent assertion that the Covid depleted New York City’s Health Stabilization Fund — thereby ostensibly leaving privatization and Medicare Advantage the only viable way for the City of New York to cover the health care costs of its municipal retirees.

By Steve Wishnia

Frustrated by management’s rejection of their proposal for annual pay increases after more than a year of contract talks, workers at Scholastic’s Magazines+ division held a one-day strike Nov. 1.

“We’re here about wages. There’s a hypocrisy involved,” production editor Alison Colby told Work-Bites as about 30 workers picketed outside the back entrance to Scholastic’s Soho offices, circling on the sidewalk between an inflatable Scabby the Rat and a banner of Clifford the Big Red Dog hanging from above the children’s publishing company’s bookstore.

By Joe Maniscalco

Hi, Mayor Adams. If you haven’t already seen it, we’d like to invite you to Thursday night’s encore performance of “Honorable But Broken - EMS in Crisis” at Cinema Village over on E. 22nd St. We saw it this past weekend as part of the Workers Unite! Film Festival and you’ve gotta see it, too. We know a guy there, and can probably get you in for nothing.

By Bob Hennelly 

Under the terms of the tentative contract between the Ford Motor Company and the United Auto Workers (UAW) members will see an 11 percent increase in their pay upon ratification, a significant down payment on what will be a 25 percent boost in pay over the four years term of the deal. More recent hires, who in the past were sacrificed by the union to fund the raises of more senior workers, will see their pay nearly double over the term of the deal.

By Joe Maniscalco

Season 12 of the Workers Unite! Film Festival opens in New York City on Friday and even though it’s been around for more than a decade, its organizers are still thinking fresh with a sharp eye on cultivating the next generation of labor-conscious activists.

By Joe Maniscalco

There’s a very old and somewhat esoteric proverb you might have heard that goes something like this: S—t rolls downhill. And in this case, New York City home health aides, predominantly elderly immigrant women of color performing indispensable jobs, are the ones standing at the bottom of that hill — and they’ve been there for a very long time now.

By Steve Wishnia

Editor’s Note: This story has been revised to include a statement from Speaker Adrienne Adams.

Protesting home health-care aides put a twist on the 19th-century labor slogan for an eight-hour day Oct. 18: “Eight hours for work, eight hours for rest, eight hours for what we will.” Many carried signs in 1880s-style imagery with a triptych of a woman at a loom, a person sleeping, and a couple reading a newspaper on top—and below that, a woman helping a gray-haired elder with a walker and the legend “24 Hours for Work, None for Rest, None for What We Will,” in Chinese, Spanish, and English.

By Bob Hennelly

On this week’s episode of the Stuck Nation Labor Radio Hour, we’re talking to striking nurses fighting for safe staffing and the coalition fighting NYC Mayor Eric Adams’ attempt to end the city’s legal obligation to shelter the homeless.

By Joe Maniscalco

New York City Mayor Eric Adams’ response last Thursday night in Brooklyn to municipal retirees challenging his administration’s plan to herd them into a privatized Medicare Advantage health insurance plan clocks in at roughly two-and-a-half-minutes.

But listen close, in that relatively short period of time, Hizzoner manages to declare “what we are doing” and what “we’re going to do” no less than four times when referring to his administration’s ongoing campaign to privatize municipal retiree health care.

By Joe Maniscalco

New York City Mayor Eric Adams continues to ignore the objections of municipal retirees who refuse to give up the traditional Medicare coverage they were promised at the start of their civil service careers in favor of a Medicare “Dis-Advantage” plan built on lots of insurance industry profits and AI algorithms.

By Joe Maniscalco

TWU Local 100 retiree Patricia Jewett put more than 30 years into the MTA New York City Transit. Now at 67, her knees are shot and bronchial asthma makes it hard to breathe.

But Jewett says she remains proud of being the first woman to ever work in the East New York Bus Depot’s Maintenance Division — and she doesn’t understand why she and her fellow retirees are now being stripped of their traditional Medicare coverage and pushed into a profit-driven Medicare Advantage plan.