By Steve Wishnia

“We have had four bargaining sessions and made no progress,” 32BJ SEIU president Manny Pastreich told a a sea of purple wool hats and yellow banners and signs that filled half of Sixth Ave. for several blocks south of West 50th Street on Dec. 20. “Time is running short for them to make a deal.”

By Bob Hennelly

Editor’s note: This story has been revised to reflect the latest developments in TWU Local 100 Retirees’ fight to obtain a Temporary Restraining Order and stop the privatization of their traditional Medicare benefits. 

In a legal reversal for TWU Local 100 retirees hoping to head off being forced into an Aetna Medicare Advantage Plan, a New York State Judge has rolled back a TRO he issued Dec. 18 which prohibited the MTA and the union from advancing their plan which the retirees lawyer says kicks in on Jan. 1. In an order issued Dec. 21 vacating the TRO, Judge Shahabuddeen A. Ally referenced filings he received from the legal team representing the union and the MTA in response to the TRO filed on Dec. 20.

By Bob Hennelly

New York City is a complicated place where several million people make life work for themselves and their families every day. It’s a place where on the same day a seven-story apartment building can collapse with no one injured, and a few hours later an 11 year-migrant boy can hang himself with his shoelaces.

It’s a mélange of the miraculous and the despairing.

By Steve Wishnia

New York City’s 20,000 commercial-building cleaners will vote Dec. 20 on whether to authorize a strike, 32BJ SEIU announced Dec. 13.

“This is a very challenging negotiation,” 32BJ vice president Denis Johnston says of the union’s contract talks with the owners of 1,300 commercial buildings. “There’s a different tone.”

By Steve Wishnia

Two massage workers at a midtown Manhattan spa who were fired after they complained to their boss about pay and scheduling have won their jobs back.

Under a settlement agreement overseen by the National Labor Relations Board, Xiaoqing Tian and Shulian Feng, who were fired from Liangtse Wellness in November 2022, have been reinstated and will get “almost all” of the pay they lost,

By Bob Hennelly

Courtesy of InsiderNJ

The parking below the Trenton State House that accommodates all of the legislature’s late model SUVs and cars was filled to capacity on Nov. 30 during a jam packed lame duck session day. Out in front of the Legislative Annex a couple of hundred labor, social justice and environmental activists protested Gov. Phil Murphy’s plan to let the state’s 2.5 percent Corporate Business Tax Surcharge lapse on entities that post more than a million dollars in annual profits.

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.