By Joe Maniscalco

Forget what New York City Mayor Eric Adams told municipal retirees in the Bronx opposing the Medicare Advantage push earlier this week—a profit-driven Medicare Advantage plan is, indeed, part of his administration’s “comprehensive approach” to remaking retiree health care before he leaves office. 

By Harry Weiner

Dear Brad -

As a retiree from City Service (31 years with NYCHA)  and a member of the NYC Organization of Public Service Retirees, I feel that your announcement to seek the mayoralty brings hope to our three year struggle to preserve our health insurance benefits.

By Joe Maniscalco

New York City municipal retirees still looking for a champion inside the City Council to reintroduce a bill protecting their existing Medicare health insurance benefits from the onslaught of so-called Medicare Advantage and privatization are gonna have to keep on searching.

By Joe Maniscalco

Earlier this month, New York City physicians working under an expired contract since last summer showed up on Mayor Eric Adams’ Gracie Mansion doorstep to remind Hizzoner that there is a retention and recruitment crisis going on inside the municipal NYC Health + Hospitals system and that he really needs to get off the pot and sign a new pact with them before things get much worse.

By Joe Maniscalco

UFT President Michael Mulgrew’s recent decision to pull out of the campaign to push 250,000 New York City municipal retirees into a profit-driven Medicare Advantage plan represents a “golden opportunity” for Speaker Adrienne Adams to “reignite” the conversation about retiree healthcare, Council Member Shahana Hanif [D-39th District] told Work-Bites this past weekend.

By Bob Hennelly

Dozens of attending physicians with Doctors Council SEIU made the trip up to Gracie Mansion this week to deliver a petition signed by over 1,000 of their colleagues to Mayor Eric Adams, warning that a lapsed contract is undermining recruitment and retention of staff.

Editor’s Note: John Hsu is a former congressional candidate from New Jersey’s 6th District

By John Hsu

Since April 22, over 100 workers from Silgan Containers, makers of steel cans for food products such as soup and dog food, have been on strike at the company’s 135 National Road location in Edison, N.J. after failing to come to terms on a new contract. The workers are unionized with United Steel Workers (USW) local 6129.

By Joe Maniscalco

New York City municipal retirees and home care workers heroically fighting for what they’ve already earned know the deck has been heavily stacked against them—so, why aren’t some of their staunchest allies willing to do anything about the systemic conditions underpinning that institutionalized inequity?

By Joe Maniscalco

Forcing older immigrant women of color to work punishing 24-hour shifts as home care workers is not fair and should stop, the head the agency responsible for assigning many of those same jobs told Work-Bites this week.

By Joe Maniscalco

All eyes in NYC’s Medicare Advantage fight should be on Mayor Eric Adams today, after UFT President Michael Mulgrew’s announcement over the weekend that he’s reversing course and no longer supporting the plan to push 250,000 municipal retirees into a profit-driven Medicare Advantage health insurance program.

By Steve Wishnia

Workers at four rural nursing homes in Western New York voted to ratify a two-year contract, 1199SEIU announced June 21. The agreement, reached just before a strike deadline of June 13, covers about 300 workers at facilities in Allegany, Aurora Park, Orchard Park, and Westfield operated by the for-profit Absolut Care/RCA Servicer  chain.

By Bob Hennelly

Earlier this month, rank and file members of HPAE—New Jersey’s largest nurses’ union working at three different hospital systems—voted to authorize strikes if they didn’t get provisions in their contracts guaranteeing safer staffing ratios.

By Joe Maniscalco

Nope, contrary to what some of the most powerful union leaders in the country would have working people believe—organized labor does not have to abandon the Medicare benefits it fought so hard to achieve in favor of profit-mad Medicare Advantage health insurance plans [MAPs].

By Steve Wishnia

More than 300 workers at four for-profit nursing homes in western New York State will go on strike June 13 if they can’t reach a contract agreement. The main issues, according to workers and the 1199SEIU union, are chronic understaffing and unfair labor practices such as the owners imposing their contract offer on June 2.

By Bob Hennelly

Did the elites just not get who actually runs New York City?

In a surprise reversal, New York State Governor Kathy Hochul has put the brakes on the MTA’s congestion pricing plan just a few weeks before it was scheduled to start on June 30. The announcement was made via a video announcement.

By Bob Hennelly

In America, healthcare delivery to patients and hospital finance are strategically compartmentalized to limit transparency. This is done to keep the consumer in the dark about pricing before services are rendered—all so that providers and profit-driven insurers can make a killing.

By Bob Hennelly

Courtesy of InsiderNJ

It was more than a year ago that President Joe Biden declared the national emergency sparked by the Covid mass death event over—but here in New Jersey, and throughout the nation, our local Emergency Management Services find themselves in a deepening crisis as professionals leave this vital profession.

By Joe Maniscalco

New York City Mayor Eric Adams may believe the highest court in the state will still let him push 250,000 municipal retirees into a profit-driven Aetna Medicare Advantage health insurance plan if he asks the judges nicely enough, but City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams says it’s time for “closure.”

By Joe Maniscalco

The City of New York’s decision to keep trying to push 250,000 municipal retirees into a profit-driven Medicare Advantage health insurance plan following yet another crushing court defeat on Tuesday has convinced many in the fight that Mayor Eric Adams and his privatization allies must be crazy.

By Joe Maniscalco

Propaganda session? Some kind of weird one-way webinar where attendees agonizing over the privatization of their traditional Medicare benefits were first encouraged to go get a flag and recite the pledge before getting any answers?