By Steve Wishnia

More than 2,500 workers at a Brooklyn-based home health-care agency, along with another 880 at a medical lab in Nassau County, have added themselves to the ranks of 1199SEIU.

By Joe Maniscalco

This week, New York City municipal retirees donned chilling death shrouds and held a mass “die-in” in front of Aetna’s Manhattan offices at One Soho Square to dramatize their opposition to Mayor Eric Adams’ ongoing Medicare Advantage push—and the need to finally pass the New York Health Act.

By Joe Maniscalco

New York City Mayor Eric Adams has been hit with a 57-page, 5-count federal indictment, been called unfit to serve, and urged to resign—but he’s still determined to push 250,000 municipal retirees into a profit-driven health insurance plan experts and the courts say diminishes existing Medicare benefits.

By Bob Hennelly

Courtesy of InsiderNJ

This past week, our region and the great world beyond woke up to reports of the indictment of Mayor Eric Adams on what turned out to be corruption charges. This unprecedented development comes amidst the climax of the most consequential presidential election since 1864 when our nation was caught up in the Civil War.

By Joe Maniscalco

“UFT, DC37 have to stop f——-g with our healthcare…stop selling out our retirees…stop f——-g over actives.”

A couple of weeks ago, a group New York City municipal retirees fighting the City of New York’s ongoing campaign to strip them of their existing Medicare benefits and push them into a profit-driven “Medicare Dis-Advantage” plan took to the streets of Manhattan to denounce the scheme and to advocate passage of the New York Health Act.

By Bob Hennelly

Another weekend, another Adams administration bombshell served up late on Saturday night with an NYPD tweet from interim police commissioner Thomas Donlon that “federal authorities executed search warrants” at his residences and that they “took materials that came into my possession approximately 20 years ago and are unrelated to my work with the New York City Police Department.”

By Joe Maniscalco

After helping to spearhead the ongoing campaign to push 250,000 New York City municipal retirees into a profit-driven Medicare Advantage plan, UFT President Michael Mulgrew now says the union is “firmly against a Medicare Advantage plan for our retirees.”

By Steve Wishnia

“We will not stand for racism, bias, and discrimination,” Brooklyn Assemblymember Stefanie Zinerman told about 100 health-care workers on the sidewalk outside Interfaith Medical Center September 18. “We love pets. We do not eat pets!”

By Joe Maniscalco

UFT President Michael Mulgrew may have officially backed out on the City of New York’s ongoing campaign to push 250,000 municipal retirees into a profit-driven “Medicare Dis-Advantage” health insurance they do not want—he still insists it doesn’t pose the threat opponents say it does.

By Bob Hennelly

Chants of “What do we want? A fair contract! When do we want it? Now!” boomed throughout the concrete canyons around 230 Park Ave. in mid-town  this week as  250 members of Law360’s unionized staff  hit the bricks in an unfair labor practice strike against their highly profitable employer.

By Bob Hennelly

Courtesy of InsiderNJ

This Labor Day workers who hoped the state’s court system would end Trenton’s exemption for Atlantic City’s casinos from the state’s 2006 Smoke-Free Air Act that entitles workers to work in a smoke free environment were dealt a real disappointment by a judge who sided with the casino industry to keep the oppressively toxic exemption in place.

By Steve Wishnia

Some 500 Uber and Lyft drivers rallied near City Hall September 4, announcing that they will go on strike October 23 if the app-cab companies don’t stop locking out drivers to avoid having to pay them minimum wage.

By Joe Maniscalco

Congress Member Yvette D. Clarke [NY-9th District] this week became the latest high-powered figure to denounce—as modern day slavery—the round-the-clock shifts older immigrant women of color are still being forced to work in New York City’s home care industry.

By Steve Wishnia

A strike at two Buffalo-area nursing homes has been averted after the main owner agreed Aug. 26 to sign a contract he’d previously reneged on

By Steve Wishnia

Workers in two Buffalo-area nursing homes have scheduled a one-day strike for August 28, after management refused to sign a contract it had agreed to in early July.

By Bob Hennelly

Gov. Phil Murphy's appointment of George Helmy, his former chief of staff who left his job to work for RWJ Barnabas Health in the midst of a bitter nurses strike over staffing, is a graphic example of the insular and self-dealing nature of our state’s politics.

By Joe Maniscalco

Advocates for New York City home care attendants forced to work punishing 24-hour shifts widely condemned as “modern day slavery” or at the very least “unfair”—say they have emails suggesting an alliance between one of the most influential Asian American social services organization in the nation and the New York State Department of Labor [NYSDOL] to kill a major probe exposing wholesale wage theft in the industry—and they want Attorney General Letitia James to investigate.

By Steve Wishnia

Calling the deal Mayor Eric Adams’ administration reached with Uber and Lyft to voluntarily reduce locking drivers out of their apps a toothless sham, the New York Taxi Workers Alliance plans further protests, leading up to a possible one-day strike soon.

By Joe Maniscalco

The ongoing destruction of what New Yorkers used to count on as “good city jobs” is a certain kind of egregious and boneheaded attack on working class families across the five boroughs—one that’s exemplified by the ongoing campaign to push municipal retirees into a profit-driven “Medicare Dis-Advantage” health insurance program. The privatization of public housing, however, is another.

By Joe Maniscalco

“Protocols” and “Processes.”

Having already reported on the “protocol” within the New York City Council that gives one person—the Speaker—sole power to determine what the rest of the 50 other members get to vote on, we couldn’t help but also take note recently of another colossally-undemocratic and grossly authoritarian “process” governing the lives of everyday working class people in this town.