By Steve Wishnia

This Nov. 8, voters in Illinois will consider amending the state’s constitution to protect the union shop, while Tennessee will consider adding the state’s law banning the union shop to its constitution.

Bob Hennelly and Joe Maniscalco

Despite increasing opposition — a lot of it coming from his sisters and brothers in organized labor, UFT President Michael Mulgrew continues to push hard for a shift to a Medicare Advantage Plan for New York City municipal retirees. And on this week’s edition of the Stuck Nation Radio Labor Hour, the UFT leader suggests changing the administrative code and ushering in MAP will give New York City the ability to tame the for-profit private health insurance industry.

By Joe Maniscalco

Commentary

So, some of the most powerful people in town are warning the rest of us that the most pressing — the most urgent — the most vital issue — facing the City of New York right now is the need to immediately privatize healthcare for municipal retirees — or else. I dunno about you, but this kind of thing reminds me of that time working people were told we had to bail out the big banks.

By Bob Hennelly

Faced with the failure of the City Council to change the administrative code to permit the shifting of city civil service retirees to a privatized for-profit Medicare Advantage plan, the city is moving for the “immediate implementation of a Medicare Advantage plan with the elimination of all other plans that otherwise would have been offered to retirees.”

By Steve Wishnia

A panel of five state appeals-court judges appeared skeptical of the city administration’s contention that it can legally change retired employees’ health coverage from traditional Medicare to a private Medicare Advantage plan.

By Helen Klein

The skeletons were fake, but the scare was real as municipal workers, past and present, gathered near City Hall on Thursday, Oct. 27, to protest the city’s efforts to substitute a Medicare Advantage plan for the health insurance retirees have counted on for years.

By Joe Maniscalco

One of the unions New York City municipal retirees charge wields too much power inside the Municipal Labor Committee [MLC] and is helping to bulldoze workers into an inferior Medicare Advantage health insurance plan is being called “autocratic” and “anti-democratic” by some of its own members.

By BOB HENNELLY/Stuck Nation Labor Radio Hour

“I’m Running not to reform the existing bureaucracy of the UAW, but to abolish it and put power in the hands of all the workers in the UAW that pay dues,” 34-year-old Will Lehmann says.

By Bob Hennelly

On October 20, 2022, my youngest sister, Rachel Hennelly, 62, died in hospice care at Holy Name Medical Center in Teaneck, New Jersey. My other sister, Jennifer, was with her. She had been triumphantly battling cancer for two years, but the COVID she contracted at a rehabilitation facility after being transferred from a hospital ended her brave battle.

By BOB HENNELLY

Aiming to reset the debate over the future of the healthcare provided retired New York City civil servants, the president of the largest municipal union insists he wants the City Council to change the city’s administrative code — not to force retirees into a controversial Medicare Advantage Plan as critics claim — but to preserve all city unions’ collective bargaining rights.

By Steve Wishnia

With New York State beginning to license its first legal adult-use marijuana farms and stores, the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union [RWDSU] is preparing to organize workers in the industry — even though most of the businesses that will employ them haven’t opened yet.

By BOB HENNELLY

Stuck Nation: The Radio Labor Hour Oct. 17, 2022

Part I. National update on how the nation's dozen rail unions are voting on the tentative contract deal brokered by President Biden with the rail carriers and the unions' leadership.

By Joe Maniscalco

That’s for daddy’s work!

IBEW Local 3 apprentice Natalie Rivera returned home after her first day on the job as a union electrician still in her hardhat and hi-viz vest but the image just did not compute for her tiny two-year-old daughter.

By Joe Maniscalco

The City of New York’s ongoing drive to force present and future municipal retirees into a for-profit Medicare Advantage healthcare system is exposing some of the most influential union leaders in town to charges of being “scabs” and betraying workers — but the head of the organization formed to help block the looming switch says there is a way out of the mess.

BY BOB HENNELLY

Last month’s brutal on-duty murder of FDNY EMS Lieutenant Alison Russo-Elling, who was posthumously promoted to Captain, is no longer front page news in a city that’s struggling to recover its pre-pandemic equilibrium.

By Bob Hennelly

A split within the Municipal Labor Committee over the future of the healthcare coverage for New York City’s 250,000 municipal retirees is playing out behind the scenes at the City Council over a controversial MLC proposal to change the city’s Administrative Code 12-126 that requires the City Council’s approval.

By Steve Wishnia

A proposed New York City law to abolish 24-hour shifts for home health-care workers has near-universal support — but only in principle. Opponents wanna know how to pay for it.

By Joe Maniscalco

Threats to personal safety and underfunding are making it tough for cities all across the United States to attract new bus operators — but those same factors are hitting Canadian transit workers just as hard.

By Bob Hennelly

A veteran FDNY EMS Lieutenant was stabbed multiple times while she went to grab a late lunch on Thursday afternoon less than a block from her EMS Station in Queens. FDNY EMS Lt. Alison Russo-Elling, 61, was transported in critical condition to Mt. Sinai Hospital where she died from her injuries, according to a statement released by the FDNY.

By Bob Hennelly

In this week’s episode of Stuck Nation Radio, New York City Firefighter Regina Wilson, former president of the Vulcan Society, an affinity group composed of FDNY’s Black employees, discusses the status of race and gender equity within the fire department - plus the end of the vax mandate for municipal workers, and the ongoing battle for single payer healthcare.