By Bob Hennelly

The Stuck Nation Radio Labor Hour for the week of 12/26

Part I: What’s the lost opportunity cost of a $1.7 Trillion Omnibus federal spending bill that spends $858 billion on the military? Shailly Gupta Barnes, policy director of the Kairos Center and Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis, director of the Kairos Center, as well as co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign, reflect on the moral failure of the Congress in not renewing the expanded child tax credit but giving the Pentagon billions more than the President Biden asked for.  

By Joe Maniscalco

“Medicare Advantage is a complete and total sellout,” 78-year-old retired Highway Transportation Specialist Fred Newton told Work-Bites earlier this week.

By Bob Hennelly with Joe Maniscalco

While other major cities in America including Boston are moving to confront an alarming shortage of municipal workers, New York City Comptroller Brad Lander this week warns the Stuck Nation Radio Labor Hour “rather than taking an aggressive approach to fill vacancies — we’ve really done the opposite as part of an effort to balance gaps in the city budgets. We’re just leaving positions vacant regardless of whether they are really critical or not.”

Dr. Donald E. Moore is an attending physician at NY Methodist Hospital, as well as a teacher at Weill Cornell Medical College, NYU and Hunter College. He is also a board member of the New York Metro chapter of Physicians for a National Health Program.

By Joe Maniscalco

New York City Mayor Eric Adams and the heads of the Municipal Labor Committee [MLC] can expect to catch a lot more hell from municipal retirees refusing to be pushed into a for-profit, privatized, Medicare Advantage plan.

By Bob Hennelly with Joe Maniscalco

We’ve already reported extensively on the curious case of Postmaster Louis Dejoy and why he’s still has the job after, you know, trying to systematically dismantle the entire United States Postal Service. You can check out some of that earlier reporting here.

On the latest episode of the Stuck Nation Radio Labor Hour, NY Metro Postal Union President Jonathan Smith [APWU] discusses what he says is a growing disconnect between national union leaders and local unions regarding Louie DeJoy.

By Bob Hennelly

The last-minute decision by Congressional leaders, including Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, to take the $3.7 billion in funding for the 9/11 WTC Health Program out of the $1.7 trillion Omnibus spending bill is being blasted as a betrayal by 9/11 WTC civilian survivors and the unions that represent essential workers that continue to lose members to WTC diseases.

By Bob Hennelly with Joe Maniscalco

Last week, an arbitrator named Martin Sheinman delivered a 60-page opinion in favor of the Adams’ administration’s campaign to push municipal retirees into a privatized, for-profit Medicare Advantage healthcare plan.

By Joe Maniscalco

Collusion.

That’s what the campaign by New York City Mayor Eric Adams and the heads of the Municipal Labor Committee [MLC] to push municipal retirees into a privatized for-profit Medicare Advantage healthcare program looks like to the many thousands who’ve spent more than a year trying to stop the plan.

Special to Work-Bites.com

Somehow, you just know when your temp job involves toxic waste things are not gonna go well. In this episode of “This Is Working” artist Jenner Bateman Grace interviews a worker who’s on-the-job experiences are both horrifying and hilarious…happy holidays! [WATCH IT NOW]

By Bob Hennelly

Courtesy of InsiderNJ

While the issue of Congress imposing an unpopular rail contract on the nation’s 115,000 workers that lacked paid sick time to precent a strike may have faded from the headlines, a series of high energy union rallies across the country on Dec. 13 are adding pressure on President Biden to issue an executive order mandating paid sick days for rail workers.

By Bob Hennelly with Joe Maniscalco

Take a hard look around at some of the most incendiary labor struggles taking place in the nation right now — rail workers fighting the bosses over sick days; the demise of the Expanded Child Tax Credit; public sector workers watching their hard-fought contract gains vanish before their eyes — look closer and you’ll find the prohibitively high cost of healthcare is never far from the mix.

By Bob Hennelly

On Nov. 29, New York City Mayor Eric Adams declared at a press conference that his “compassion” driven response to the city’s homeless crisis would be to enhance the state’s existing authority to involuntary commit the mentally ill in their ranks to ensure people “in desperate need” were no longer allowed “to slip through the cracks.”

By Joe Maniscalco

Jennifer Bateman Grace has thought a lot about working — the nature of work, what it means to work, and what our work means to us. Those deep meditations have now resulted in an ongoing series of whimsical YouTube video shorts about working in America today — and they’re every bit as insightful as they are fun to watch.

By Bob Hennelly

Courtesy of InsiderNJ

It’s been a week since President Biden and a Democratic Congress took the draconian step of imposing a labor pact that most of the nation’s 125,000 rail workers voted down because it lacked more than one sick day per year. The last time this happened was in 1992 when President George W. Bush did it.

By Joe Maniscalco

The New York City Council — celebrated for being the most progressive in NYC history — is reportedly still searching for “clarity” on the campaign to push municipal retirees into a privatized for-profit Medicare Advantage health plan. Retired Delaware State Senator Karen Peterson has some.

“Your medical care can really go off the rails,” Peterson recently told Work-Bites.

By Bob Hennelly

Even as the nation finds itself in a tridemic, with COVID, the flu and pediatric respiratory viruses all surging, the nation is facing a critical shortfall of hundreds of thousands of nurses. In Part 1, I talk with New York State Nurses AssociationPresident Nancy Hagans, RN.

By Bob Hennelly

In the first direct vote ever by the rank-and-file of the United Auto Workers, members voted by a nearly two-to-one margin for someone other than Ray Curry, the incumbent president. But thanks to the crowded field no one candidate emerged with the 50 percent threshold necessary to avoid a run-off early next year.

By Joe Maniscalco

Sometimes, jobs can get so bad they kill. Ivan Frias, went to work last Monday November 28, and never came home again after plunging off the 15th Floor of a 23-story building located at West 72nd Street and West End Avenue in Manhattan.

By Bob Hennelly

Courtesy of InsiderNJ

Tuesday of next week will be the last public hearing being held by New Jersey’s Coronavirus Disease Pandemic Task Force on Racial and Health Disparities where people can offer their first-hand account of their COVID tribulation that at last count killed over 35,110 New Jersey residents and 1.1 million Americans nationally.