By Steve Wishnia

New York City has signed a contract with the Aetna insurance company to provide a private Medicare Advantage health-insurance plan to the about 250,000 retired municipal workers. The deal, announced Mar. 30 by Mayor Eric Adams and Office of Labor Relations Commissioner Renee Campion, means retirees will no longer be able to use traditional Medicare unless they pay for coverage themselves.

Work-Bites

On this episode of the “Iron Bill” Hohlfeld Show, Bill welcomes Vermont Labor Council, AFL-CIO President David Van Deusen for a lively discussion about the conflicting streams of thought within the labor movement today, and what might be some ways to resolve those conflicts.

By Steve Wishnia

Michigan has repealed its 2012 law banning the union shop and restored prevailing-wage requirements for public construction projects. But Texas is considering a bill that would void local labor laws that are stronger than the state’s, such as those in Austin, Dallas, and San Antonio that employers must give construction workers 10-minute water breaks every four hours.

By Bob Hennelly

This week on the Stuck Nation Labor Radio Hour we bring you our Women’s Labor History Edition:

By Bob Hennelly

This year’s commemoration in lower Manhattan of the Triangle Factory Fire on March 25, 1911, which claimed the lives of 146 mostly young immigrant female garment workers, drew a larger, younger, and more energized crowd than it has in previous years.

By Bob Hennelly

Courtesy of InsiderNJ

Three years after New Jersey was upended by the COVID virus, a coalition of New Jersey’s healthcare unions are warning that without a legally enforceable nurse to patient ratio, nurses will continue to leave the state’s acute care hospitals already facing a skilled nursing shortage.

By Joe Maniscalco

Cross-Union Retirees Organizing Committee [CROC] member Julie Schwartzberg was right on the money a few weeks ago in New York City when she called the ongoing campaign to strip municipal workers of their traditional Medicare health benefits and push them into a profit-driven Medicare Advantage program a “national issue.”

By Bob Hennelly

Dozens of outraged New York City retired civil servants dialed into a teleconferenced public hearing convened by the city’s Office of Labor Relations on March 21, a legal perquisite to advance the controversial $200 million Aetna Medicare Advantage contract being promoted by the Adams administration and the Municipal Labor Committee [MLC].

Work-Bites

On this episode of the Stuck Nation Labor Radio Hour, host Bob Hennelly welcomes NYCOSH Executive Director Charlene Obernauer and “Democracy Hits Home” host Dr. Harriet Fraad to talk about the state of working women and their families both here in New York State and across the country.

By Steve Wishnia

A group of seven New York City municipal retirees protesting NYC’s plan to privatize their Medicare coverage slipped into the Conrad Hilton hotel today in Battery Park City where the Aetna insurance company was about to hold a session to prepare union staff on how to tell retirees about the company’s Medicare Advantage plan.

On this episode of the “Iron Bill Hohlfeld Show” Bill talks with Clayton Sinyai, executive director of the Catholic Labor Network about “Cathonomics” and what that’s really all about…

By Bob Hennelly

City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams said that City Council will not take up legislation proposed in a letter from the New York City Organization of Public Service Retirees to prevent the city’s retirees from being forced into a controversial Aetna Medicare Advantage plan that was approved earlier this month by the Municipal Labor Committee.

Editor’s Note: Harry Weiner is lifelong New Yorker who devoted more than 30 years of his life working for the New York City Housing Authority. As as an IBT Local 237 member, Harry feels his union betrayed him when it voted in favor of stripping NYC municipal retirees of their traditional Medicare benefits and pushing them into a profit-driven Medicare Advantage plan with Aetna.

This is his open letter to NYC Comptroller Brad Lander urging him to investigate the Municipal Labor Committee’s Medicare Advantage contract with Aetna.

By Joe Maniscalco

Retired New York City librarian Dana Simon was in an Aetna managed care plan back in 2007 when the night before she was scheduled to have her cochlear implant replaced — she received a call from the for-profit health insurance company warning her to cancel the surgery because they weren’t covering the operation.

By Bob Hennelly

On this edition of the Stuck Nation Labor Radio Hour we mark week 2 of Women’s History Month we welcome Dalvanie Powell, president of the NYC United Probation Officers Association; Bev Neufeld, the co-founder of PowHer NY, a non-profit advocacy pressing for gender pay equity; and Celeste Kirkland, vice-chair of TWU Local 100’s Power Division and vice-president of the NYC chapter of the Coalition of Union Women.

Work-Bites

On this episode of the “Iron Bill” Hohlfeld Show, Bill talks with legendary labor activist Frank Emspak about making trouble — the kind of trouble that empowers working class people, overcomes oppressive bosses, and improves working conditions for everyone.

By Joe Maniscalco

The Municipal Labor Committee’s [MLC] ability to legitimately represent public service unions across New York City is openly being called into question this week following Thursday’s weighted vote helping Mayor Eric Adams’ administration strip civil service workers of their traditional Medicare health benefits and push them into profit-driven Medicare Advantage program run by insurance giant Aetna.

By Steve Wishnia

The Florida legislator who recently introduced a bill to ban the state Democratic Party — on the grounds that it supported slavery before 1865 — is now taking aim at its public-sector unions.

By Joe Maniscalco

New York City’s Municipal Labor Committee [MLC] may be poised on Thursday to endorse an agreement with Aetna to privatize health care for hundreds of thousands of city employees — but it’s hard for Patrick Ferraiuolo, president of the Correction Captains’ Association, to comprehend why any union would be endorsing a profit-driven scheme like Medicare Advantage.

By Bob Hennelly

This is the first Monday of Women’s History Month. Last Women’s History Month, a woman still had the reproductive rights that were enshrined in the landmark Roe. Vs Wade decision that affirmed a woman’s constitutional right to an abortion. On June 24, 2022 the US Supreme Court took that away.