By Bob Hennelly 

This week, a permanent memorial at the site of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire in New York City will be dedicated to the mass casualty event that killed 146 mostly young immigrant women garment workers on March 25, 1911 and sparked a national movement for workplace safety and worker rights.

By Joe Maniscalco

Was there ever a sweeter day in grade school than when somebody from the principal’s office walked into class holding a cardboard box and announced the Scholastic books everybody ordered were finally here? 

The roughly 80 Scholastic Union workers who’ve now spent a solid year trying to bargain for a living wage sure wish the “world’s largest publisher and distributor of children’s books” would get off the pot and extend some of that sweetness to them — right away!

By Bob Hennelly

The day before close to 85,000 Kaiser Permanente workers in several states hit the bricks in the largest healthcare strike in American history, the Washington Post reported the results of an explosive year-long investigation that revealed the country’s life expectancy was cratering in large measure thanks to premature deaths due to chronic illness.

By Robert Ovetz

The August Cemex ruling by the National Labor Relations Board has stirred up hope among the labor movement. After 40 years, the board finally responded to employer union-busting by requiring that the company recognize the union and begin bargaining.

By Joe Maniscalco

Yesterday, on the social media platform-formerly-known as Twitter, I noted a few interesting posts from the Work-Bites news feed referencing the UAW’s strike against the Big Three auto giants and a video clip of Starwood Capital Group CEO Barry Sternlicht, in particular, earning his money.

By Bob Hennelly

In part I of this week’s episode of the Stuck Nation Labor Radio Hour, we look at the 18th day of the United Auto Workers strike against the Big Three auto giants. The UAW has just reached a tentative contract deal with Mack Trucks avoiding a work stoppage at that iconic brand that’s now owned by Volvo. Talks were also scheduled to resume between SAG-AFTRA and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers. The 160,000-member actor’s union has been out since July 14. The Writers Guild reached a tentative contract deal last week, which ended their five-month strike. Rank and file union members will be voting on the 94-page contract this week.

By Ryn Gargulinski

Krissie was easily Boss Man’s most favorite employee – and by far my least. We worked side-by-side at a New York City ice cream shop in the early 1990s. She was blond, perky and went to NYU. I was gruff, brunette and went to the bar. I also had dirt under my nails and liked to wear ripped-up tank tops to work.

By Joe Maniscalco

New York City municipal retirees have spent nearly three years battling the most powerful public sector union heads in the city and now two separate mayoral administrations who together have shown themselves to be hellbent on tearing apart what a “good city job” used to mean in this town.

Like you, that all sounds absolutely crazy to City Council Member Charles Barron [D-42nd District], too.

By Bob Hennelly

Hundreds of thousands of federal workers and contract workers are on edge this week with just a few days to go before a possible federal government shutdown engineered by former President Donald Trump’s most ardent partisans in the House of Representatives. 

By Joe Maniscalco

New Yorkers across the five boroughs elect 51 City Council members to represent them — but only one of those people actually calls the shots. If you didn’t already know it, there’s a “protocol” in place inside the hallowed halls of the New York City Council where members do not cross the will of one person — Speaker Adrienne Adams.

By Steve Wishnia

Five current or retired home health-care aides are demanding the state Department of Labor reopen its investigation into their wage-theft complaints. In a class-action suit filed in late August, they allege the department’s decision to end its probe after four years was “arbitrary and capricious,” says Carmela Huang of the National Center for Law and Economic Justice, one of the lawyers representing them.

By Bob Hennelly

On this episode of the Stuck Nation Labor Radio Hour, Rev. Dr. William Barber joins Sara Nelson, president of CWA’s Association of Flight Attendants, in full support of United Steelworkers Nurses Local 4-200 on strike for safer staffing at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick, NJ since Aug. 4.

The hospital’s parent RWJBaranabas, which is self-insured, terminated the nurses’ health insurance earlier this month and has embarked on an expensive anti-union drive.

Is a major occupational health issue for essential workers just being ignored?

By Bob Hennelly

For only the second time since the FDNY absorbed the city’s EMS workforce in 1996, the average response time for a city ambulance to answer a life-threatening emergency exceeded ten minutes. At 10:43, that response time was 36 seconds longer than the previous year, according to the Mayor’s Management Report [MMR] looking at fiscal year 2023 — and a 1:21 longer than what was reported four years ago.

By Steve Wishnia

Two massage workers at a New York City spa are trying to get their jobs back after the National Labor Relations Board formally accused their employer of having fired them illegally last November.

“They have consistently treated us unfairly,” Tian Xiao May Qing, speaking through a translator, told reporters outside Liangste Wellness at 150 East 55th St. on Sept. 19. “When we complained, he fired us.”

By Joe Maniscalco

One night, just before Halloween, Rachel Rivera heard an alarming crack come from her 4-year-old daughter’s bedroom. She immediately raced in, scooped up the child in her arms and got out quick — right before the ceiling fell in on their Brooklyn apartment. Hurricane Sandy killed some 50 New Yorkers in 2012. Rivera and her daughter Marisol just missed being counted among the deceased.

By Bob Hennelly

Striking nurses at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick, New Jersey have voted overwhelmingly to continue their job action even after the self-insured nonprofit hospital chain cut off their healthcare.

By Bob Hennelly

On this action-packed episode of the Stucknation Labor Radio Hour, we’re talking about the UAW’s “Stand Up” strike; United Steelworkers Nurses Local 4-200’s strike for safer staffing at the Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Jersey and what at stake for the general public — and SAG-AFTRA video gamers eyeing their own strike vote.

But that’s not all…

By Joe Maniscalco

Something ugly and very troubling recently happened on the picket line outside the Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick, New Jersey that should tell us a lot about the ongoing strike at that particular institution.

But more importantly, it should also serve as a sobering warning about the class struggle working people throughout this country now face — and have, indeed, always faced when they collectively stand up to the bosses. 

By Bob Hennelly

The United Auto Workers strike against the nation’s big three automakers is a high stakes gambit that comes at a time when an increasing number of Americans support the union movement but the percentage of them actually in one is at an all time low.

By Timothy Sheard

Dear nursing sisters and brothers,

You have to be tender and tough if you are going to stay in the nursing profession for very long. Tender, because our patients are so vulnerable. So at risk of injury and death. So afraid.

And tough, because the work is so demanding, the bosses so disrespectful, and the pain of losing a patient so deep.