By Joe Maniscalco

Home care workers in New York City have generated a ton street heat this summer—but none of it has so far succeeded in moving New York City Council Speaker Julie Menin to fulfill the pledge she made months ago to allow a democratic vote on Intro. 303—the No More 24 bill. 

By Joe Maniscalco

New York City municipal retirees are getting back the co-pays they were charged in 2022 to see their doctors. 

According the New York City Organization of Public Service Retirees [NYCOPSR], the City and Emblem health have agreed to a $53 million settlement—closing out an outstanding class action lawsuit NYCOPSR and a number of other plaintiffs brought on behalf of more than 250,000 elderly and disabled retired City workers enrolled in EmblemHealth’s GHI Senior Care Plan. 

By Bob Hennelly

This week, scores of activists turned out on the steps of City Hall to support No More 24 hunger strikers pressing for a municipal ban on the practice of paying live-in caregivers just 13 hours pay.

By Harry Weiner

The New York City Organization of Public Service Retirees [NYCOPSR] has responded to my Work-Bites July 20 open letter and a similar letter in The Chief. (“Bylaws of Gravity, July 24).‍ ‍

I invited NYCOPSR to issue a reply in the “Debunked” section of their website, which they did.

By Joe Maniscalco

The New York City Housing Authority is tripping all over itself in a mad dash to demolish the Fulton and Elliott-Chelsea [FEC] houses on Manhattan’s West Side as quickly as possible—and the last thing they want is for anybody questioning what they’re doing.

By Steve Wishnia

Twelve black mesh folding chairs were arranged in two rows, like a jury box, by the Broadway entrance to City Hall July 28—places to sit for home health aides as they began another hunger strike to demand that the City Council pass legislation to ban 24-hour shifts.

By Joe Maniscalco

Just like New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, FDNY EMS Officers Union Local 3621 Vice-President Anthony Almojera identifies as a democratic socialist, and has since the 90s, for about as long as the mayor has been alive. 

But does that mean he believes City EMTs and paramedics will finally achieve the pay parity with cops and firefighters that mayors going all the way back to Edward I. Koch and his administration have promised?

By Bob Hennelly

The ongoing war in Iran and Lebanon that has killed thousands of civilians, struck closer to home this week with the combat death of 28 year-old Sgt. Angel Sarah Rampersad from Ozone Park, Queens who died when her base in Jordan came under an Iranian missile and drone attack.

By Steve Wishnia

Trying to protect federal workers’ rights under Donald Trump’s rule has been a one-battle-after-another scenario—and this month, it’s happening on three fronts.

By Joe Maniscalco

New York City home care workers fighting to end the 24-workday and reclaim stolen wages potentially totaling millions of dollars are calling on Governor Kathy Hochul to abandon any further efforts to appeal two recent court decisions moving them closer to ultimate victory. 

By Bob Hennelly

On this episode of WBAI’s What’s Going On? we check in with our FDNY EMS unions about a new bill introduced by New York City Council Member Joann Ariola, who chairs the Council's Fire and Emergency Management Committee, to provide a $20,000 retention and recruitment bonus for FDNY EMTS and $25,000 payment to FDNY EMS paramedics.

By Joe Maniscalco

Editor’s Note: Work-Bites recently had the opportunity to talk to Anthony Almojera, Vice-President of FDNY EMS Officers Union Local 3621, about the crisis facing New York City EMTs and paramedics. This is Part I of a two-part report.   

We are more than halfway through New York City Mayor Mamdani’s first year in office and the unaddressed crisis facing municipal EMTs and paramedics has grown so bad FDNY EMS Lieutenant Anthony Almojera reports that three members battling suicidal ideation have reached out to him for help in the last six weeks alone.

By Harry Weiner

The Municipal Labor Committee rules were difficult to find.

Marianne Pizzitola, president of the New York City Organization of Public Service Retirees, has called out their “undemocratic weighted voting power structure.” The UFT and DC37 can pass anything they want due to the two-thirds vote threshold. She observed that for many months the MLC was “blatantly ignoring the bylaws that requires a Uniformed union on the Executive Board.”

By Joe Maniscalco

There’s an early passage in Matewan Blood & Coal, Kevin Corley’s riveting novelization of the 1920 West Virginia coal miner’s strike and Battle of Blair Mountain where he writes about how “The moon cast long shadows over Matewan’s emptied streets: gunpowder lingered in the air, faint but unmistakable, like history refusing to leave quietly.”

Can you see it?

By Joe Maniscalco

New York City Council Speaker Julie Menin is calling on No More 24 combatants to hammer out their differences this week after home care workers and their advocates brought the fight to end the 24-hour workday to her doorstep in Manhattan.

By Joe Maniscalco

This summer, New York City beaches are once again operating with a shortage of qualified lifeguards—and the woman who spent nearly a half century guarding those beaches says there is something more “sinister” about the chronic shortfall than what’s routinely reported.

By Bob Hennelly

According to New York City officials, the 37-story midtown high-rise at risk of collapsing last week has been stabilized.

The former Pfizer office tower was in the midst of being converted into luxury apartments when workmen discovered steel structural supports on the 21st floor bent in half under the weight of the upper floors.

By Joe Maniscalco

Public housing advocates battling the privatization and demolition of the Fulton and Elliott-Chelsea [FEC] houses on Manhattan’s West Side are vowing to fight on despite a devastating blow from the courts this week. 

By Steve Wishnia

“They killed my cousin,” says the Brooklyn man, a Haitian immigrant in his 40s, explaining why he came to the United States four years ago. He asked to remain anonymous for obvious reasons.

By Joe Maniscalco

On this episode of Labor and Healthcare Confidential host Marianne Pizzitola talks with Work-Bites contributor Bob Hennelly about the creation of a special online portal to search soon-to-be-released 9/11 files related to the air toxicity emanating from Ground Zero following the terrorist attack on New York City in 2001.