By Joe Maniscalco

Working class New Yorkers incensed over the grisly murder of 37-year-old Veterans Affairs ICU nurse and trade unionist Alex Pretti on the streets of Minneapolis this past weekend are vowing to give Senate Democratic Caucus boss Chuck Schumer and other feckless Dems in Congress “hell” this week for their ongoing failure to confront out-of-control ICE agents.

Editor’s Note: An emergency protest was announced for Saturday, Jan. 24 at Union Square starting at 4 p.m. just prior to publication of this story after federal agents shot and killed another person in Minneapolis believed to be a US citizen.

By Steve Wishnia

With the damp chill of a looming blizzard blowing in from the south, hundreds of New Yorkers flowed up the subway stairs at Union Square on January 23 like a fountain of humans wearing purple SEIU gear or bearing red “NO ICE” signs.

By Joe Maniscalco

No one really knows what impact Friday’s “Day of Truth and Freedom” in Minnesota will have on the state and the rest of the nation when workers there put down their tools, students stay home from school, and everybody stops shopping.

By Joe Maniscalco

The ongoing nurses strike may be the largest in New York City history, but there’s nothing unprecedented about the way the hospital bosses at Mount Sinai, New York-Presbyterian, and Montefiore are responding to their unionized workforce’s essential demands.

War Stories By Phil Cohen

One of the labor movement’s most essential obligations is enforcing health and safety regulations. Factories, warehouses and other industrial facilities are inherently dangerous environments, compounded by management deliberately ignoring serious hazards to avoid repair costs. Ironically this is one of the least important issues for many workers who trust in their luck, focusing instead on wages, benefits and plant rules.

By Bob Hennelly

Here in New York City, thousands of nurses with the New York State Nurses Association remain on strike at New York Presbyterian, Mount Sinai, and Mount Sinai Morningside and West to maintain their healthcare benefits, safe staffing for patient care as well as secure improved protections against a spike in workplace violence.

By Steve Wishnia

With the impending expiration of a stipulation that the New York City Housing Authority won’t begin demolishing two Chelsea public-housing developments, another tenant challenge to the plan is wending its way through the courts.

By Steve Wishnia

The hundreds of striking nurses picketing outside NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital January 12 were loud. Their chants, cheers, and shouts resounded under the three-level bridgeway connecting the hospital’s buildings. But they weren’t talking about money.

By Joe Maniscalco

Sunday’s massive march south on 5th Avenue in response to the ICE execution of 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis took protesters right past Trump Tower and provided many with the opportunity to express their anger and disgust towards the current administration in patented NYC style.

By Joe Maniscalco

New York State Governor Kathy Hochul continues to block resumption of a sweeping wage theft probe into the home care industry this week despite a new ruling in favor of home care workers demanding action.

By Steve Wishnia

Compelled by a snuff-video clip that went viral on social media on the afternoon of January 7, several hundred people converged on Foley Square that evening for an emergency rally to protest the killing depicted in said video: An Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent shooting 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis that morning.

“I’m outraged. I didn’t know what to do. I came after work,”said John Grauwiler, a teacher from Astoria.

By Joe Maniscalco

Tristan Castillo’s job as an Emergency Room nurse is unquestionably more stressful than whatever the heads of Mount Sinai, NewYork-Presbyterian, and Montefiore private hospital chains do all day long. Unlike those lavishly-paid executives, however, Castillo goes to bed at night worrying about making ends meet and if being short-staffed meant the welfare of a patient was put at risk during her last shift. 

Work-Bites

After months of destroying civilian boats off the coast of Venezuela, killing scores of civilians which the Trump administration claimed were involved in the illicit drug trade, the US military staged a violent incursion into that country and abducted President Nicholas Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores.

By Joe Maniscalco

“Beginning today we will govern expansively and audaciously,” New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani pledged during his inauguration speech on Jan. 1.

So, why is he continuing to run away from the New York State Stock Transfer Tax and letting Lt. Governor Antonio Delgado show what audacity really looks like?

By Steve Wishnia

New York City Councilmembers are mulling over how to override former mayor Eric Adams’ vetoes of 19 bills on his last day in office December 31. They included legislation to prohibit app-cab companies from firing drivers without good cause; to set a minimum wage for security guards; and to increase the number of licenses given to street vendors.

By Bill Barry

Editor’s Note: This column is reposed here with permission of the author.

At a high point of membership in 1957, 37% of the U.S. workforce was in a union. More importantly, for non-union workers, about 40% of them enjoyed union conditions thanks to what analysts call “the spillover effect.” As unions raised workplace standards, employers had to keep up. While there were cultural conflicts about breadwinners and breadmakers, many households had one-income families with  good wages, fully paid health insurance, defined benefit pensions, and a secure future.  

By Joe Maniscalco

It looks like the New York City Municipal Labor Committee [MLC] is starting to leak like a sieve and that’s a great thing for everybody who’s spent the last four years demanding true transparency and real participatory democracy out of the group.

By Bob Hennelly

In less than a week Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani becomes Mayor Mamdani as the Trump administration doubles down on its lethal mass deportation strategy using masked federal agents to tear apart  families and communities all in pursuit of a whiter nation. 

By Bob Hennelly

As we broadcast the latest episode of “We Decide: America at the Crossroads with Jenna Flanagan” Aljazeera is reporting that the Gaza Health Ministry has only about half of the medicine it needs to take care of the beleaguered population still suffering from lack of the basics including shelter. The BBC also reports that United Nations-supported experts are warning that while Gaza's food supplies are improving, conditions remain "highly fragile."

By Steve Wishnia

In a flurry of votes on the last day of its session, the City Council on Dec. 18 passed long-sought legislation setting minimum wages and benefits for security guards and prohibiting app-cab companies and delivery apps from firing workers without good cause. However, absent from the more than 40 measures approved were bills that would have guaranteed retired city workers traditional Medicare and outlawed unpaid 24-hour shifts for home health attendants.