By Joe Maniscalco

Sixty-two-year-old Queens resident Marlene Urquhart spent seven years working round-the-clock shifts for a home care agency located on Ralph Avenue in Brooklyn called 1st Help HomeCare.

The mother of four quit in March 2025 alleging 1st Help Home Care and its owner Rita Cohen owed her more than $260,000 in unpaid wages following the death of Urquhart’s primary patient that same year.

By Joe Maniscalco

What’s wrong with this picture?

Members of the largest and arguably most powerful public sector union in the City of New York can no longer afford to live in the city they serve—but the strongest opposition they face getting a contract they can live with this fall isn’t coming from the Office of Labor Relations [OLR].  

It’s coming from their own union leadership. 

By Jessica Peralta

Community Sentinel

IRVINE, CA — UCI MIND’s laboratory has 15 freezers and five refrigerators. They are packed — but not with food. 

About 1,200 brains are currently stored in those freezers and fridges.

Each sample represents a person who donated their brain to science with the hopes of helping future generations overcome neurological disorders like Alzheimer’s disease

By Steve Wishnia

Twenty-five years have passesd since the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center, but the maladies caused by the resulting poisonous dust continue to linger, and the survivors are aging.

By Joe Maniscalco

One-hundred-and-twenty-three summers have past since iconic workers’ rights activist Mary Harris “Mother” Jones led the March of the Mill Children from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to New York City and Long Island. 

By Steve Wishnia

Eight unions representing federal employees filed a lawsuit Aug. 24 challenging two rules recently imposed by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), arguing that they would effectively eliminate the protections civil-service laws give workers against being fired without just cause.

By Steve Wishnia

The National Labor Relations Board is planning to ask federal courts to hold Covenant House in contempt for refusing to bargain in good faith with 1199SEIU after a judge issued an injunction ordering it to do so in September 2025.

By Joe Maniscalco

Mayor Zohran Mamdani took office on Jan. 1 declaring a “new era” in New York City. But for FDNY EMS first-responders in crisis it seems a lot like the same old song and dance.

By Eilean Faltin

Accused fascist Abelardo de la Espriella was sworn in as the new president of Colombia on Aug. 7 after claiming victory in a fiercely contested election. One day later, the U.S. government pledged $1 billion dollars in “security aid” to the South American nation, pending congressional approval.

By Bob Hennelly

Mount Sinai Health System is facing backlash this week after it stopped accepting some new patients enrolled in Medicaid, Medicare and other publicly subsidized insurance plans—a move the New York State Nurses Association says could further strain safety-net hospitals and deny care to some of New York’s most vulnerable patients.

By Bob Hennelly

In this episode of We Decide: America at the Crossroads we go to Ukraine to consider what's at risk for the world in a war zone where Russia has seized a Ukrainian nuclear power complex in a region with so many vulnerable atomic power plants.

Is the world just watching and waiting? Will we say if there's a Chernobyl-scale disaster that nobody saw it coming?

By Steve Wishnia

As artificial intelligence expands its share of recorded music, musicians need to establish their rights to “consent, compensation, and credit” when their work is used, an American Federation of Musicians spokesperson recently told Work-Bites.

By Joe Maniscalco

New York City is in contract negotiations with FDNY EMS unions, and if that sounds boring or hum-drum it’s only because City Hall wants it to appear that way. In reality, the talks represent a golden opportunity for the Mamdani administration to distinguish itself from preceding ones and do what previous mayors have spectacularly failed to do in the past—rescue FDNY EMS before it’s too late. 

By Steve Wishnia

One week after Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced that New York City was being “forced by federal law” to lay off Haitian-immigrant employees whose temporary protected status (TPS) was terminated July 27 when a June Supreme Court decision formally went into effect, it is difficult to find information about how that is playing out.

By Joe Maniscalco

New York City Council Member Chris Marte [D-1st District] re-introduced legislation on Thursday aimed at blocking ongoing efforts to chip away at the healthcare coverage municipal retirees earned after decades on the job—and this time, he said, the bill will pass. 

By Joe Maniscalco

Unionized workers hit the streets outside Planned Parenthood locations in Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, and Long Island on Tuesday in search of living wage their employers are calling “selfish.”

By Joe Maniscalco

District Council 37 is the largest public sector union in the City of New York with more than 150,000 members in 62 locals covering over 1,000 job titles.

And in this town today, legislation often lives or dies on the word of the union’s Executive Director, Henry Garrido.

But ask the average rank and file DC37 member if they feel like they have a voice in what their union and its leader does with all that power—and they’ll say no, according to outspoken union delegate Cristina Rodriguez-Hart.

By Bob Hennelly

This week’s action-packed broadcasts includes a visit with 1199 SEIU Executive VP Andy Cassagnol who talks about this week’s rally in support of the tens of thousands of essential healthcare workers who are here in the United States on Temporary Protective Status.  Last month, the US Supreme Court sided with the Trump administration and its plans to force over 300,000 Haitian and Syrian TPS holders out of the country.

New York City Mayor Zoharan Mamdani has since announced the termination of potentially thousands of city workers who had previously held Temporary Protective Status.

By Joe Maniscalco

New York City Council Member Chris Marte will reintroduce legislation next week, that if passed, will make it impossible for anyone to try and claw back the health benefits retired municipal workers were promised when they went to work for the City.

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.