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 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

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 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.

Editor’s Note: Harry Weiner is a member of both the New York City Organization of Public Service Retirees and Council of Municipal Retiree Organizations.

By Harry Weiner

On July 2, COGE issued a Preliminary Report, and it is disappointing that there has been no outreach to retirees from City service. And it glosses over health benefits, a significant portion of the budget.

By Joe Maniscalco

On July 28, New York City home care workers fighting for passage of the No More 24 bill in the City Council will again stage a hunger strike outside the gates of City Hall to end the 24-hour workday. 

By Steven Zheng

Editor’s Note: Steven Zheng is NYU student organizer from Youths Against Sweatshop and the Yecao Collective.

New York’s home care workers are still fighting to pass Intro. 303 because they are still fighting to abolish one of the most brutal labor arrangements the city continues to tolerate: the 24-hour workday.

By Joe Maniscalco

The whole world is watching New York City’s fight to end the 24-hour workday and Governor Kathy Hochul is guilty of breaking international labor laws. 

By Joe Maniscalco

Staten Island paramedic Jack Chapman looked out over the thousands of fellow 1199SEIU members gathered in Foley Square on Wednesday and talked about how EMS wages have lagged behind the responsibility workers like him carry ever day.

Editor’s Note: The following is an open letter to Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s newly-created Commission on Government Efficiency about the role Acting MLC Chair and Medicare Advantage proponent Henry Garrido is playing on the commission and why that raises red flags for New York City Retirees.

As reported by the Chief, COGE invited Executive Director Ann Cheng to attend a future Municipal Labor Committee meeting to gather feedback from labor leaders. A June 10 letter from COGE stated that “We believe that true efficiency will be found by learning from the expertise and knowledge of our workforce.”

By Joe Maniscalco

Before his recent passing, IBT Local 808 Secretary-Treasurer Chris Silvera bravely stood alongside public housing tenants in Chelsea fighting to save their homes from privatization and demolition.

By Steve Wishnia

Workers at the New York Immigration Coalition, cohost of the union-led International Workers’ Day May Day March, have asked the organization to recognize their newly formed union, NYIC United.

By Joe Maniscalco

Eighty-one days have elapsed since New York City Council Speaker Julie Menin stood on the sidewalk with home care workers outside City Hall and promised to bring Intro. 303—the No More 24 bill—to the floor for a vote.

By Steve Wishnia

Four years after Nicole Munoz was fired from her job as a bathroom cleaner in a Midtown office building, and nine months after the state Division of Human Rights held there was “probable cause” to believe it was retaliation for her filing a sexual-harassment complaint, she is seeking compensation from her former employer, the SL Green real-estate company.

By Joe Maniscalco

A coalition of both active workers and retirees from New York City’s largest public service union is defying union leadership and calling on City Council Speaker Julie Menin to back a bill banning round-the-clock shifts in the home care industry.

By Steve Wishnia

Saying that a 1,000-unit Harlem development approved by the City Council last year does not include housing neighborhood residents can actually afford, about 25 people rallied on the steps of City Hall May 27 to demand that the city require it to include 400 apartments for working-class people.

By Joe Maniscalco

The head of the largest public sector union in the City of New York and his lieutenants said a lot jaw-dropping things this past Wednesday in opposition to No More 24 advocates fighting to end exploitation and institutionalized wage theft in the home care industry.