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 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

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 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 Harry Weiner

Reviewing the original bylaws of the New York City Organization of Public Services Retirees (sent to me upon request) reinforces my belief that all members should be informed that they have the same right.  For the sake of transparency.

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

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. 

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 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 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.