By Bob Hennelly

Kai Fritz, elected captain for the first Starbucks store to unionize in Brooklyn, explains why Starbucks Workers United union will be holding a strike rally TODAY at 4 p.m. at the company's 325 Lafayette Ave. Brooklyn location to demand a fair contract. 

By Steve Wishnia

The Trump administration violated furloughed federal workers’ free-speech rights during the shutdown when it changed their automated out-of-office email replies to blame “Democrat Senators,” a federal judge in Washington ruled Nov. 7.

By Bob Hennelly

This will be the first Monday that Mayor Elect Zohran Mamdani gets to set the media agenda for the city he has yet to officially lead. Indeed the whole world will be watching with the kind of fascination and hope it had when a very young President-Elect John Kennedy, the first Roman Catholic to be elected to the office, prepared to assume it.

By Joe Maniscalco

Just launched this fall, the State University of New York’s Reconnect program is providing residents with an opportunity to change course or add a whole new chapter to their working lives with an Associate’s Degree in more than 120 different areas of study.

And the cost? It’s free.

By Steve Wishnia

Tenants in three Chelsea public housing buildings slated to be demolished argued Nov. 5 for a court order to stop the New York City Housing Authority [NYCHA] from trying to evict them or pressuring them to sign new leases accepting relocation.

By Joe Maniscalco

Mayor-Elect Zohran Mamdani declared victory on Tuesday night promising working class New Yorkers a “bold vision of what we will achieve, rather than a list of excuses for what we are too timid to attempt.”

By Carol Lang and Steve Zeltzer

Editor’s Note: Carol Lang is a CUNY Professor and PSC Delagate and Steve Zeltzer is the producer and host of the WorkWeek Radio program.

American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten attempts to provide an understanding of the ever increasing problem of Why Fascists Fear Teachers, but, in my opinion, fails miserably. Her book provides no solution that will meet the immediate crisis because she is unable to understand the crisis from a class perspective.

Editor’s Note: The following is a response to Marianne Pizzitola’s open letter to mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani which was published here on Oct. 27.

The article “An Open Letter to Zohran Mamdani: Why Are You Ignoring NYC Retirees?,” written by Marianne Pizzitola and published in the October 27 issue of Work-Bites, is a distorted publicity attempt to help elect disgraced former governor Andrew Cuomo.

By Joe Maniscalco

The New York City Housing Authority stepped up its efforts to clear out the elderly residents living in the Chelsea Addition in Manhattan this week, forcibly attempting to relocate one resident against her will, according to reports and flatly telling everyone there that their building “will be demolished.”

By Steve Wishnia

City Council staffers rallied outside City Hall Oct. 29, urging the lawmakers not to take advantage of a loophole in their union contract that lets re-elected incumbents fire their aides without any reason during the first 60 days of their second term.

By Bob Hennelly

On this episode of “We Decide: America at the Crossroads with Jenna Flanagan, our reporter roundtable regulars, D.C.-based investigative reporter Dave Levinthal and Laura Jedeed, discuss Donald Trump's Versailles style of governing and his Caribbean hot war on suspicious small boats.

By Steve Wishnia

More than two-thirds of Uber and Lyft drivers who were “deactivated” say they did not receive any notice before their access to the apps was cut off, according to a survey of 341 fired drivers conducted by the New York Taxi Workers Alliance (NYTWA) and the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund (AALDEF).

Editor’s Note: Marianne Pizzitola is a retired EMS worker and president of the New York City Organization of Public Service Retirees.

Dear Zohran,

You speak often about fighting hate, combatting racism, Islamophobia, and injustice, and I respect that. But I must ask: do our values not extend to older New Yorkers?

War Stories By Phil Cohen

During 1998, John Cummings was promoted to operations manager in the Receiving Department of Kmart’s Greensboro Distribution Center. The managers and supervisors on all three Receiving shifts reported to him. Cummings was a tall, muscular man in his mid-thirties who had previously held management positions at Walmart and Family Dollar warehouses.

By Joe Maniscalco

Unlike previous “No Kings” rallies held across the county earlier this year where demonstrators were a lot more circumspect about calling for a nationwide general strike to response to  the Trump administration’s growing authoritarian attacks on American democracy—Oct. 18’s demonstrations were much more definitive about the need to take such action now.

By Bob Hennelly

For over nine hours, WBAI’s team of dozens of reporters and producers—including Work-Bites’ Steve Wishnia—brought you the soundtrack of the growing resistance to authoritarian rule from across our nation.

Editor’s Note: Harry Weiner worked for the New York City Housing Authority for more than 30 years and is a member of the Council of Municipal Retiree Organizations [COMRO]. This is his open letter to comedy legend and Elliott-Chelsea public housing product Whoopie Goldberg. 

Dear Whoopi:

I’m writing to you as a fellow senior citizen with similar  good memories of Elliott-Chelsea Houses, which is in the midst of a crisis. When I worked there in the 1980’s as a Housing Assistant, they were both very desirable “projects” to live in…safe, well maintained  and a sense of community prevailed. Indeed, it was a source of pride that you were a former resident.

By Steve Wishnia

“What’s at stake here is our democracy,” Charles Jenkins, president of the New York chapter of the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists, told Work-Bites as thousands of people assembled by Canal Street on the cool, sunny morning of Oct. 18.

By Joe Maniscalco

Some seven million people, according to organizers, took part in this past weekend’s “No Kings” rallies across the United States—reportedly making the anti-Trump action one of the largest single day protests in American history.