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

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. 

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 Bob Hennelly

This week, scores of activists turned out on the steps of City Hall to support No More 24 hunger strikers pressing for a municipal ban on the practice of paying live-in caregivers just 13 hours pay.

By Harry Weiner

The New York City Organization of Public Service Retirees [NYCOPSR] has responded to my Work-Bites July 20 open letter and a similar letter in The Chief. (“Bylaws of Gravity, July 24).‍ ‍

I invited NYCOPSR to issue a reply in the “Debunked” section of their website, which they did.

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 Bob Hennelly

The ongoing war in Iran and Lebanon that has killed thousands of civilians, struck closer to home this week with the combat death of 28 year-old Sgt. Angel Sarah Rampersad from Ozone Park, Queens who died when her base in Jordan came under an Iranian missile and drone attack.

By Steve Wishnia

Trying to protect federal workers’ rights under Donald Trump’s rule has been a one-battle-after-another scenario—and this month, it’s happening on three fronts.

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 Bob Hennelly

On this episode of WBAI’s What’s Going On? we check in with our FDNY EMS unions about a new bill introduced by New York City Council Member Joann Ariola, who chairs the Council's Fire and Emergency Management Committee, to provide a $20,000 retention and recruitment bonus for FDNY EMTS and $25,000 payment to FDNY EMS paramedics.

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 Joe Maniscalco

There’s an early passage in Matewan Blood & Coal, Kevin Corley’s riveting novelization of the 1920 West Virginia coal miner’s strike and Battle of Blair Mountain where he writes about how “The moon cast long shadows over Matewan’s emptied streets: gunpowder lingered in the air, faint but unmistakable, like history refusing to leave quietly.”

Can you see it?

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.