By Joe Maniscalco

Organizing working class power against entrenched systems of economic exploitation and oppression can take a lot out of you. But Standing Up: Tales of Struggle authors Ellen Bravo and Larry Miller also want you to know that it can fill you with something, too — love.

By Steve Wishnia

“Are you guys striking?” a young woman in a wool cap and ponytail asks a barista handing out flyers in front of a Starbucks in Queens, November 17.

Yes, says barista Faith Bianchi, giving her a short overview about the workers seeking benefits. “I was going to get some lattes, but I won’t,” the woman answers. A man standing nearby holds a “No Contract, No Coffee” sign, its red and green colors matching the holiday cups Starbucks is giving away.

By Joe Maniscalco

Is there a more consequential issue facing the folks in city government today than the plan backed by the mayor and the heads of the Municipal Labor Committee to push New York City’s retirees into a for-profit private health insurance plan calling itself “Medicare Advantage?”

By Bob Hennelly

With just 24 hours to go before the deadline for ballots to be postmarked for the election of the United Auto Workers leadership by the rank and file — one of the candidates for the top post wants a federal court to extend the process for another 30 days due to “widespread reports that workers are unaware of the election” and incumbent union officials have failed to get the word out to the members.

By Joe Maniscalco

Colleges and universities have for years employed an economic system that’s allowed them to get the most talented and dedicated academics this country has to offer on the cheap — but students at The New School School and Parsons School of Design in New York City are calling bullshit on the whole operation.

By Bob Hennelly

Courtesy of InsiderNJ

In response to an unprecedented spike in healthcare insurance premium hikes for essential workers, some of the Garden State’s largest unions, healthcare advocates and social justice nonprofits are forming the New Jersey Coalition for Affordable Hospitals (NJCAH) to press for more transparency on the runaway healthcare pricing. 

By Bob Hennelly with Joe Maniscalco

ACT-UAW Local 7902 teachers at the New School and Parsons School of Design have overwhelmingly authorized to go on strike — and unsurprisingly, stagnant wages and astronomical healthcare costs are central issues surrounding the looming job action.

On this episode of the Stuck Nation Labor Radio Hour, Parsons teacher and union representative Tamar Samir tells host Bob Hennelly “We need universal healthcare and unions need to be advocating and fighting for it.”

By Joe Maniscalco

Starbucks worker Joel Foote already had seven write-ups hanging over his head when Work-Bites talked to him outside the company’s Reserve Roastery in Chelsea this past Thursday. One more and he would be fired. “Fear is a tool of the boss,” the 24-year-old said. “The power lies within our labor — and once we understand that we don’t need to be afraid.”

By Joe Maniscalco

There are better cost-saving alternatives to rewriting New York City’s Administrative Code and pushing a quarter of a million municipal retirees into a for-profit health insurance plan that’ll only make corporate fat cats fatter while delaying and denying vital medical care to people who worked for the city all their lives.

By Steve Wishnia

Voters in Illinois solidly approved amending the state’s constitution to protect the right to collective bargaining and the union shop, while Tennessee voted to embed its ban on the union shop in its constitution.

By Bob Hennelly

On this special Election Day edition of the Stuck Nation Labor Radio Hour we take a look at the latest COVID data and give a shout out to the NewsGuild CWA for their one-day-strike against Gannett. The corporation owns over 200 newspapers and has refused to bargain in good faith while it lays off hundreds of reporters and pays its CEO several million dollars.

By Bob Hennelly

Courtesy of InsiderNJ

Friday, over 200 journalists with the NewsGuild CWA put their careers at risk by walking off their jobs as local reporters at Gannett owned newspapers at the Asbury Park Press and The Record as well as a dozen other news rooms around the country because the company refuses to bargain with their union in good faith.

By Bob Hennelly

The Adams administration Nov. 4 deadline for the New York City Council to approve a controversial revision of the administrative code to permit the shifting of city civil service retirees to a privatized for-profit Medicare Advantage plan came and went Nov. 4 without any action from the City Council. 

By Steve Wishnia

This Nov. 8, voters in Illinois will consider amending the state’s constitution to protect the union shop, while Tennessee will consider adding the state’s law banning the union shop to its constitution.

Bob Hennelly and Joe Maniscalco

Despite increasing opposition — a lot of it coming from his sisters and brothers in organized labor, UFT President Michael Mulgrew continues to push hard for a shift to a Medicare Advantage Plan for New York City municipal retirees. And on this week’s edition of the Stuck Nation Radio Labor Hour, the UFT leader suggests changing the administrative code and ushering in MAP will give New York City the ability to tame the for-profit private health insurance industry.

By Joe Maniscalco

Commentary

So, some of the most powerful people in town are warning the rest of us that the most pressing — the most urgent — the most vital issue — facing the City of New York right now is the need to immediately privatize healthcare for municipal retirees — or else. I dunno about you, but this kind of thing reminds me of that time working people were told we had to bail out the big banks.

By Bob Hennelly

Faced with the failure of the City Council to change the administrative code to permit the shifting of city civil service retirees to a privatized for-profit Medicare Advantage plan, the city is moving for the “immediate implementation of a Medicare Advantage plan with the elimination of all other plans that otherwise would have been offered to retirees.”

By Steve Wishnia

A panel of five state appeals-court judges appeared skeptical of the city administration’s contention that it can legally change retired employees’ health coverage from traditional Medicare to a private Medicare Advantage plan.

By Helen Klein

The skeletons were fake, but the scare was real as municipal workers, past and present, gathered near City Hall on Thursday, Oct. 27, to protest the city’s efforts to substitute a Medicare Advantage plan for the health insurance retirees have counted on for years.

By Joe Maniscalco

One of the unions New York City municipal retirees charge wields too much power inside the Municipal Labor Committee [MLC] and is helping to bulldoze workers into an inferior Medicare Advantage health insurance plan is being called “autocratic” and “anti-democratic” by some of its own members.