By Joe Maniscalco

Stripping New York City municipal retirees of their traditional Medicare benefits and pushing them into a profit-driven Medicare Advantage program will not deliver the $600 million savings Mayor Eric Adams’ administration claims it will.

By Steve Wishnia

“We don’t want pizza parties. We want pay raises so we can stop the hemorrhaging of staff,” Sonia Lawrence, the New York State Nurses Association’s director for New York City Health + Hospitals facilities, told several hundred nurses and supporters gathered in Foley Square May 10.

By Bob Hennelly

On Thursday, May 11 President Biden will end the COVID public health emergency which was declared three years ago by then President Trump.  It has been widely reported that as many as 15 million Americans will lose their health insurance as the states reevaluate their Medicaid status now that the pandemic is declared over. 

By Bob Hennelly

Later this week, President Joe Biden is expected to declare the nation’s COVID pandemic emergency over, even as the nation’s healthcare system is in a deepening access and affordability crisis Washington is in active denial because the medical industrial complex is paying them to look the other way.

Work-Bites.com

On this episode of the Iron Bill Hohlfeld show labor writer Robert Ovetz talks about the “Stockholm Syndrome” impacting too many labor leaders today where they start to “think about the issues from the perspective of the boss” — and how that sad reality correlates to the fight retired trade unionists in New York City are having trying to save their traditional Medicare benefits from being stripped and privatized.

By Joe Maniscalco

New York City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams [D-28th District] is crying foul this week after angry calls for her resignation erupted at a May Day rally outside City Hall on Monday in support of exploited home care attendants across the five boroughs.

By Bob Hennelly

On this episode of the Stuck Nation Labor Radio Hour, Marianne Pizzitola, head of the NYC Organization of Public Service Retirees and Michelle Keller, head of the NYC Coalition of Labor Union Women connect the legacy of May Day to the ongoing battle to preserve the traditional Medicare benefits municipal retirees were promised as active duty workers.

By Steve Wishnia

“Why do you all spend so much money on union-busting?” Laura Rosario, a barista at a Starbucks in Montclair, N.J., demanded May 1, as a group of 15 to 20 Starbucks Workers United members filled the entrance room at the company’s New York regional office near Penn Station.

By Joe Maniscalco

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration recorded the deaths of 20 New York City construction workers in 2015 — the same year a 22-year-old Ecuadorian immigrant named Carlos Moncayo was crushed to death helping to erect what is now Restoration Hardware and the RH Rooftop Restaurant on 9th Avenue in NYC’s Meatpacking District.

By Steve Wishnia

On the chilly gray afternoon of Apr. 28, mourners laid red roses and white carnations on a table in Manhattan’s Foley Square, reading the names of workers who died on the job in New York City in the past year.

By Bob Hennelly

Despite decades of progress in worker safety since the creation of the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration in 1970, there’s troubling evidence of deadly backsliding particularly for the nation’s Black and Latino workers, according to a comprehensive analysis from the AFL-CIO, the nation’s largest labor federation.

By Bob Hennelly

Courtesy of InsiderNJ

They came from all over New Jersey and reflected the state’s diversity yet all of them shared a desire to protect the public’s safety. As a consequence, they paid the ultimate price for keeping that commitment in the brutal onslaught that was COVID which hit an unprepared nation hard.

By Steve Wishnia

In 1960, when the federal minimum wage was $1 an hour and did not cover workers in nursing homes or construction, the New York State Department of Labor established a regulation that home health-care attendants working 24-hour shifts should only get paid for 13 hours, because they have the other 11 hours off for eating, sleeping, and breaks

By Bob Hennelly

On this episode of the Stuck Nation Labor Radio Hour, we will get an update on the labor situation at Rutgers University from the leadership of the Rutgers Adjunct Faculty Union, President Amy Higer and Vice President Bryan Sacks. In the second half of the show, we will visit with documentary filmmaker Kenny Ballentine, whose latest project “Healing Us” captures the devastating consequences on our families from our nation’s for-profit predatory healthcare system.

Work-Bites.com

On this “Your Labor Minute” episode, host Mark Harrison breaks down why the friendly folks at the Federal Reserve want to see more working people unemployed!

By Bob Hennelly

CVS Health has named Brian Kane as the Executive Vice President and President of Aetna, effective September 1. He will report to CVS Health President and CEO Karen S. Lynch. Last month, New York City Mayor Eric Adams signed a contract with Aetna as part of the administration’s campaign to strip 250,000 municipal retirees of their traditional Medicare benefits and push them into a profit-driven Medicare Advantage program.

Work-Bites.com

Mark Harrison returns this week to Work-Bites with the latest edition of “Your Labor Minute”, taking a quick look at the Rutgers University strike settlement in New Jersey and what faculty and staff are getting out of the new four-year deal.

By Joe Maniscalco

Labor writer and activist Bill Fletcher Jr was on a bus in Cuba back in 1999 as part of a special delegation to that country which also included actor Danny Glover and author Walter Mosley, when he was inspired to share an idea he had percolating in his head for a murder mystery.

By Bob Hennelly

In the first half of this week’s Tax Day episode of the Stuck Nation Labor Radio Hour, we speak with Abigail E. Disney, an Emmy-winning documentary filmmaker, activist, philanthropist, and host of the podcast "All Ears."

By Bob Hennelly

In the second half of this week’s Stuck Nation Labor Radio Hour, we catch up with New York City Council Member Christopher Marte (D-Dist. 1) who confronts the scandal of home health aide being forced to work 24-hour shifts and NYC’s ongoing campaign to strip municipal retirees of their traditional Medicare benefits.