By Steve Wisnia

On May 23, the Justice Department and the Environmental Protection Agency announced a proposed settlement in which the Norfolk Southern railroad would pay more than $310 million to cover remediation costs from the February 2023 train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio. The town of 4,800 people had to be partially evacuated after about 50 cars on a 9,300-foot train derailed, including five carrying vinyl chloride, and some caught fire. The highly toxic gas, used in plastic manufacturing, had to be released and burned to avert an explosion.

By Bob Hennelly

Today is a national holiday, and on this episode of the Moral Monday Labor Radio Hour with Rev. Dr. William Barber & Bob Hennelly, we’re talking about the hundreds of thousands of EMTs and paramedics working hard to save lives and deliver health care to tens of millions of Americans who do not have regular access to a doctor.

By Phil Cohen

The art of defeating hostile employers involves attacking on multiple fronts simultaneously, in ways they least expect, until executives come to feel like medieval lords trapped in a castle, surrounded by Vikings at every gate.

By Bill Barry

Courtesy of Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee

It happens all the time: a supervisor suddenly approaches one of your best organizing committee members, screams a lot of false accusations about bad work, bad attendance, or bad attitude at them, and then tells them that they are fired.

By Bob Hennelly

Courtesy of InsiderNJ

It was more than a year ago that President Joe Biden declared the national emergency sparked by the Covid mass death event over—but here in New Jersey, and throughout the nation, our local Emergency Management Services find themselves in a deepening crisis as professionals leave this vital profession.

By Joe Maniscalco

New York City Mayor Eric Adams may believe the highest court in the state will still let him push 250,000 municipal retirees into a profit-driven Aetna Medicare Advantage health insurance plan if he asks the judges nicely enough, but City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams says it’s time for “closure.”

By Phil Cohen

I received a call from Mill Chair Clara Moser the next morning at 8 am. She frantically told me security guards had been stationed at the plant entrance to prevent me from entering. Management claimed to have video showing me kicking a hole in the wall as I exited on Thursday.

By Joe Maniscalco

The City of New York’s decision to keep trying to push 250,000 municipal retirees into a profit-driven Medicare Advantage health insurance plan following yet another crushing court defeat on Tuesday has convinced many in the fight that Mayor Eric Adams and his privatization allies must be crazy.

By Bob Hennelly

We are in Philadelphia for this week’s edition of the Stuck Nation Labor Radio Hour covering the Service Employees International Union’s national convention. Yesterday, delegates elected April Verrett, the first Black president of the almost 2 million member union.

By Bob Hennelly

On this episode of the Moral Monday Labor Radio Hour with Rev. Dr. William Barber and Bob Hennelly, we are live from SEIU Convention in Philadelphia talking with  George Gresham, president of 1199SEIU, America’s largest healthcare union, about his union’s deep ties to the civil rights movement and how it’s continued to grow even in the south which has historically resistant to the union moment.

By Bob Hennelly

The UAW’s winning streak, including a lopsided union recognition vote last month at a Volkswagen plant in “right-to-work” state Tennessee, came to an end at a Mercedes plant in Alabama thanks to a flagrantly illegal counter-campaign led by plant management and backed up by a powerful coalition of southern Republican Governors.

By Phil Cohen

In 1976 the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America and the Textile Workers Union of America merged to form the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union. It was a marriage of convenience, rooted in necessity, between very disparate cultures.

By Bob Hennelly

Last weekend, former President Donald Trump held a rally in Wildwood, New Jersey where his racist anti-immigrant messaging appears to have drawn thousands. While the Associated Press reported tens of thousands attended, other reliable outlets have put the actual crowd size as much smaller.

By Steve Wishnia

The union campaign at the Bloom Medicinals medical-marijuana dispensary in Akron, Ohio began in the break room early last year. Dispensary agents Krispin Horner and Ev Lindrose were both angry that a coworker had just been fired, Lindrose recalls.

By Bob Hennelly

The Republican Party will hold its national convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin July 15 through 18. A month later, August 19 to 22, the Democratic Party will convene in Chicago. So far, the 2024 Presidential campaign has been entirely about President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump—two elderly white guys.

By Joe Maniscalco

Propaganda session? Some kind of weird one-way webinar where attendees agonizing over the privatization of their traditional Medicare benefits were first encouraged to go get a flag and recite the pledge before getting any answers?

By Bob Hennelly

Four days before protestors took over Columbia University’s Hamilton Hall on April 30, trapping building service workers from TWU Local 241 inside for a harrowing half-hour to 45 minutes, their union wrote university officials to flag their concerns. 

By Bob Hennelly

We kick off National Nurses Week with an update from Debbie White, RN and president of HPAE, New Jersey’s largest nurses’ union, which is in major contract negotiations revolving around getting local hospitals to establish and abide by safe staffing levels. 

By Bob Hennelly

On this episode of the Moral Monday Labor Radio Hour with Rev. Dr. William Barber & Bob Hennelly, we are on the Atlantic Coast in southeast Florida, a state where over 42 percent of the voters are low wage and low wealth, and who, as Rev. Dr. William Barber reminds us, could change the course of history this year if they mobilize.

By Ryn Gargulinski

It’s all Bitsy Finnigan’s fault. Bitsy Finnigan was a childhood neighbor kid who would come over to our house and wreck things.