By Bob Hennelly

After a 3-day strike, the Teamsters Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers & Trainmen (BLET) have reached a tentative deal with NJ Transit. 

“While I won’t get into the exact details of the deal reached, I will say that the only real issue was wages and we were able to reach an agreement that boosts hourly pay beyond the proposal rejected by our members last month, and beyond where we were when NJ Transit’s managers walked away from the table Thursday evening,” Tom Haas, head of the union’s unit that represents the NJ Transit engineers, said in a statement.

By Joe Maniscalco

Are the seven justices now deliberating the case that will largely determine if the City of New York is allowed to strip municipal retirees of their Traditional Medicare benefits sitting on the New York State Court of Appeals…or the NYS Court of Schlemiels?

By Joe Maniscalco

Whether or not the New York State Court of Appeals ultimately delivers a ruling blocking New York City Mayor Eric Adams from stripping municipal retirees of their Traditional Medicare benefits, retirees insist legislation in the City Council protecting them must be enacted.

By Joe Maniscalco

Patricia Hills, PhD and professor Emerita at Boston University’s Department of History of Art & Architecture, spent her entire academic and curatorial career helping to open up some of the top museums and cultural institutions in the nation to women, people of color, the poor, and other marginalized communities—everything the Trump administration is now attempting to roll back.

By Bob Hennelly

On this episode of "What’s Going On?” we hear from Tom Haas, chairman of the Teamsters Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineer and Trainmen who represents 450 NJ Transit engineers. Haas says NJ Transit needs to raise wages to hold on to engineers going to Amtrak, PATH, LIRR and MetroNorth. The union could strike as early as Friday.

By Joe Maniscalco

A couple of years ago, Mayor Eric Adams defended trying to strip 250,000 municipal retirees of their Traditional Medicare benefits and throwing them into a profit-driven Medicare Advantage health insurance plan in the the worst ways possible on two separate occasions in Brooklyn where Work-Bites was present.

By Bob Hennelly

On Friday, federal immigration police seized Newark Mayor Ras Baraka off of a public street outside Delaney Hall, a controversial private prison, operated by the GEO Corporation, formerly known as Wackenhut Corrections Corporation. This for-profit, publicly traded, multinational employs 18,000 people at over 50 sites here and abroad.  

By Joe Maniscalco

Two years ago at a Medicare rally for municipal retirees outside the gates of City Hall, IBT Local 831 retiree John Pinard expressed his utter astonishment and disbelief that a labor leader he considered “the most courageous fighter I’ve ever seen in my life” was trying to strip former civil servants like him of their traditional healthcare and push them into a profit-driven Medicare Advantage health insurance plan.

By Bob Hennelly

On this episode of the Stuck Nation Labor Radio Hour, retired FDNY EMT Marianne Pizzitola, president of the New York City Organization of Public Service Retirees, joins attorney Micheal Barasch and FDNY Deputy Chief Jim Brosi, president of the FDNY UFOA to discuss the impact of major cuts  to the 9/11 WTC Health Program.

By Steve Wishnia

Since 2011, the annual Clara Lemlich awards have celebrated the lives of “women whose many decades of sustained activism have made real and lasting change in the world.”

“The idea of the evening is to give us all hope. We have to act. We can never give up,” Esther Cohen of LaborArts, a cofounder of the event, told Work-Bites.

By Bob Hennelly

On this week’s edition of Pacifica Radio’s We Decide: America at the Crossroads with Jenna Flanagan we’re talking about how the Trump/Musk junta is doubling down on dismantling democracy, unions and due process.

Sara Nelson, head of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA argues workers should up the ante with a general strike. Indeed, the regime’s full-court press to eliminate collective bargaining for federal workers bodes poorly for all workers Nelson insists.

By Joe Maniscalco

New York City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams doesn’t think voters should believe Andrew Cuomo when he says he won’t try and push municipal retirees into a Medicare Advantage health insurance plan if he’s elected mayor this fall.

By Steve Wishnia

Thousands of people crammed Foley Square May Day for a May 1 rally and march to protest basically everything the Trump-Musk regime is doing. “100 Days of Cruelty is Enough” read one sign.

By Steve Wishnia

The amplified first half of a chant calling out City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams could be heard a block west of City Hall May 1, as several hundred people filled the sidewalk for a “Fight for Our Health and Lives” rally.

By Bob Hennelly

On the latest episode of WBAI’s "What’s Going On?” we preview multiple May Day events scheduled for our region to protest the first 100 days on the Trump/ Musk junta attack on democracy, union rights, our immigrant families, Medicaid, Social Security and public education. 

By Joe Maniscalco

UFT President Micheal Mulgrew’s appearance on the latest episode of WBAI’s “What’s Going On?” show might be the closest he’s come to conceding he screwed up when deciding to back the plan to push 250,000 New York City municipal retirees and their families into a profit-driven Medicare Advantage health insurance plan.

By Bob Hennelly

On Monday afternoon, Rev. Dr. William Barber and two others  were arrested inside the U.S. Capitol for praying on behalf of the tens of millions of Americans set to lose their healthcare if Congress passes the pending GOP budget which cuts $800 billion from Medicaid to fund tax cuts for the nation's wealthiest households and corporations. They were held for three hours.

By Joe Maniscalco

Last year, State Senator Pete Harckham stood alongside municipal retirees and surviving 9/11 spouses in Albany, urging passage of a statewide bill protecting them from ongoing efforts to strip their traditional Medicare coverage and force them into a profit-driven Medicare Advantage plan.

War Stories By Phil Cohen

Part III – The Fine Art of Hustling

Every afternoon as I took my seat in the taxi, regardless of exhaustion levels or mood, my awareness shifted into overdrive. I felt like a fighter pilot about to go out on a mission. From the moment I hit the streets I was in a state of pure reaction time. If a cockroach tweaked its antenna in a garbage can a thousand yards away, I’d sense it. The street has zero tolerance for people who let their guard down. One has to constantly remain prepared for the unexpected and the only thing that can be trusted is instinct.

By Steve Wishnia

New York State has been rebating billions of dollars in stock-sales taxes to Wall Street for more than 40 years—and legislators and activists are making another try to change that.