By Bob Hennelly

WBAI Pacifica Radio was graced for several years with the on-air presence of  Tom Robbins, a fearless reporter who did stories about working people and their challenges getting by in a city and nation that increasingly served the rich.

By Joe Maniscalco

After 15 months in receivership, members of the District Council 37 Retirees Association still have no idea this week when they’ll ever regain control of their organization once again following a rare in-person general meeting held at the union’s headquarters on Thursday.

Work-Bites

Hello Work-Bites Builders! Today we kick off a new weekly cartoon series from Work-Bites friends and contributors Tim Sheard and Ryn Gargulinski. ‘That’s Outrageous!’ imagines an ongoing mock debate portraying two very different political ideologies…

WAR STORIES By Phil Cohen

I returned to New York in 1979 after a year of traveling across Asia, accompanied by woman named Faye. I found an apartment in Sunnyside, Queens, a working-class neighborhood bordering Long Island City, and resumed driving taxis. But my new friend was a country girl and terrified of the urban environment.

By Bob Hennelly

On this special Memorial Day edition of “We Decide: America at the Crossroads” we’re talking about how the Trump/Musk junta is trying to cut 80,000 civil servants from the Veterans Administration which provides life saving healthcare to millions of our veterans.

By Bob Hennelly

This week the Republican controlled House passed by just one vote what President Trump calls his "one big beautiful bill" that provides obscene tax cuts for the nation's wealthiest individuals and corporations while cutting hundreds of billions from safety net programs like Medicaid and food stamps.

By Joe Maniscalco

As author Len Shindel says in the introduction to The Strike That Changed Maryland’s Wilderness County, he was “intent on getting some of the real dirt and gravel on the 1970 strike.”

By Bob Hennelly

The Teamsters Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers & Trainmen (BLET) have won their strike and reached a tentative agreement with NJ Transit that reflects a better deal than the one that management walked away from Thursday night.

By Bob Hennelly

On the latest episode of WBAI’s “What’s Going On?” Issac Ferguson reports on acting U.S. Attorney Alina Habba charging Rep. LaMonica McIver (D-NJ) with allegedly assaulting DHS/ICE officers as they were taking Newark Mayor Ras Baraka into custody on May 9.  

By Joe Maniscalco

Throughout the four-year battle to stop New York City from pushing municipal retirees into a predatory Medicare Advantage health insurance plan and blowing up what used to constitute “a good city job” for generations of New Yorkers—City Council Speaker and now mayoral hopeful Adrienne Adams has stood on the sidelines and worked hard to make sure her fellow legislators remained there, too. 

By Steve Wishnia

A bill to revive New York’s tax on stock transfers, which has been rebated since 1981, could bring the state some $13 billion a year in revenue—but it is drawing almost zero support from labor unions.

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.