By Steve Wishnia

The hundreds of striking nurses picketing outside NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital January 12 were loud. Their chants, cheers, and shouts resounded under the three-level bridgeway connecting the hospital’s buildings. But they weren’t talking about money.

By Joe Maniscalco

Sunday’s massive march south on 5th Avenue in response to the ICE execution of 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis took protesters right past Trump Tower and provided many with the opportunity to express their anger and disgust towards the current administration in patented NYC style.

By Joe Maniscalco

New York State Governor Kathy Hochul continues to block resumption of a sweeping wage theft probe into the home care industry this week despite a new ruling in favor of home care workers demanding action.

By Steve Wishnia

Compelled by a snuff-video clip that went viral on social media on the afternoon of January 7, several hundred people converged on Foley Square that evening for an emergency rally to protest the killing depicted in said video: An Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent shooting 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis that morning.

“I’m outraged. I didn’t know what to do. I came after work,”said John Grauwiler, a teacher from Astoria.

By Joe Maniscalco

Tristan Castillo’s job as an Emergency Room nurse is unquestionably more stressful than whatever the heads of Mount Sinai, NewYork-Presbyterian, and Montefiore private hospital chains do all day long. Unlike those lavishly-paid executives, however, Castillo goes to bed at night worrying about making ends meet and if being short-staffed meant the welfare of a patient was put at risk during her last shift. 

Work-Bites

After months of destroying civilian boats off the coast of Venezuela, killing scores of civilians which the Trump administration claimed were involved in the illicit drug trade, the US military staged a violent incursion into that country and abducted President Nicholas Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores.

By Joe Maniscalco

“Beginning today we will govern expansively and audaciously,” New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani pledged during his inauguration speech on Jan. 1.

So, why is he continuing to run away from the New York State Stock Transfer Tax and letting Lt. Governor Antonio Delgado show what audacity really looks like?

By Steve Wishnia

New York City Councilmembers are mulling over how to override former mayor Eric Adams’ vetoes of 19 bills on his last day in office December 31. They included legislation to prohibit app-cab companies from firing drivers without good cause; to set a minimum wage for security guards; and to increase the number of licenses given to street vendors.

By Bill Barry

Editor’s Note: This column is reposed here with permission of the author.

At a high point of membership in 1957, 37% of the U.S. workforce was in a union. More importantly, for non-union workers, about 40% of them enjoyed union conditions thanks to what analysts call “the spillover effect.” As unions raised workplace standards, employers had to keep up. While there were cultural conflicts about breadwinners and breadmakers, many households had one-income families with  good wages, fully paid health insurance, defined benefit pensions, and a secure future.  

By Joe Maniscalco

It looks like the New York City Municipal Labor Committee [MLC] is starting to leak like a sieve and that’s a great thing for everybody who’s spent the last four years demanding true transparency and real participatory democracy out of the group.

By Bob Hennelly

In less than a week Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani becomes Mayor Mamdani as the Trump administration doubles down on its lethal mass deportation strategy using masked federal agents to tear apart  families and communities all in pursuit of a whiter nation. 

By Bob Hennelly

As we broadcast the latest episode of “We Decide: America at the Crossroads with Jenna Flanagan” Aljazeera is reporting that the Gaza Health Ministry has only about half of the medicine it needs to take care of the beleaguered population still suffering from lack of the basics including shelter. The BBC also reports that United Nations-supported experts are warning that while Gaza's food supplies are improving, conditions remain "highly fragile."

By Steve Wishnia

In a flurry of votes on the last day of its session, the City Council on Dec. 18 passed long-sought legislation setting minimum wages and benefits for security guards and prohibiting app-cab companies and delivery apps from firing workers without good cause. However, absent from the more than 40 measures approved were bills that would have guaranteed retired city workers traditional Medicare and outlawed unpaid 24-hour shifts for home health attendants.

By Steve Wishnia

Cleaners at two Manhattan office buildings went on strike Dec. 17, after the new cleaning contractor not only slashed their pay by $9 an hour, but cut their hours as well.

By Joe Maniscalco

Home care worker Luz Estrella, 73, stood on the sidewalk outside Governor Kathy Hochul’s Third Avenue offices in Manhattan on Wednesday morning, Dec. 17 wondering why the most powerful woman in the state continues to oppose working class women like her fighting hard against wage theft.

By Bob Hennelly

The day after a bipartisan coalition of House members passed legislation to overturn President Trump's executive order stripping collective bargaining rights from one million federal civil servants, the Trump administration ripped up its current contract with 47,000 Transportation Safety officers.

By Steve Wishnia

Mayor Eric Adams’ administration won’t turn over records sought by 9/11 Health Watch while he’s in office.

For the tenth time since the group filed a Freedom of Information Law request in September 2023 for documents showing what the city government knew about health hazards in the Ground Zero area in 2001, the mayor’s office told them it was unable to provide them “due to the volume of requests that we have received.”

By Bob Hennelly
In a bipartisan rebuke of President Trump's stripping of collective bargaining rights from one million federal workers, 20 House Republicans joined 211 Democrats to pass the “Protect America's Workforce Act." The lopsided 231 to 195 vote came after a successful House discharge petition effort led by Rep. Jared Golden (ME-D) and Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (PA-R) over the objection of Speaker Mike Johnson (LA-R).

By Joe Maniscalco

New York State Assembly Member Tony Simone blew off at least two elderly NYCHA residents desperately fighting the demolition of their homes and dismissed them as nothing but “obstructionists” during a tenants’ conference held at Fordham University School of Law in Manhattan this past weekend, Work-Bites has learned.

By Steve Wishnia

State Supreme Court Judge Lyle E. Frank has denied opponents of the city’s new self-funded health-care plan for employees a preliminary injunction that would stop it from going into effect on Jan. 1.