By Joe Maniscalco

The Municipal Labor Committee’s [MLC] ability to legitimately represent public service unions across New York City is openly being called into question this week following Thursday’s weighted vote helping Mayor Eric Adams’ administration strip civil service workers of their traditional Medicare health benefits and push them into profit-driven Medicare Advantage program run by insurance giant Aetna.

By Joe Maniscalco

New York City’s Municipal Labor Committee [MLC] may be poised on Thursday to endorse an agreement with Aetna to privatize health care for hundreds of thousands of city employees — but it’s hard for Patrick Ferraiuolo, president of the Correction Captains’ Association, to comprehend why any union would be endorsing a profit-driven scheme like Medicare Advantage.

By Joe Maniscalco

To no one’s surprise, but to the absolute horror of many — Mayor Eric Adams’ administration and the heads of the Municipal Labor Committee [MLC] have gone ahead and thrown back the blast doors on the nukes pointed at traditional Medicare health insurance in New York City and started the countdown to launch.

By Bob Hennelly

It came as no surprise to Maurice Walls, a proud TWU Local 100 elevator mechanic, that a recent City Council analysis found the MTA and its union workforce did a much better job keeping its escalator and elevators operating than the contractors doing that work for sites where real estate developers are responsible for their operation.

By Steve Wishnia

Better pay and job security, especially for adjunct and lower-paid full-time staff, are among the main priorities for the Professional Staff Congress as it prepares to negotiate a new contract with the City University of New York.

By Bob Hennelly

A New York City Council bill that aims to bring transparency and accountability to NYC’s opaque hospital pricing via a consumer-friendly website is a step closer to consideration by the full body after a Feb. 23 hearing.

By Steve Wishnia 

The city has reached a tentative contract deal with District Council 37, the union representing more than a quarter of the municipal workforce, Mayor Eric Adams announced Feb. 17.

By Joe Maniscalco

The prospect of Bill de Blasio succeeding Marty Walsh as U.S. Labor Secretary immediately sparked incredulous feelings of horror and hilarity amongst working class New Yorkers who know the former mayor’s record best.

By Bob Hennelly

On this episode of the Stuck Nation Labor Radio Hour FDNY firefighter Regina Wilson — president of the Vulcan Society, the fraternal organization that represents Black firefighters, EMS, fire inspectors and civilian employees — discusses what’s been accomplished and what’s left to do after the City of New York’s 2014 settlement of a federal racial discrimination lawsuit.

By Bob Hennelly

Speculation in the New York Post that former Mayor Bill de Blasio and former Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney were both angling to succeed outgoing U.S. Secretary Marty Walsh was received with a mix of laughter and outright disdain during an informal survey of several New York City union leaders.

By Steve Wishnia

State Sen. Jessica Ramos (D-Queens) and Assemblymember Latoya Joyner (D-Bronx), the chairs of the labor committees in their houses of the Legislature, have introduced a bill to require employers to take measures to protect their workers against extreme heat and cold.

By Steve Wishnia

SALAMANCA, N.Y.— Sandra Lamacchia, a licensed practical nurse at a nursing home in Salamanca, about 60 miles south of Buffalo, says she wishes her employer would hire temporary laundry workers.

By Joe Maniscalco

New York City Mayor Eric Adams, when he announced his support of a plan to push municipal retirees into a privatized Medicare Advantage program last year, said “the city has had, and will continue to have, your best interests at heart.” 

Why then does convening a Blue Ribbon Panel where those interests would be directly represented by retirees themselves appear to be the last thing Hizzoner wants to talk about?

By Bob Hennelly

The deadline for the City Council to change its Administrative code that covers how the city provides healthcare insurance for its active-duty workforce and retirees came and went last month without the Council opting to act after a marathon Jan. 9 public hearing where scores of city retirees blasted the proposal.

By Joe Maniscalco

Their chief antagonists may happen to be some of the most influential union leaders in New York City — but municipal retirees refusing to be stripped of their traditional Medicare health insurance and pushed into a scandalous for-profit Medicare Advantage program are exercising as much labor power as any Amazon warehouse worker or Starbucks barista — and that’s how they ought to be celebrated this week.

By Bob Hennelly

The City Council will not advance a controversial bill being pushed hard by Mayor Adams and the Municipal Labor Committee to change the city’s Administrative Code 12-126 that covers how the city covers its 300,000 active-duty employees and 250,000 retirees.

By Bob Hennelly

Several New York City Council members at the Jan. 9 Civil Service and Labor Committee hearing on the future of healthcare for the city’s active and retired civil servants appeared to stump the expert panel sent by the Adams administration who repeatedly had to commit to following up later with their answers.  

By Bob Hennelly

The tentative agreements reached between the New York State Nurses Association, Mt. Sinai and Montefiore Hospitals include a 19.2 percent pay raise over three years as well as groundbreaking and enforceable patient nursing staffing ratio requirements. The 7,000 union nurses, on strike since Monday, headed back to work today as details on the deals, that still need to be ratified, continued to emerge.

By Joe Maniscalco

FDNY retiree Ken Dolan’s wife suffers from Parkinson’s and the 80-year-old knew he really should be at home looking after her, but here he was standing outside City Hall on Jan. 9 with hundreds of other senior citizens trying to convince members of the New York City Council not to touch their traditional Medicare health insurance plan.

By Bob Hennelly with Joe Maniscalco

Were you one of those New Yorkers who were banging on pots and pans or hanging out your window applauding overworked nurses and doctors at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic? Well, striking nurses at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx and Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan need you on the picket line today.