By Joe Maniscalco

Starbucks baristas launched their “Red Cup Rebellion” this past week in more than 40 cities across the country promising to escalate the walkout until it becomes the “largest, longest strike in company history.”

By Joe Maniscalco

Outgoing FDNY Commissioner Robert Tucker on Thursday downplayed the significance of increasing emergency response times across New York City saying that his department is purposely “elevating” the alarming figures.

By Joe Maniscalco

Mayor-Elect Zohran Mamdani will be sworn in on Jan. 1 2026, but New York City public housing tenants currently being forced out of their homes in Chelsea want the 34-year-old Democratic Socialist to know that he has an “urban genocide” happening on his hands right now.

By Joe Maniscalco

Just launched this fall, the State University of New York’s Reconnect program is providing residents with an opportunity to change course or add a whole new chapter to their working lives with an Associate’s Degree in more than 120 different areas of study.

And the cost? It’s free.

By Steve Wishnia

Tenants in three Chelsea public housing buildings slated to be demolished argued Nov. 5 for a court order to stop the New York City Housing Authority [NYCHA] from trying to evict them or pressuring them to sign new leases accepting relocation.

By Joe Maniscalco

Mayor-Elect Zohran Mamdani declared victory on Tuesday night promising working class New Yorkers a “bold vision of what we will achieve, rather than a list of excuses for what we are too timid to attempt.”

Editor’s Note: The following is a response to Marianne Pizzitola’s open letter to mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani which was published here on Oct. 27.

The article “An Open Letter to Zohran Mamdani: Why Are You Ignoring NYC Retirees?,” written by Marianne Pizzitola and published in the October 27 issue of Work-Bites, is a distorted publicity attempt to help elect disgraced former governor Andrew Cuomo.

By Joe Maniscalco

The New York City Housing Authority stepped up its efforts to clear out the elderly residents living in the Chelsea Addition in Manhattan this week, forcibly attempting to relocate one resident against her will, according to reports and flatly telling everyone there that their building “will be demolished.”

By Steve Wishnia

City Council staffers rallied outside City Hall Oct. 29, urging the lawmakers not to take advantage of a loophole in their union contract that lets re-elected incumbents fire their aides without any reason during the first 60 days of their second term.

By Steve Wishnia

More than two-thirds of Uber and Lyft drivers who were “deactivated” say they did not receive any notice before their access to the apps was cut off, according to a survey of 341 fired drivers conducted by the New York Taxi Workers Alliance (NYTWA) and the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund (AALDEF).

Editor’s Note: Marianne Pizzitola is a retired EMS worker and president of the New York City Organization of Public Service Retirees.

Dear Zohran,

You speak often about fighting hate, combatting racism, Islamophobia, and injustice, and I respect that. But I must ask: do our values not extend to older New Yorkers?

Editor’s Note: Harry Weiner worked for the New York City Housing Authority for more than 30 years and is a member of the Council of Municipal Retiree Organizations [COMRO]. This is his open letter to comedy legend and Elliott-Chelsea public housing product Whoopie Goldberg. 

Dear Whoopi:

I’m writing to you as a fellow senior citizen with similar  good memories of Elliott-Chelsea Houses, which is in the midst of a crisis. When I worked there in the 1980’s as a Housing Assistant, they were both very desirable “projects” to live in…safe, well maintained  and a sense of community prevailed. Indeed, it was a source of pride that you were a former resident.

By Steve Wishnia

“What’s at stake here is our democracy,” Charles Jenkins, president of the New York chapter of the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists, told Work-Bites as thousands of people assembled by Canal Street on the cool, sunny morning of Oct. 18.

By Joe Maniscalco

A humble memorial appeared inside the lobby of NYCHA’s Chelsea Addition on W. 27 Drive in Manhattan earlier this week honoring the life of a beloved neighbor who recently passed away with the threat of eviction weighing heavily on her heart.

By Joe Maniscalco

New York City retiree Harry Weiner spent just over 30 years working for the New York City Housing Authority before retiring back in 2008. After about a decade working out of 250 Broadway at the start of his career, Weiner decided to take a field assignment at the Elliott-Chelsea Houses on W.26th Street in Manhattan as a Housing Assistant.

By Steve Wishnia

Almost a year after a judge told the state Department of Labor that it had wrongly closed hundreds of wage-theft investigations, home health attendants and supporters demanded that it enforce the law in a demonstration outside its downtown Brooklyn office Oct. 8.

By Joe Maniscalco

New York City Council Member Erik Bottcher likes to portray himself as a stalwart advocate for tenants rights, but he’s failing to uphold that image in Chelsea where elderly NYCHA residents continue to be subjected to an ongoing campaign of fear and intimidation that supporters call nothing less than “horrific.”

By Joe Maniscalco

The new health plan for all active New York City municipal workers is moving ahead this week without the benefit of a public hearing that would’ve been mandatory had a quick rule change made back in May not been implemented.

By Joe Maniscalco

The heads of the Municipal Labor Committee [MLC] got what they wanted this week with members rubber-stamping a new city health plan for all municipal workers, pre-Medicare retirees, and their dependents.