Editor’s Note: The following is an open letter to retirees from New York Public Library Retirees Association President Ray Markey and VP Jane Kunstler

Dear Retiree,

The New York Public Library and the District Council 37/The New York Public Health & Security Plan Trust have been paying all Medicare Part B eligible retirees 80% of our contribution, not 100%. The Trust letter of 2025 writes, “we have decided again this year to reimburse the 2024 Medicare Part B premium at 80% of the base cost.” This has been happening since 2017.

By Steve Wishnia

Few people say they support the current system of paying home health aides who do 24-hour shifts for only 13 hours—even as they oppose efforts to end it. “We all recognize the onerous conditions some home care workers face. Every worker deserves a decent wage for every minute they work,” the Legal Aid Society wrote in March, joined by the DC37 union and a group of disabled people’s organizations, in a letter urging the City Council to reject legislation to prohibit 24-hour shifts.

By Joe Maniscalco

Ugly tensions erupted outside City Hall on Wednesday as workers and advocates fighting to end round-the-clock shifts in New York City’s home care industry marched down Broadway and crashed District Council 37’s rally against the proposed ban.

By Joe Maniscalco

Opponents of legislation ending round-the-clock shifts in New York City’s home care industry are expected to argue at a rally in City Hall Park on Wednesday that while “abusive”—little can be done to change a system widely acknowledged as nothing less than modern day slavery. 

By Steve Wishnia

A quartet of people in wheelchairs, joined by a handful of supporters, protested outside City Councilmember Christopher Marte’s Chinatown district office May 12, saying that Intro 303, his bill to prohibit 24-hour shifts for home-care aides, would lead to patients getting their care cut off.

By Joe Maniscalco

The hard-fought struggle to finally end institutionalized wage theft and round-the-clock shifts in New York City’s home care industry entered a new phase this week with a possible vote a bill nobody seems to want. 

By Steve Wishnia

City Council Speaker Julie Menin has introduced a version of the No More 24 Act that would extend how long home health-care workers may still do 24-hour shifts by six months.

By Joe Maniscalco

New York City public Housing advocate Layla Law-Gisiko may have lost her bid to win last month’s special election to fill Erik Bottcher’s vacated District 3 Council seat, but the vote once again proved that Chelsea residents reject plans to demolition their community.

By Steve Wishnia

Washington Square Park was a sea of orange May 1, as the Laborers International Union of North America brought hundreds of members from as far as New England and Delaware for the May Day march.

By Joe Maniscalco

Repealing the New York State Stock Transfer Tax rebate could, according to supporters, generate as much as $40 billion to $75 billion annually for the most urgent needs facing working class New Yorkers today.

By Joe Maniscalco

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani stood inside Washington Square Park on May Day waxing poetically about socialist icon Eugene V. Debs and the battle for the eight hour workday.

But just 20-some-odd blocks away outside the gates of City Hall home care workers and their allies fighting to end the 24-hour workday and other working class struggles against privatization and displacement called out Hizzoner’s hypocrisy in turning a blind eye to all those ongoing battles.

By Joe Maniscalco

Has the election Mayor Zohran Mamdani, as a recent UFT Delegate Assembly resolution declared, “definitively ended the immediate danger” of New York City municipal retirees being stripped of their Traditional Medicare and pushed into a predatory Medicare Advantage health insurance plan?

By Joe Maniscalco

New York City home care workers fighting to ban the 24-hour workday capped off Week 1 of their hunger strike outside the gates of City Hall on Thursday confident City Council Speaker Julie Menin will finally green light a vote on legislation they want by mid-May.

By Joe Maniscalco

New York City law enforcement agents on Tuesday reportedly tried unsuccessfully to strip elderly home care workers of the makeshift tent they’re using to help withstand unseasonably frigid temperatures and rain during their ongoing hunger strike outside the gates of City Hall.

By Joe Maniscalco

The March 19 photograph of home care workers cheering New York City Council Speaker Julie Menin on the sidewalk as she promises to bring the “No More 24 bill” to the floor for a vote this month features prominently outside the gates of City Hall where the workers are now on the fifth day of their hunger strike. 

By Joe Maniscalco

Despite some of the most powerful forces in New York State arraying against them, home care workers on hunger strike this week in support of the No More 24 bill thought they were finally seeing a light at the end of the tunnel.

By Steve Wishnia

New York residential-building workers and landlords have reached a tentative agreement on a new four-year contract, 32BJ SEIU and the Realty Advisory Board on Labor Relations announced late in the afternoon Apr. 17—three days before the current contract expires.

By Steve Wishnia

Arlind Lela led a chant of “Kursluftujmë fitojmë” at 32BJ SEIU’s rally April 15. That means “We fight and win” in Albanian, a language spoken by many of the building-service workers union’s members.

Five days before the contract covering 34,000 residential-building workers will expire, a crowd the union estimated at 10,000 people assembled in the downtown lanes of Park Avenue on the Upper East Side and authorized a strike by voice vote.

By Joe Maniscalco

New York City democratic socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani doesn’t believe public housing is worth saving, according to tenants pushing back against ongoing plans to demolish 18 NYCHA buildings on the west side of Manhattan.

By Joe Maniscalco

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani is celebrating his first 100 days in office with some favorable poll numbers and national headlines touting his “unique star power.” Underneath it all, however, Hizzoner has demonstrated an established pattern of simply ignoring inconvenient groups that threaten to undermine the social media confection he and his administration have carefully curated for mass consumption.