By Bob Hennelly

Late last week, United Steelworkers Nurses Local 4-200 voted overwhelmingly to ratify their contract with Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital and should be back to work in the first week of January after a bitter four month strike for safer staffing.

By Bob Hennelly

This week on the Stuck Nation Labor Radio Hour, we visit with Antoinette Miles, the interim director of the New Jersey’s Working Families Alliance. Last month, she was the master of ceremonies at a rally in front of the Legislative Annex down in Trenton that drew a couple of hundred labor, social justice and environmental activists protesting Gov. Phil Murphy’s plan to let the state’s 2.5 percent Corporate Business Tax Surcharge lapse on corporations that make more than a million dollars in annual profits—not exactly your small businesses. 

By Bob Hennelly

The Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union  [BCTGM] Local 390G have been on strike at International Flavor & Fragrance [IFF] in Memphis for nearly five months. On this episode of the Stuck Nation Labor Radio Hour, we welcome Local 390G President Cedric Wilson — as well as Local 4-200 President Judy Danella; Council Member Chris Marte; and NYC Organization of Public Service Retirees President Marianne Pizzitola.

By Bob Hennelly

On this week’s episode of the Stuck Nation Labor Radio Hour — the UAW strike continues. Some 4,000 UAW rank and file members who work for the Volvo-owned Mack Trucks company overwhelmingly rejected a tentative contract. The proposed agreement included a 20 percent wage increase over five years with a ten percent increase in the first year and a guarantee of no increases in workers’ health care insurance premiums for the term of the contract.

By Bob Hennelly

In part I of this week’s episode of the Stuck Nation Labor Radio Hour, we look at the 18th day of the United Auto Workers strike against the Big Three auto giants. The UAW has just reached a tentative contract deal with Mack Trucks avoiding a work stoppage at that iconic brand that’s now owned by Volvo. Talks were also scheduled to resume between SAG-AFTRA and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers. The 160,000-member actor’s union has been out since July 14. The Writers Guild reached a tentative contract deal last week, which ended their five-month strike. Rank and file union members will be voting on the 94-page contract this week.

By Bob Hennelly

On this action-packed episode of the Stucknation Labor Radio Hour, we’re talking about the UAW’s “Stand Up” strike; United Steelworkers Nurses Local 4-200’s strike for safer staffing at the Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Jersey and what at stake for the general public — and SAG-AFTRA video gamers eyeing their own strike vote.

But that’s not all…

By Bob Hennelly

On this 22nd anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 attack on the World Trade Center which killed close to 3,000 people, we look at the public health fallout from U.S. EPA and New York City officials telling the world the air was "safe to breathe" following the attack when testing actually showed it was not. 

Thousands more have died following the initial attack from their exposure to that toxic air. 

By Bob Hennelly

This Labor Day, the most pressing question we in the labor movement can ask ourselves is how to reverse the historic decades-in-the-making decline in the percentage of workers represented by a union.

By Bob Hennelly

On the latest episode of the Stuck Nation Labor Radio Hour, Judy Danella, RN, and president of United Steel Workers Nurses Local 4-200, updates us on her union’s strike at the Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick, New Jersey. New York State Nurses Association [NYSNA] President Nancy Hagans is also on hand to discuss her union’s new contract agreement with New York City’s Health + Hospitals Corporation, which promises a $32,000 a year pay boost over the next five-and-a-half years.

By Bob Hennelly

On the latest episode of the Stuck Nation Labor Radio Hour, we recap last week’s Washington, D.C. rally to save traditional Medicare with Marianne Pizzitola, president of the New York City Organization of Public Service Retirees.

By Bob Hennelly

On this episode of the Labor Radio Hour, NYC Central Labor Council President Vincent Alvarez talks about Strike Summer 2023 — and the possible implications of a national Teamsters strike against UPS happening at the same time members of SAG-AFTRA and Writers Guild of America are striking against the AMPTP. Locally, the New York Nurses Association went on strike at some private non-profit hospitals. Did COVID give workers new leverage?

By Bob Hennelly

On this episode of the Stuck Nation Labor Radio Hour, we visit with noted labor historian and author Joshua Freeman, a distinguished professor emeritus at CUNY’s Queens College, to discuss the significant increase in union organizing and strike activity across the country. We ask with all of this union activity why is union density actually going down?

By Bob Hennelly

On this episode of the Stuck Nation Labor Radio Hour, we’re delving further into the Newark Port fire that took the lives of two New Jersey firefighters, and raises serious workplace and public health questions — plus more!

By Bob Hennelly

On this Independence Day edition of the Stuck Nation Labor Radio Hour, we find Canada continuing to battle hundreds of forest fires in what is that nation’s worst wildfire season on record with 250 blazes still out of control consuming close to 20 million acres — the near equivalent of two thirds of New York State’s landmass.

By Bob Hennelly

On this episode of the Stuck Nation Labor Radio Hour, we welcome New Jersey Poor People Campaign’s delegates Rachel Dawn Davis, with WaterSpirit, and Pastor Rupert Hall from Trenton’s Turning Point United Methodist Church who recently joined nearly 1,000 other activists from over 30 states at the three-day PPC event that culminated in a lobby day in Congress.

By Bob Hennelly

On this Juneteenth Edition of the Stuck Nation Labor Radio Hour we’re broadcasting from Washington DC at the Poor People’s Campaign Moral Poverty Action Congress. NYC Council Member Charles Barron is on hand to talk about new legislation being introduced this week to safeguard traditional Medicare benefits for municipal retirees, and much more.

By Bob Hennelly

In the middle part of the show, NYC Comptroller Brad Lander explains why he opted to reject the Aetna Medicare Advantage Plan that Mayor Adams is forcing 250,000 New York City retired civil servants to enroll in. Lander explains how pending litigation by the New York City Organization of Public Service Retirees raises significant questions about the legality of the procurement.

By Bob Hennelly

On this episode of the Stuck Nation Labor Radio Hour, we are joined by Pete Kramer, veteran reporter with the Journal News and member of the News Guild CWA New York State team to discuss today’s one-day strike against Gannett called at two dozen newspapers in several states…

By Bob Hennelly

On this Memorial Day episode of the Stuck Nation Labor Radio Hour, we’re talking about the courage and sacrifices working people are making throughout this county. First up is a conversation with Debbie White, Registered Nurse and head of Health Professionals and Allied Employees (HPAE) — the largest healthcare union in New Jersey about the ongoing fight for safe staffing laws in the Garden State.

By Bob Hennelly

The corporate news media has been working overtime to drum up fear and anxiety in the population alternating between their fixation on the border and the supposed great perils of undocumented immigration — and breathless stories about the completely manufactured beltway crisis over the impending debt ceiling. They want us to be fearful and in the insecure mindset where we see a world of scarcity.