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.

By Joe Maniscalco

Outgoing New York City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams [D-28th District] did everything she possibly could to bottle up legislation protecting municipal retirees fighting the privatization of their traditional Medicare benefits—but will City Council Member Julie Menin will be any different as the new Speaker?

Editor’s Note: The following is an op-ed from consumer advocate and former presidential candidate Ralph Nader and Constitutional lawyer Bruce Fein.

Dear Mayor-elect Mandani,

It should not come as a surprise to alert citizens that your decisive victory in the Mayoral race has prompted your opponents – the privileged super-rich and their indentured servants in City Hall – to label you as an “extremist,” “radical,” or, in Trump’s view, a “communist.” How ludicrous! Your affordability agenda is hardly immoderate. Many Democratic politicians have taken these positions over time.

By Steve Wishnia

State Supreme Court Judge David B. Cohen on Dec. 4 denied the New York City Housing Authority’s request for a preliminary injunction ordering eight Chelsea Addition senior-housing residents to accept relocation so the building can be demolished.

Editor’s Note: Ray Rogers is a pioneering labor strategist & organizer, and founder of CorporateCampaign.org.

By Ray Rogers

Since 2004, as part of the Campaign to Stop Killer Coke, I have attended Coca-Cola’s annual meetings of shareholders to confront The Coca-Cola Company’s chief executives and board members over the company's involvement in horrific human rights abuses and other criminal behavior.

Editor’s Note: This is Part II of Phil’s first-person account of a truly unusual decertification fight that took place at a Brooks Brothers shirt factory located in Garland, North Carolina during the mid-1990s.

WAR STORIES BY Phil Cohen

As we resumed our seats at the bargaining table, Hodges asked if we’d had a chance to review the company’s package.

“As much as possible within a short period of time,” I replied. “Where do you come off trying to eliminate seniority from the job bidding language? That’s at the heart of every union contract, including the other two Brooks Brothers plants.”