By Joe Maniscalco

It’s just after 9 p.m. in the fall of 1992 and union organizer Phil Cohen is inside a dingy cement-block building in Cornelius, North Carolina wondering if he’s quick enough to pull the .38 special in his shoulder holster before the two irate Klansmen in front of him start shooting.

By Steve Wishnia

Saying that a 1,000-unit Harlem development approved by the City Council last year does not include housing neighborhood residents can actually afford, about 25 people rallied on the steps of City Hall May 27 to demand that the city require it to include 400 apartments for working-class people.

By Joe Maniscalco

The head of the largest public sector union in the City of New York and his lieutenants said a lot jaw-dropping things this past Wednesday in opposition to No More 24 advocates fighting to end exploitation and institutionalized wage theft in the home care industry.

By Bob Hennelly

In this special edition of Caribbean Voices and Beyond with Issac Ferguson we look at the roughly 300 detainees at Delaney Hall in Newark, New Jersey who started a hunger strike and work stoppage last Friday night to protest inhumane conditions inside the privately-owned immigration prison operated by GEO, a major Trump donor.

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 Bob Hennelly

This past week Mayor Mamdani delivered a master class in how to completely reset the annual municipal budget conversation while delivering a $124.7 billion budget that on paper zeroed out a $12 billion budget gap looming in no small part due to cynical under budgeting by the previous Adams administration.

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 Bob Hennelly

Trump’s ongoing illegal war on Iran and increasing efforts at voter suppression here at home continue to spark resistance across the nation.

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.

War Stories By Phil Cohen

Editor’s Note: Editor’s Note: Several years ago, Phil Cohen authored an indispensable training manual in labor law for rank and file workers called “Enforcing Your Rights.” Work-Bites has been happy to bring you the serialization of that book with this concluding chapter on Just Cause.

If you ask most workers about the most important part of a union contract, they’ll usually say money or seniority. But both answers are wrong. The most important part of a union contract lies in two simple words: Just Cause.  Sometimes buried within the most unlikely contract article, you’ll find, “the company can discipline or fire employees for just cause.”

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 Bob Hennelly

On this episode of Frontline Voices on WBAI, Samar Ali, a Research Professor of Political Science and Law at Vanderbilt University, talks about how last week’s landmark Supreme Court decision on Louisiana vs. Callais could reshape the political landscape in America.

By Bob Hennelly

On the latest episode of “What’s Going On” I speak with Dr. Joe Wilson and Larry Hamm, founder of the People's Organization for Progress, who recap May Day's dynamic American rebirth even as SCOTUS demolishes the 1965 Voting Rights Act and Louisiana delays a primary that was already underway.

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.