Mamdani’s Labor Policy Worsens Inequality
Walking my kids to their first day of school brought the unwelcome news that PS 45, on Staten Island, is down to two crossing guards. We used to have (and still need) four. This is a system-wide problem, as the city reports nearly 200 unfilled posts, even after former Mayor Eric Adams cut 500 vacant crossing guard lines as a budget gimmick in 2024.
Crossing guards’ pay starts $18 an hour. One reason why the pay barely exceeds minimum wage is the Office of Labor Relations’ strict policy of pattern bargaining over wages across city agencies, in which the first union to settle a contract with the city — be it teachers, cops or DC37 — sets the pattern for the upper-most across-the-board pay increase that the city will pay any other union.
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NYPD Must Enforce City Traffic Laws (Or Else Bring Back the Agency That Will)
The “second-most-reckless driver in the city” racked up 547 camera-issued red light and speeding tickets since 2002 before being exposed by Streetsblog NYC in April.
James Giovansanti raced his 2½ ton pickup truck through the same school zones and traffic lights on Staten Island, at the same times, at least every other day, on his way to and from work. Instead of posting a patrol car at one of these intersections to catch this reckless driver, and give him enough tickets to suspend his license, the NYPD is instead dealing with a PR crisis.
Giovansanti, you see, is a cop and his depraved indifference to pedestrian safety lays bare the crime scandal that the press rarely talks about: that the NYPD have virtually stopped enforcing traffic laws.
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Op-Ed: Mamdani Is Right To Side With The Nurses
Mayor John Lindsay famously faced a massive citywide strike of bus and subway workers as his first challenge in office. The Transport Workers Union Local 100 contract expired at the stroke of midnight on Jan. 1, 1966, just as Lindsay was sworn in. The strike was finally settled 11 days later, with union leaders jailed at Lindsay’s insistence for leading an “illegal” work stoppage.
Legendary TWU president Mike Quill suffered an ultimately fatal heart attack in prison, after wishing the judge who did Lindsay’s bidding “drop dead in his black robes.”
This is what some in the press have suggested towards Mayor Mamdani, who has joined with the 15,000 nurses striking against three big hospitals. Continue reading “Op-Ed: Mamdani Is Right To Side With The Nurses”
Review of “The Pandemic and the Working Class: How US Labor Navigated COVID-19” for H-Sci-Med-Tech
It is sometimes said that there are decades in which not much changes and years in which an entire decade’s worth of sociopolitical tumult occurs. The so-called COVID year, March 2020 until the vaccine rollout of the following year, is an example of the latter. The COVID year markedly reduced average American life expectancy, nurtured extremist politics and conspiracy-minded cynicism, frayed communities, and eroded trust in institutions.
For workers who, in the words of Nick Juravich and Steve Striffler, were briefly “elevated from disposable to ‘essential,’” the period led to an uptick in worker self-organizing, new wage demands and concessions on work-from-home flexibility, some successful union organizing, and a nearly impossible amount of worker protest to fully quantify, including “quiet” and actual quitting. “Not in nearly a century had so many people felt the failure of government and indifference of the bosses so quickly and so deeply, on a scale and with an intensity that was difficult to ignore.” Continue reading “Review of “The Pandemic and the Working Class: How US Labor Navigated COVID-19” for H-Sci-Med-Tech”