During his campaign for governor, Eliot Spitzer promised to address New York State’s decade-long failure to fund public housing. While he has yet to follow through on this promise, labor leaders believed that he now has the opportunity to do so by signing the shelter allowance bill, which would put $90 million and alleviate NYCHA’s budget deficit. more>

According to the AFL-CIO study, there were 5,734 fatal workplace injuries with significant increases in fatalities among African-American, Latinos, foreign-born and young workers in 2005. more>

On June 1, the union will begin paying the highest price any labor union can imagine for the 2005 strike – the loss of dues check-off. “It’s all part of their ongoing attempt to punish Local 100 for standing up back in December 2005,” said TWU Local 100 President Roger Toussaint. more>

District Council 37, the city’s largest public sector union, said soaring prices make it virtually impossible for many of the workers it represents to find affordable housing in New York. more>

“Get all the bad people out of the union. They don’t look after our safety. Members have to dig into their own pockets for legal help. We’re tired of it,” said Brijida Pilgrim, a bus driver for 12 years and a union member of Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1181 for 11 years. more>

According to a lawyer on the case, Yetta G. Kurland, only a small number of women rise through the ranks. EMS has “just a handful of ranking female officers,” including seven chiefs and a little over a dozen captains on a force of about 2,500. more>

The union insists the threat in the Bronx is part of a national plan by the postal service to close mail-processing plants, spelling the disruption of mail service for residents and businesses, and the displacement of over 2,000 postal workers. more>

“What we are fighting against when we refuse substandard wages, benefits and conditions for ourselves is a substandard future for our students,” said Barbara Bowen, president of Professional Staff Congress (PSC), the union representing CUNY’s 20,000 professors and staff. more>

Moved by the Hurricane Katrina tragedy, members of Transport Workers Union Local 100 assembled a convoy of 70 buses and 47 supply vehicles and pulled out of New York early morning of September 3, bound for New Orleans, Louisiana. “If we can move New York, I guess we can move New Orleans or anyone else who needs support,” said TA Surface Bus Operator Darien Davis. more>

Stewart Acuff, organizing director for the AFL-CIO, said that since women of color who belong to unions generally make more than those not in unions, “Women, too, have a lot at stake” in the outcome of the ongoing debate. more>

Determined to stop President Bush from implementing another four years of policies detrimental to working families, unions are sending more than 15,000 members to knock on union household doors and monitor voter registration in swing states with a track record of problems. more>

Four hundred day care directors and 7,000 teachers – responsible for over 50,000 low- and middle-income children in 350 day care centers throughout the city – are fired up. They have been without a contract for three years and now they are sending an angry message to Mayor Michael Bloomberg. more>

Will the city’s Black and Latino communities be hardest hit by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s (MTA) plans to close 177 token booths? It certainly looks like it. more>