Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) spent the evening of Inauguration Day just outside her congressional district supporting a Teamsters union strike in the Bronx.
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For the first time in 35 years, workers at New York City s Hunts Point Market are on strike.
About 1,400 produce workers part of the Teamsters Local 202 union unanimously voted to strike on Sunday, January 17, after contract negotiations broke down when management countered appeals for a $1 hourly raise with an offer of a $0.32 hourly raise. These workers–who have continued working throughout the devastating COVID-19 pandemic–are responsible for supplying 60 percent of the produce in New York City.
On Wednesday, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez helped draw some spotlight on the movement by skipping the estimated $200 million inaugural festivities to join union members on the picket line calling for the $1 wage increase.
A dream long nurtured by grassroots neighborhood activists approached reality last week when Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced an offshore wind turbine assembly hub in Brooklyn part of a promised “green energy economy.”
Sunset Park environmental justice advocates had pressed for more than two decades to revive a declining industrial waterfront while sowing the seeds for projects that would serve their largely Latino and immigrant community as well as the environment.
“The possibility of bringing good paying jobs to our community and to also address climate change, for us, that’s everything,” said Elizabeth Yeampierre, executive director of the local group UPROSE. “That’s what we fight for. We fight for our people, for our
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It won’t be doomsday for subway riders quite yet, after the MTA
approved a $17 billion budget holding off on the drastic service cuts it has threatened because of its pandemic-induced financial crisis.
Instead, the transit agency’s
budget assumes fingers crossed that it will get a $4.5 billion cash infusion from the federal government. That’s roughly the amount Sen. Chuck Schumer has been
trying to secure for the transit system in recent stimulus bill negotiations. So gone, for now, are the 40 percent reduction in subway service the MTA had proposed. If the money comes through, it would be enough to close the MTA’s deficit for 2021 but still leave an $8 billion deficit in the following years. If it doesn’t come through, the service cuts and large scale layoffs could be resurrected in the new year.