Editor’s Note: Harry Weiner worked for the New York City Housing Authority for more than 30 years and is a member of the Council of Municipal Retiree Organizations [COMRO]. This is his open letter to comedy legend and Elliott-Chelsea public housing product Whoopie Goldberg. 

Dear Whoopi:

I’m writing to you as a fellow senior citizen with similar  good memories of Elliott-Chelsea Houses, which is in the midst of a crisis. When I worked there in the 1980’s as a Housing Assistant, they were both very desirable “projects” to live in…safe, well maintained  and a sense of community prevailed. Indeed, it was a source of pride that you were a former resident.

By Steve Wishnia

“What’s at stake here is our democracy,” Charles Jenkins, president of the New York chapter of the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists, told Work-Bites as thousands of people assembled by Canal Street on the cool, sunny morning of Oct. 18.

By Joe Maniscalco

A humble memorial appeared inside the lobby of NYCHA’s Chelsea Addition on W. 27 Drive in Manhattan earlier this week honoring the life of a beloved neighbor who recently passed away with the threat of eviction weighing heavily on her heart.

By Joe Maniscalco

New York City retiree Harry Weiner spent just over 30 years working for the New York City Housing Authority before retiring back in 2008. After about a decade working out of 250 Broadway at the start of his career, Weiner decided to take a field assignment at the Elliott-Chelsea Houses on W.26th Street in Manhattan as a Housing Assistant.

By Steve Wishnia

Almost a year after a judge told the state Department of Labor that it had wrongly closed hundreds of wage-theft investigations, home health attendants and supporters demanded that it enforce the law in a demonstration outside its downtown Brooklyn office Oct. 8.

By Joe Maniscalco

New York City Council Member Erik Bottcher likes to portray himself as a stalwart advocate for tenants rights, but he’s failing to uphold that image in Chelsea where elderly NYCHA residents continue to be subjected to an ongoing campaign of fear and intimidation that supporters call nothing less than “horrific.”

By Joe Maniscalco

The new health plan for all active New York City municipal workers is moving ahead this week without the benefit of a public hearing that would’ve been mandatory had a quick rule change made back in May not been implemented.

By Joe Maniscalco

The heads of the Municipal Labor Committee [MLC] got what they wanted this week with members rubber-stamping a new city health plan for all municipal workers, pre-Medicare retirees, and their dependents.

By Steve Wishnia

The city’s Municipal Labor Committee overwhelmingly approved a new health-insurance plan for current city workers and pre-Medicare retirees on Sept. 30, as protesters objected that union leaders had given out only minimal information about its details.

By Steve Wishnia

With the legislative clock ticking down toward the end of the year, scores of Uber and Lyft drivers rallied in the rain near City Hall Sept. 25, demanding that the City Council pass a bill to protect them against being fired without good cause and due process.

By Joe Maniscalco

The City of New York’s new health care plan for in-service and pre-Medicare municipal employees will directly impact the lives of hundreds of rank and file members of Plumbers Local 1—but the head of the union says he and his union have been kept completely in the dark about the proposal.

By Joe Maniscalco

Last Saturday, roughly 15 to 20 Fulton and Elliott-Chelsea [FEC] public housing tenants fighting the impending destruction of their homes intercepted Council Member Erik Bottcher outside a Manhattan deli at W. 26th Street and 9th Avenue demanding a meeting with him and challenging his support of the demolition planCommunity Board 4 has already rejected. 

Work-Bites

Debra Lieberman has lived in the Chelsea Addition senior building on W. 27th Drive in Manhattan since 2013. Now, she and her neighbors are being told they have one month to "relocate" so that Related Companies and Essence Development can begin demolishing their apartments. It's all part of the “reimagining of public housing” in New York City.

By Joe Maniscalco

You can’t take it with you—but if you’re the outgoing head of the New York City Council you can try and make sure the power you’ve built into the Speaker’s position over the last four years continues long after you’re out of office.

By Steve Wishnia

More than a year after United Federation of Teachers members angry about being switched into profit-driven Medicare Advantage plan unseated the union’s dominant Unity caucus from leading its retirees chapter, the chapter’s ability to advocate for preserving their traditional Medicare has been tightly-restricted.

By Joe Maniscalco

Still struggling to get out of single digits in the latest polls, incumbent Mayor Eric Adams this week not only put the health and welfare of Central Park horses before the health and welfare of New York City municipal retirees—he did everything he could to fast-track the effort.

Work-Bites

One of the first things Donald Trump did when he came into office in January was fire National Labor Relations Board member Gwynn Wilcox, thereby depriving the NLRB the three-member quorum it needs to function.

Dear Council Member,

This Summer, the severity of the Emergency Medical Services staffing problem, as it is part of the FDNY, was clearly demonstrated. As temperatures in the city hovered near 100°F in June, the Mayor declared a Heat Emergency. During it, the average citywide ambulance response time to life-threatening medical emergencies climbed to 12 minutes and 19 seconds, the highest since March 2020 at the start of the Covid pandemic.

By Joe Maniscalco

If New York City Council Member Erik Bottcher [D-3rd District] was home this weekend when outraged NYCHA public housing tenants came calling, he couldn’t have been very happy.

By Joe Maniscalco

When public housing residents living in the Fulton and Elliott-Chelsea Houses marched in this year’s New York City Labor Day Parade to highlight the impending destruction of their homes, IBT Local 808 Secretary-Treasurer Chris Silvera and other members of his local marched with them.