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Construction workers and general building laborers who make up LIUNA Local 79 planned to rally on Thursday, January 16, at 3 p.m. in front of the Empire State Building.

The union has posted several large Scabby the Rat inflatables as sentries near the building’s entrance for more than a week now. Local 79 has been complaining about the Empire State Building’s record of working with contractors who employ non-union workers. Those workers, Local 79 claims, are not earning the type of salaries normally paid to building laborers in New York City.

Data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics in 2023 showed that in New York, construction workers make an average yearly wage ranging between $63,830 and $68,210. But that’s not what workers at the iconic Empire State Building are being paid, contend union members who say they have spoken with the non-union workers in efforts to help them.

The Empire State Building is owned and operated by the Empire State Realty Trust (ESRT), a real estate investment trust (REIT). The company owns 28 New York City-based buildings, most of which have units leased out to office and retail clients.

ESRT works with subcontractors who bring in their own employees to do the work of maintaining the buildings. Local 79 members say those workers are hired by contractors who come in to do various buildouts, demolition services, or general contracting work. But if the subcontractors are not paying equitable wages and not properly supporting worker rights, they are chipping away at the gains union workers have made in the industry.

“Every day, Laborers’ Local 79 is outside the Empire State Building to highlight the exploitation of non-union construction workers at this iconic building,” Oona Adams, Local 79’s director of organizing said in a statement to the AmNews. “It is shameful and wrong that Empire State Realty has chosen to hire contractors who refuse to pay family-sustaining wages and benefits to non-union construction laborers. We fight to ensure that all construction laborers are paid fairly, treated with respect, and able to do their jobs safely.”

Phone calls and emails to ESRT for a response to Local 79’s claims were not returned before the Amsterdam News went to press.

A union flier posted near the protest rally site states that Local 79 is “.. committed to a healthy, diverse, and equitable workplace that actively promotes employee growth and development and drives positive social impact for the well-being of our employees, tenants, and the communities we serve.

“If the Empire State Realty Trust is committed to the communities they serve, why have they now taken the stance of putting profits over people? Every construction worker working in their building should be paid a living wage so they can actually invest in the community. Instead the Empire State Realty Trust has adopted a practice of hiring substandard contractors to work in their buildings. These contractors don’t pay area standard wages and benefits that every hard worker deserves.”

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 The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has declassified documents showing that it monitored Puerto Rican independence groups from the 1960s through the 1980s.

Under an anti-leftist counterintelligence program known as Operation CHAOS or Operation MH/CHAOS, the agency monitored the actions of the Pro-Independence Movement (MPI), which later became the Puerto Rican Socialist Party (PSP).

The CIA is not legally allowed to collect intelligence on U.S. citizens, yet it was empowered to create and operate MH/CHAOS during the administrations of President Lyndon Johnson and President Richard Nixon. 

Both U.S. presidents expressed concerns about potential alliances between independence movement activists and the radical left anti-Vietnam War movement, Black civil rights activists, and radical student activists. They were particularly concerned about any connections they may have had with the then newly formed Fidel Castro-led government of Cuba.

The Movimiento Independentista Nacional Hostosiano (Hostosian National Independence Movement; MINH) called on representatives in the Puerto Rican government to speak out against the MHCHAOS program. “The least that would be expected of those who claim to represent the Puerto Rican people is that they take a position in defense of the civil and human rights of the population,” MINH wrote in a note posted to its website.

“It’s not shocking because the FBI and police units between Puerto Rico, Chicago, and New York City have always surveilled the Puerto Rican independence movement, so the CIA rounding this out is not shocking,” Erica González, director of  Power 4 Puerto Rico, a national coalition of Puerto Ricans in the diaspora, told the Amsterdam News. “The U.S. came into Puerto Rico with an agenda of extracting wealth for U.S. corporations and using the archipelago for military use. The independence movement has always represented a challenge to that agenda and to U.S. domination for those interests. 

“It’s part and parcel with how the U.S., sadly, has treated liberation movements from people of color.” 

During the 2024 Puerto Rican general elections, the Puerto Rican Independence Party’s gubernatorial candidate, Juan Dalmau, garnered 32.7% of the popular vote. He came in second in the contest to be the next governor. 

This was a result that, at one point in Puerto Rico’s history, would not have been so shocking, said González — in the past, pro-independence parties were regularly on the ballot like any other political party. “Puerto Ricans and then younger people, in multiple surveys — even people of different status or income brackets — have shown more of a leaning toward independence. I think you have this generation that has not grown up with that chilling effect, and they see what’s happening with Puerto Rico, and this whole movement that took place after the ousting of the governor [Ricardo Rosselló in July 2019] … that builds a lot of momentum around getting, for the first time in decades, a pro-sovereignty candidate as a viable competitor …, so it has recalibrated politics in the island.”

The CIA’s gathering of information about independence movements coincided with the period of the “carpeteo,” when the intelligence division of the Puerto Rico police worked with the FBI to spy on left-leaning political activists. The carpetas program took place between the 1940s and 1987, according to photographer Christopher Gregory-Rivera, who has been documenting the surveillance program. Both agencies collected personal information about individuals and reports on the independence movements on the island through undercover intelligence agents.

In 1978, the late California Congressman Ronald Dellums sent the CIA a formal request, asking if the agency had done any work in the archipelago that affected the independence movement. Sections of the CIA’s now declassified notes put forward to respond to Dellums show that “[t]here have been two instances of Agency analysis [sections in black redacted in original documents] in July 1954 expressed an opinion that there was a trend towards pro-independence sympathies in Puerto Rico under the then . The writer merely commented that he felt that independence would be welcomed by the majority of Puerto Ricans, that independence would gain friends for the United States and that it would also improve the prestige of Puerto Rico. An Agency memorandum was published in 1976 which dealt with the Cuban effort to promote the cause of Puerto Rican independence.”

This past March 2024, Congressmembers Joaquin Castro of Texas and Jimmy Gomez of California also requested CIA information about the extent of surveillance of Latino civil rights activists, such as labor leader César Chávez and members of the Mexican American group the American G.I. Forum.

“The declassification of materials related to the surveillance of the Latino civil rights movement,” Castro and Gomez wrote in their request letter, “would not only align with our commitment to transparency and civil liberties but would also contribute to a more inclusive understanding of American history. It is imperative that we continue to confront and address these aspects of our past to ensure that such overreaches do not occur in the future.”

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* This article was originally published here

The 2024 New York City Employment and Training Coalition (NYCETC) conference took place over two days in December. The get-together brought labor leaders, employers, politicians, educators, and workforce coordinators together to talk about where the city is headed and what kind of employment future New Yorkers will be engaged in.

The conference was designed to focus on workforce development for the future, says NYCETC CEO Greg Morris. “What…was focused on was if you are in the workforce development space, if you are seeking talent and employers, let’s talk about how we do that work and do that work well, especially given the reality that industries –– the industries that are growing in New York City, whether it’s the green economy conversation, whether it’s the expansion of healthcare, or whether it’s related to tech and AI, automation, etc. –– let’s have a conversation about what, in terms of practice, what we’re doing well, what we can do more of to support New Yorkers who are seeking jobs, seeking transition to new jobs, and how it is that we ensure that the employers in New York City have the talent they need to both reflect their interests and their desire to create value and impact, that they represent the equity, inclusivity, and accessibility that we expect for New Yorkers.”

New York City’s employment recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic has been impressive. The most recent Bureau of Labor statistics showed that health and education were the fastest growing sectors. New hires in those industries don’t always make salaries that can afford them a comfortable life in the metropolitan area. Meanwhile, the New York City Economic Development Corporation (EDC) recently reported that the city has “record-high employment figures…and growth in new, innovative sectors like the life sciences, green economy, and tech.” Those industries, which pay significantly higher salaries, have traditionally employed fewer people of color.

New York City’s labor force participation reached 62.8% as of September 2024, but “unemployment rates for Black and Latino New Yorkers stood at 8.5% and 6.7% in the third quarter of 2024 [respectively], significantly lower than their pandemic peak but still higher than the white unemployment rate of 3.3%,” the EDC report notes. “While the labor force participation rate has improved for New Yorkers of all races since 2022, the white labor force participation rate, at 67.5% in Q2 2024, is well above the rates for other races and ethnicities.”

NYCETC represents organizations that try to ensure that all New Yorkers have access to training opportunities, for the jobs developing for New York’s future,” Morris said. “And if we need to build a scaffolding for folks to get ready, that’s what we want to do. So, for Black and Brown New Yorkers, for any type of person seeking a pathway to a future, that’s what we’re about.

“When we look at the wage data for how it is that Black and Brown New Yorkers in particular are underpaid compared to their white peers, unemployment numbers are greater for Black and Brown New Yorkers than for white folks. That’s something we need to be constantly focused on addressing. …That’s what the workforce agenda that we’re trying to build will seek to reflect.”

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* This article was originally published here

Like former First Lady Michelle Obama, we won’t be attending Trump’s inauguration, and that would be true even if we were invited. We have no idea why Michelle won’t be there (Barack will attend) or why she failed to show up for the funeral services for Jimmy Carter, though it was reported that she had a scheduling conflict that made it necessary for her to remain in Hawaii. It is our suspicion that she stayed away from the funeral because it would have seated her right next to Trump, and that was probably too close for comfort.

Whatever the reasons for her keeping her distance from the inauguration are hers to disclose, and we support her stance on this and would like to see a few other notable and elected officials refusing to attend, which, in effect, would be a silent rejection of his oncoming reign of power and duplicity. And her resolve on the inauguration jibes perfectly with Vice President Harris’s non-invitation to JD Vance for a formal sit-down tour of the White House. 

For the first time in the nation’s history we have a convicted felon occupying  the Oval Office, and if he fulfills any of the nefarious promises he’s spewed then we are all in trouble. It is almost insufferable to have a leader who is talking about expropriating the Panama Canal, Greenland, and even Canada. What next, Mexico and Iceland?

Those announcements may be only distractions while he plans other more realistic and distressing possibilities, i.e. the deportations and promise to pardon the Jan. 6 rioters, a veritable affront to the democratic process, which is nothing new from this miscreant. 

Fasten your public policy seatbelts because there’s every indication that we are in for a rocky ride with unrelenting turbulence from the Trump edicts. Will we survive? Most assuredly — didn’t we make it through slavery, Andrew Johnson, and the Great Depression?

“Michelle, ma belle. Sont les mots qui vont tres bien ensemble!”

The post EDITORIAL: Michelle, ma belle! appeared first on New York Amsterdam News.

* This article was originally published here