Work-Bites, Joe Maniscalco, April 21, 2026

The March 19 photograph of home care workers cheering New York City Council Speaker Julie Menin on the sidewalk as she promises to bring the “No More 24 bill” to the floor for a vote this month features prominently outside the gates of City Hall where the workers are now on the fifth day of their hunger strike.

Ivy Wang, a young public housing advocate fighting the planned demolition of the Fulton and Elliott-Chelsea Houses not far from City Hall, pointed to the photograph prominently displayed in front of the Broadway and Murray Street subway stop on Sunday and talked about how “this picture of Julie Menin particularly pisses me off.”

“All I see is her making an empty promise to home care workers that she has so far failed to keep,” Wang said. “I feel that the promise meant nothing to her as she stares into the faces of these workers who are so often undervalued in our oppressive capitalist system, and whose struggles are too often invisible and unspoken.”

Speaker Menin appeared to have distinguished herself from her predecessor—former City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams—when in February she backed a public hearing on the “No More 24” bill and later pledged to bring it to the floor for a vote.

Adams—now on the gubernatorial re-election ticket as Kathy Hochul’s number two—had spent her entire tenure as City Council Speaker suppressing a vote on the “No More 24” bill. Sponsored by Council Member Chris Marte [D-1st District]—Intro. 303, the “No More 24” bill— seeks to end round-the-clock shifts at roughly half the pay in New York City home care industry and replace them with 12-hour split shifts at full pay.

No More 24 advocates insist what exists now amounts to nothing less than modern day slavery and institutionalized violence against the older immigrant women of color who perform most of the home care work in New York City.

“[Speaker] Menin thinks she can make a promise to these people because it means nothing and she won’t be held accountable to it,” Wang continued this weekend. “We’re not going to let her forget that she gave her word to these workers.”

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