}
The men began arriving last Wednesday, first a trickle, then dozens. By Friday there were hundreds of them, along with a few women.
They set up their tents and mattresses on the sidewalk in Long Island City, Queens, unpacked their Coronas and cards – and settled in to wait as long as five days and nights for a slender chance at a union job as an elevator mechanic.
You want ketchup with that? If you’re dining in Manhattan, it’s going to cost you.
Many McDonald’s franchises in the borough are charging customers extra to drench their Big Macs in the condiment.
More often than not, Marta Schwartz’s paycheck is worth nothing.
The $5 she makes per hour as a server doesn’t even pay the taxes she owes on her tips, and that’s reflected in her pay stub with a neat line of zeros.
Schwartz is one of 771,000 hospitality workers in New York State — about 2.8 million food service workers across the country — making the federal minimum wage of $7.25 or less.
Five classrooms at a Head Start center in Woodside are filled with young children learning to read, write and count.
In one classroom, students sing in English, Spanish and Bengali and dance to “La Bamba.”
The coming months could see fewer low-income families in the area receive childcare and early childhood education services because of federal budget reductions. Many of the families include immigrants from Latin America and South Asia.
The cuts are part of sweeping federal budget reductions known as the sequester.
