Labor is where most of us spend the majority of our waking hours, and yet, many of us are overworked and financially exploited in our jobs. 

• A quarter of the 350,000 tipped workers in New York live upstate, where their minimum wage is as low as $8.30. We must standardize the state’s minimum wage by passing The One Fair Wage Act, which would apply it to tipped workers across the state.
  • The minimum wage for tipped workers in New York is lower than for waged workers, and often these tips do not guarantee a stable income. Because of this, tipped workers are impoverished at greater rates than waged workers are—especially for women and BIPOC workers in the service industry.
• Establish new workplace standards for nail salon workers on issues such as wages, benefits, and training by passing the Nail Salon Minimum Standards Council Act.
• Even as shareholder profits dramatically increase, working people’s incomes stagnate. In District 103, the minimum wage does not pay enough to continue living here. In the short term, we must tie the state’s minimum wage to inflation by passing (A7111). In the long term, we must create good jobs that are not reliant on the idea of minimum wage.

From warehouse workers at Amazon to the nurses at WMCHealth, every worker deserves a union—the most effective way for workers to win safer, better workplaces. We must rewrite the rules that have been rigged against labor so that every worker can get one.

• A workers’ right to strike is an essential right in our quest to democratize our workplace. We must pass (A9115) and establish this as a basic worker right in the state.
• The National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) does not extend protections to domestic workers and farm workers, whose exclusion perpetuates racial discrimination and the legacy of slavery. New York must secure equal rights for these workers in addition to other excluded laborers like independent contractors.
• New York has been unable to follow through with investigating employers who engage in illegal actions. We must empower workers to initiate public enforcement action against employers who violate labor law by passing The EMPIRE Worker Protection Act.
• Empower workers to seek a court order freezing the assets of employers who engage in wage theft, by passing Securing Wages Earned Against Theft.