Monthly Archives: March 2020

Demand Relief for Community Amid Coronavirus Pandemic

The coronavirus pandemic is wreaking havoc in our communities. We have already been facing a crisis caused by the City’s racist displacement agenda that has targeted communities of color. Small businesses have already been shuttering or cutting workers’ hours, while working people have been forced to double or triple up in homes, to deal with rising rents. Now, we are facing an even more rapid closure of small businesses and loss of jobs and hours. Many workers living paycheck to paycheck cannot afford to stay home and lose wages, and living in crowded conditions makes self-quarantining impossible. 

We call on everyone to join us in demanding the city not use this pandemic to further displace our businesses and community member and provide relief for working people. We demand the city and state government to immediately:

1. Establish an emergency relief fund to help workers, regardless of their immigration status, who are laid off or have their hours cut as a result of the economic impact of the virus, and help workers easily obtain unemployment benefits; 

2. Cut small businesses’ real estate tax or rent and/or provide rent relief for small businesses. 

3. Establish medical facilities that can be easily accessed by patients to get tested and receive necessary treatment quickly and be quarantined if necessary, instead of self-quarantining. 

4. Establish an emergency relief fund to help workers for lost wages when they test positive for the COVID-19 and need to be quarantined, regardless of their immigration status. 

5. Demand the President issue a Disaster Declaration to include direct economic assistance to individuals.

Sign the petition to demand relief fund for workers and small businesses in response to coronavirus:
http://bit.ly/smallbzandworkers

Workers Condemn Cuomo’s Veto of SWEAT Bill & His Promotion of Wage Theft (From NMASS)

On New Year’s Day, Governor Cuomo vetoed the SWEAT (Securing Wages Earned Against Theft) bill, a real stab in the back to all workers in NY. After six years of discussion and vetting of the bill by the State Senate and Assembly, which finally passed the bill last summer, Cuomo waited until the last moment to shoot it down.


By vetoing SWEAT, Cuomo encourages more wage theft, which the U.S. Labor Department estimates to be $1 billion per year in NYS. Cuomo shows his real colors: he is more concerned about protecting the property and assets of law-breaking employers than upholding the rights of workers to their wages for work they have already performed.


Workers are disappointed and furious that the Governor aids and abets criminal bosses, and leaves out in the cold workers and employers that comply with the law. By vetoing SWEAT, Cuomo remains an accomplice to criminals who steal wages from workers. For instance, he created a system in which home care workers working 24-hour shifts are paid for only 12 or 13 of those hours.


For promoting these sweatshop conditions like long hours and wage theft, workers demand that Cuomo resign. He is not fit to lead New York.


In the last few months, hundreds of workers and advocates have rallied and picketed in front of Gov. Cuomo’s N.Y. City office to urge the governor to sign SWEAT. Many of the workers spoke about winning decisions in court to the tune of $700,000, $1 million, $1.8 million–but being left with nothing but a piece of paper from court.


Without SWEAT, workers try to claim their unpaid wages, but weak laws make it easy for employers to hide and transfer their assets. Workers spend years navigating legal processes and often end up settling for a small fraction of what they are owed or end up with a judgment or order that they cannot collect on.


SWEAT would strengthen the labor law by allowing workers who have been robbed of wages to put a lien on employers’ property and freeze their assets until their claim is resolved.
We ask everyone to join us in speaking out against the Governor and demanding his resignation until he rights his wrong. We need a leader who is capable of protecting the rights of working people in this state.


Join us in upcoming protests to hold Governor Cuomo to his words that he will enact protections soon and ensure the protections are the real protections provided by the SWEAT bill A486/S2844. Please call Cuomo’s office at (518) 474-8390 to let him know that New Yorkers want an end to wage theft now!


Says Efren Caballero de Jesus, “I worked at Indus Valley for nine years. I did delivery and packing and other things. I was paid $3 an hour, and no overtime pay. In 2008 my co-workers and I went to the Labor Department to complain. The boss continued to steal our wages. We decided to sue the boss in court. We won a decision of $700,000. The boss supposedly sold the business, changing the name from Indus Valley to Manhattan Valley, but we know that it’s the same boss; they just want to avoid paying us. That’s not just. That’s why we want Gov. Cuomo to sign SWEAT.”

Next protest to urge Cuomo sign the SWEAT bill

WHEN: April 1, 2020 at 12pm

WHERE: 633 3rd Ave., in front of Cuomo’s office

Protest Governor Cuomo, Wage-Theft-Commander-in-Chief, March 2

On January 1st, Governor Cuomo heartlessly vetoed the SWEAT bill, showing he would rather aid and abet criminal bosses who refuse to follow the labor law, than workers. The SWEAT bill gives critically needed tools to workers and the Department of Labor to stop bosses from transferring and hiding their assets and leaving workers who corageously fight against wage theft with nothing. With this act, Cuomo is essentially undermining businesses that comply with the law and instead promoting criminal enterprises. Under his leadership wage theft has balloned to $1 billion each year. That is $1 billion dollars of workers’ SWEAT! With his veto Cuomo shows he is an accomplice to wage theft and thus a criminal himself. How can we have in office, one who protects the few over the interests of the many?

Join us again in front of Cuomo’s office, on March 2nd, to protest Cuomo’s senseless attack on working people’s lives. Demand Cuomo right his wrong and pass the SWEAT bill instead of watering it down! Don’t let Cuomo continue enabling this abuse, lets unite to put an end to wage theft.