Home care workers at First Chinese Presbyterian have been fighting to end the 24-hour workday and for back pay for the years they worked 24-hours while only being paid 13 hours. These workers work 24-hour shifts caring for elderly, disabled and ill people who need around-the-clock care in their homes. Hundreds of workers have spoken out against the 24-hour workdays, testifying to the damage working days on end without proper rest has had on their health and their family life and how splitting 24-hour shifts into at least two shifts of 12 would help protect them, and enable them to provide proper care to those requiring it. Despite knowing this, FCP works with insurance companies to continue the 24-hour workdays and refuses to right its wrong by paying back the workers what they are owed. Are these the values and beliefs FCP stands for? Is this how the agency treats its workers and those who receive care? Join workers to demand FCP pay back the workers now and to call on Governor Cuomo to stop the 24-hour shifts immediately and ensure the agency and insurance companies pay back the workers. Join home attendants and other workers!Wednesday, December 11, 11amFirst Chinese Presbyterian Home Care Agency, 30 Broad Street, New York, NY
FIGHT AGAINST Displacement!
Call for the City to Stop the Two Bridges Luxury Towers and Pass the FULL Chinatown Working Group Rezoning Plan!
Mayor de Blasio has been pushing his pro-developer agenda that displaces tenants, workers and small businesses to enrich the 1%. In the Lower East Side, he illegally approved four out-of-scale megatowers that would make the neighborhood unaffordable and destroy the environment. Moreover, he refused to pass the Chinatown Working Group Rezoning Plan that would stop luxury high-rises and mandate any new development on public land to be 100% affordable to the community.
The recent NYS Supreme Court decision reverses the approval of the megatowers. The Judge has disagreed with Mayor de Blasio’s support for rich developers at the expense of the community. However, it dictates that the Two Bridges luxury towers must now go through the Uniform Land Use Review Procedure (ULURP), which allows Council Member Margaret Chin to approve the towers. Her intention to align with Mayor de Blasio’s displacement agenda has been clear from the beginning. The community is not deceived into believing that ULURP is any kind of victory.
We need to take the future of the community in our own hands. Therefore, we are petitioning Mayor de Blasio and City Council Speaker Corey Johnson to:
1. Stop the four luxury towers that would decimate the neighborhood
2. Pass the FULL Chinatown Working Group Rezoning Plan that would protect the whole community.
We urge Council Speaker Johnson to stand with the community and not be like Mayor de Blasio.
Sign the petition and join our call! https://www.thepetitionsite.com/540/710/761/stop-the-illegal-megatowers-in-the-lower-east-side-and-pass-the-cwg/
Coalition to Protect Chinatown and LES
peoplefirstnyc@gmail.com 212-358-0295
peoplefirstnyc.org
Join us to urge Gov. Cuomo to sign the bill now so workers can start using its tools to fight wage theft!
Wednesday, November 20, 12:30pm
@ 633 3rd Ave. btw 40 and 41 St., in front of Governor Cuomo’s office
Each year, 1 billion dollars of hard-earned money is stolen from workers in New York State. The SWEAT bill (A486/S2844) would give workers the tool to stop this rampant wage theft and it has passed the NYS legislature in June.
Governor Cuomo, what are you waiting for?
Join us to urge Gov. Cuomo to sign the bill now so workers can start using its tools to fight wage theft!
Facebook event page: https://www.facebook.com/events/3135424659819684/
Happy Lunar New Year!
We invite you to come to our center and join us or support us this year. We hope you will attend our Lunar New Year Celebration on March 11th at P.S. 124 to welcome in the Year of the Dog!
Victory! Home Attendants Win Right to Demand 24 hours pay for 24 hours Worked!
Over a hundred home attendants from various NYC home care agencies and dozens of supporters convened at a workers’ center in Lower Manhattan Wednesday to celebrate several precedent-setting decisions issued in the past few weeks by the New York State Supreme Court Appellate Division. The decisions make the law clear: it is illegal for employers to pay only 12 hours for 24-hour shifts.
For more than two years, home attendants who worked 24 hours a day for Chinese-American Planning Council (CPC) and First Chinese Presbyterian (FCP) have been fighting against their employers to recover stolen wages. Home attendants in these cases were forced by employers to work grueling 24-hour shifts, and like Andryeyeva, Moreno and Tokhtaman, were only paid for 12 hours of work. When CPC and FCP home attendants went to their union, 1199 SEIU, to complain, the union not only ignored them, but went as far as to help the employers by signing a new collective bargaining agreement that prevents the home attendants from having their day in court. But the home attendants never gave up––instead they reached out to workers from other cases to continue fighting. They feel vindicated by the recent decisions.
The decisions were issued in the cases of Adriana Moreno v Future Care Health Services, Inc., Lilya Andryeyeva v New York Health Care, Inc. and Nina Tokhtaman v Human Care, LLC. The plaintiffs in all three cases were 24-hour home attendants who had not been paid for the overnight hours. The courts upheld the home attendants’ right to be paid for each of the 24 hours, “regardless of whether they were afforded opportunities for sleep and meals.”
Lai Yee Chan, a current CPC home attendant who attended the celebration today, said, “This is really good news for us! It means we will be able to get back the wages stolen from us by our agency. And it sends a warning to the companies that try to mess with workers’ hard-earned money. So it is good news not only for home attendants but also other workers across trades. We have been working 24-hour shifts for years, and many of us got injured due to long hours of work and became patients ourselves. This affects our quality of service, and therefore hurts both workers and the patients we are taking care of. We are demanding an end to the inhumane 24-hour shifts, and instead demanding a change to 12-hour shifts.”
A former FCP worker, Alvaro Ramirez, home attendant and member of the AIW campaign said, “Today, we are celebrating this victory as an important accomplishment. We will continue to fight and we are calling on all home attendants to unite with us and demand pay for all of the 24 hours worked and to stop mandatory overtime.”
The workers are asking other home attendants, regardless of agencies, whether in the union or not, to come out and join the campaign. They demand the agencies to pay back the stolen wages immediately and stop mandatory overtime.
Rally Against Wage Theft this Wednesday April 5
Learn more about the bill at www.sweatny.org
CSWA’s 2017 Lunar New Year Celebration – Ushering in the Year of the Rooster
Thanks to everyone who volunteered and came out to CSWA’s annual Lunar New Year Celebration, once again the event was a great success, with hundreds of people in attendance.
Below, a look back at some highlights from last year. Enjoy!
Celebrate the Lunar New Year with CSWA!
Chinese Staff & Workers’ Association
Invites you to a Lunar New Year Celebration
Please join us for a day of festivities with family and friends as we bring in the Year of the Rooster with exhilarating musical performances, an amazing lion dance, a lunch buffet and raffle prizes!
Sunday 2:30pm
February 26, 2017
PS 124 (40 Division Street in Chinatown, Manhattan)
For more information or to RSVP: 212-334-2333
Chinatown & LES Reclaim Martin Luther King Jr. Day
Demand Mayor de Blasio Step Down for Racist Rezoning
January 16 – City Hall. (Image credits – Lanny Li, Destiny Mata)
The Citywide Alliance Against Displacement held a rally at City Hall to demand Mayor de Blasio step down for promoting racist rezoning plans that target communities of color and to commemorate Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy of fighting against racial and economic injustice all over the country. Around 500 protesters gathered to call on the mayor to step down. The Alliance said it chose this day to hold the rally to reclaim the day from politicians like Mayor de Blasio who use celebrations on this day to cover up their own racist policies.
Lai Yee Chan from Chinese Staff & Workers Association pointed to the impact on workers in the area. She said, “I’m a home attendant, who have been taking care of Chinese seniors and patients for years. If the low-income families in the Chinese community are being pushed out, we will lose our jobs as well. Whether in Chinatown, Brooklyn or Flushing, both seniors and us home attendants are the victims of displacement, because we will face job loss. The mayor is making our lives desperate.”
For more, visit the Coalition’s website at https://peoplefirstnyc.org/.
Hundreds protest at City Hall on December 7
December 7, 2016 at City Hall
The Chinatown Working Group(CWG) Rezoning Plan has gained wide support in the LES and Chinatown community and beyond. If passed, the plan will put height limits on new developments. It will stop luxury waterfront skyscrapers, like Extell and JDS. It will prevent the sale of public housing and require any housing on NYCHA land to be 100% low-income. It will protect residents and small businesses against displacement.
Hundreds of people from the community have been protesting monthly at City Hall.
Mayor de Blasio has been colluding with big developers to slice up the plan. The city was proposing to rezone a part of Chinatown and exclude the Lower East Side, leaving the majority Latino and African American residents in NYCHA and waterfront buildings unprotected. Mayor de Blasio is pitting Chinese against Latinos and African Americans, helping the developers to displace us all!
Our community–Chinese, Latino and African American–held a large demonstration at City Hall in October against discriminatory zoning policies. The protest successfully pushed the City to scrap their Chinatown-only plan. This is a great example of people power! Now we need to make sure that the City pass the full CWG Rezoning Plan immediately, and we will keep coming back to City Hall each month until they do!
In the wake of the national election, Mayor de Blasio is trying to repair his tattered image as a Mayor for the 1%, vowing to protect the people of color being targeted by Donald Trump. But the Mayor himself has been targeting low-income, people of color communities across the City such as East Harlem, Inwood/Washington Heights, East New York and the South Bronx for luxury development. These communities are also rising up against displacement and joining us. We cannot stand by a mayor who claims to be for the people yet pushes racist policies in our community.
