Dear John,
For months this spring, we stood on our doorsteps and leaned out our windows to bang pots and pans, cheering on the nurses, doctors, grocery store and delivery workers, subway conductors, sanitation workers and so many other essential workers who keep our city going. It was a powerful expression of gratitude and solidarity with workers.
Grimly, as Labor Day arrives, we have not lived up to it. Those food delivery workers are still without paid sick leave. The Amazon warehouse, fast-food, and even health care workers can still be fired on a whim, making it risky to blow the whistle on unsafe conditions.
In the spring, I proposed an Essential Workers Bill of Rights that expanded rights to sick leave, protections against unfair firings, and hazard pay. All these pandemic months later, the City Council has not yet moved the bills forward. We’ve left these workers -- who we spent so much time calling “essential” -- to suffer, when we could have protected them.
On this Labor Day, I’m disappointed in our failure to show up for workers. But I’m not giving up. I’m renewing my commitment to pass our Essential Workers Bill of Rights, and expanding protections for all workers in our city.
Join me fighting for worker protections that honor the labor and sacrifice of essential workers.
There is a lot of talk about appreciating workers, but so far very little action. In fact, rather than expand worker protections, city, state, and federal leaders are dragging their heels on proposals to help workers:
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The GOP Senate and President Trump are driving families toward ruin and our economy toward wreckage by refusing to renew pandemic unemployment assistance.
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Governor Cuomo and the State Legislature have refused to tax the wealthiest among us to #FundExcludedWorkers, the majority of whom are immigrants who have been shut out of any form of relief during this crisis.
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Mayor de Blasio is threatening to lay off 22,000 people who make the city run, including EMTs, teachers, parks and sanitation workers, if the city doesn't get permission from Albany to borrow or unions agree to cuts to benefits.
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Many of the workers who have returned to work lack basic protections, like nail salon technicians or construction day laborers, who are misclassified as independent contractors -- so they have to work in a pandemic without paid sick days, health care, workers comp, or other benefits.
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And with the start of school just around the corner, working families are struggling with anxiety about the safety of classrooms, hybrid schedules, lack of child care, access to technology, and so much more. For teachers and school staff and child care workers who are also parents, the challenges are even more compounded. But we’ve allowed a long-standing child care crisis to boil into an emergency. And we haven’t even taken steps to require employers to give reasonable accommodations to working parents -- so some people could literally be forced to choose between leaving their kids at home unsupervised and losing their jobs.
We owe our essential workers so much better. We owe all workers so much better.
We have a choice this Labor Day. We can close our eyes to all this suffering, wish for a world where things are “back to normal,” continue in our collective failure to act, and leave all these workers struggling without protections.
Or we can remember what we felt during that 7 PM cheer for workers, honor the solidarity it expressed, demand more of ourselves and our leaders, and step up to our responsibility to learn the lessons of this pandemic.
I hope you and your family are finding safe and fun ways to enjoy this Labor Day weekend.
And I hope we collectively find ways to honor its call.
Brad
