This week, the legislative session came to a close. As Chair of the Labor Committee, and a union organizer at heart, I am especially proud of the progress we made to better protect and value our workers. 

The bills we passed together make it clear that we are here to level the playing field between workers and corporations. Human beings are not robots – and we’re tired of employers who treat us like so.

Workers deserve better. I fought hard this session and will continue to fight, to ensure working families get the fair, compassionate, and humane workplaces they deserve. 

For example, last week, the House and Senate passed the Warehouse Workers Protection Act. This bill will finally allow us to regulate unsafe productivity quotas, ensuring that workers are treated like the human beings they are, not the robots that Amazon wants them to be. 

Another bill I’m proud to have sponsored and passed this session is S9029A, a bill that will extend the deadline to apply for child care assistance subsidies by one year. This bill will lift that annual burden just a bit, so that they can focus on what really matters – their children. 

We also signed into law the Salary Range Disclosure bill, a step forward in addressing gender and race-based pay disparity, and a bill that will help workers’ proceedings with the Public Employee Relations Board more accessible by digitizing processes and making them available in 12 different languages! 

The House and Senate also passed a few bills waiting on the desk of Governor Hochul, including legislation to increase pregnancy protections for commuter rail workers and protect nurses from mandatory overtime. 

If you believe in the work I’m doing up in Albany, please chip in what you can so I pass even more bills like these next session!

At the end of the day, we got a lot done for workers, families, and neighbors this year. I’m proud of what we accomplished — but until every family has dignified wages, secure housing, and a government that serves them, the work continues.

In Solidarity,