Governor Hochul: “I want to thank all of you, all of our leaders here who continue in the legacy of our forefathers and foremothers who fought in the streets for worker protections…But the fights continue, because people always try to find ways to shortchange our workers, to leave them with less money in their pockets because it benefits them. So, that is what we're doing here today. We are standing up once again, upholding the tradition of labor in New York State to fight for our workers.”
Hochul: “To me this is personal…I saw the labor movement lift my grandfather and his brothers out of great poverty, gave them a whole new lease in life…I saw what this did to their families, no one thought about the poverty anymore. They said, ‘We've made it. We've arrived. We can buy a house. We can get a car. We can raise eight kids – in an attic in a small house, but at least we have a house.’ That's what we had. And my family benefited from that. And one generation after my father, we're in the Governor's Office standing with labor because I know what it means.”
Earlier today, Governor Kathy Hochul delivered remarks at the NYC Central Labor Council 2023 Labor Day Parade breakfast reception. At the event, Governor Hochul also signed legislation to support workers by protecting employees from mandatory political and religious meetings, strengthening wage theft penalties, and increasing benefits for injured workers.
The Governor signed legislation (S4982/A6604) to prohibit employers from disciplining employees that opt not to participate in meetings about the employer’s political or religious views. The Governor also signed legislation (S2832-A/A154-A) to make wage theft a form of larceny and allow prosecutors to seek stronger criminal penalties against employers who steal wages from workers. Governor Hochul signed legislation (S1161-A/A2034-A) as well to increase the minimum benefits for workers' compensation to better protect low wage workers who are injured and cannot work.
VIDEO of the event is available on YouTube here and in TV quality (h.264, mp4) format here.
AUDIO of the event is available here.
PHOTOS of the event are available on the Governor's Flickr page.
A rush transcript of the Governor's remarks is available below:
Good morning. You know I look out in this room, I see what the labor movement is all about. Its representatives of incredibly diverse professions – professions where we represent workers who build our buildings, who staff our buildings and service them, who get us to our jobs, who take care of us when we're sick, and they do it all. But the common denominator is, they are united. That is the foundational pillar behind the strength of the labor movement here in the State of New York. It is the unity that I see here in this room.
And as your Governor, I am so proud that this is the birthplace of the labor movement. And what we do here, and what we're going to be doing today in a couple of minutes, will set the narrative, set the bar high for the rest of the nation to follow because this is New York. And I want to thank all of you, all of our leaders here who continue in the legacy of our forefathers and foremothers who fought in the streets for worker protections. It was long, it was hard – a lot of struggles. And today we are the beneficiaries of those fights.
But the fights continue, because people always try to find ways to shortchange our workers, to leave them with less money in their pockets because it benefits them. So, that is what we're doing here today. We are standing up once again, upholding the tradition of labor in New York State to fight for our workers.
And I want to thank everybody who's here. And, first of all, Vinny. As the leader of our Central Labor Council, your voice has been so powerful, so necessary as we work through many of these struggles. Let's give another round of applause to our leader, Vinny Alvarez.
I want to thank two individuals that'll be very involved in the parade. We'll be marching with Nancy Hagans and Mark Henry in a couple of days. Nancy and I have been on a couple of picket lines together, haven't we Nancy? Nancy, where are you? Nancy? There you are. We fought a lot of struggles together, but we always won. We are standing together, government and labor together. That's how we stand united. So thank you, Nancy, and thank you Mark for the work you do with Amalgamated Transit Union. The work that those individuals do every single day is sometimes so taken for granted, unappreciated, but that has to stop. They need to know our gratitude.
Also, Mario Cilento. I have traveled every corner of this state with Mario Cilento. He is dogged in his determination for people to understand what the labor movement means to New York – and not just a great part of our history and the present, but it is critical for our future that we unionize more people. And I could not be prouder to be the Governor of a state that, except for Hawaii, and I'm not sure how they creeped above us, has more unionized workers than any other state in the nation. So that is something we're all proud of here in New York. But Mario, thank you for your leadership.
And so many friends here, Gary LaBarbera, Building and Construction Trades. Also, I have a couple of my team members here. Who does not love our Labor Commissioner, Roberta Reardon. Roberta, stand up. Stand up, Roberta. Thank you. Clarissa Rodriguez, stand up as well, our Chair of the Workers' Compensation Board. Clarissa, thank you.
And to the many elected officials who are here today, I want to acknowledge all your hard work in our legislature to get these over the finish line, these bills. And some of our sponsors are here today.
But to me this is personal. You've heard me tell the story. I don't know how many governors had their fathers and grandfathers as members of a union, but mine sure were. And because I saw the labor movement lift my grandfather and his brothers out of great poverty, gave them a whole new lease in life – Grandpa was a steelworker, his brothers were pipe fitters and longshoremen and iron workers. Uncle Tommy was an ironworker, Uncle Billy was a plumber.
I saw what this did to their families, no one thought about the poverty anymore. They said, “We've made it. We've arrived. We can buy a house. We can get a car. We can raise eight kids – in an attic in a small house, but at least we have a house.” That's what we had.
And my family benefited from that. And one generation after my father, we're in the Governor's Office standing with labor because I know what it means. And I don't know if a lot of other people appreciate that, the toughness that you have to have to be part of a labor movement because you're always fighting, always pushing. Because people are always trying to take from you and you have to be standing up and standing strong.
That's why I have steel running through my veins. That came from my father and grandfather and all the labor union members of my family that stood before and taught me the power of standing up and standing strong. And as the people in this room do, standing united. Let's never forget that. That is who we are and how we're going to continue to lift up the men and women of today, but also into the future, giving their kids better opportunities.
So, that brings us to a couple of bill signings here today. I didn't make you all come to Albany for this. To my partner – there you go. You're welcome, you’re welcome. Let me talk about a couple of these because they're really, really important. And I recognize our Attorney General is here and she acknowledged how important our wage theft bill is.
But one thing I wanted to do before we get to this, I also knew that we had opportunities. And I've been Governor just about two years now. I saw what the cost of living was doing to our workers. Right? Just when you think you're getting ahead, inflation comes and steals that opportunity for you to feel like, “My God, I thought I was getting my head above water. I was going to be able to make ends meet.” And what we did working with our legislature, we said that going forward for the first time in New York history, we will index the minimum wage to inflation, so when prices start going up, your paycheck starts going up. That's something we accomplished together.
Also, as someone, the first mother Governor of New York, actually first grandmother now, but I remember what it was like not having paid family leave. And so, we offered paid leave to all of our state workers, 150,000 state employees now get 12 weeks of fully paid parental leave. That's how we set the message that this is how we lead.
And another issue that languished for a long time, the Roadway Quality Assurance Act. That provides the prevailing wages to our construction workers. That was a long fight. Anybody involved in that fight, raise your hand because I know I heard from all of you. Yep, Gary. Yes, especially Gary. We got that done.
And as I said, we have a couple of other bills here, and I'm going to sign those. One is the wage theft bill. Let's talk about what it's like when you're working hard every day and you think you're going to get a certain size paycheck. And you look at it like, “Wait a minute, this isn't what I thought it would be.” Well guess what? That is a crime now in the State of New York. You will not get away with that. That'll be prosecuted as a crime, the crime that it is. That is what we call theft, my friends. And it's now going to end here in the State of New York. So congratulations to our sponsors on that as well.
And our third bill, and I've pulled this out, so I want to make sure I have all my bills here, alright? This is to protect – let's see, wage theft. This is one I’ve heard about from Mario Cilento since I first met him. What are we going to do about workers' comp? Because you think about the fact that people had to live off of $150 a week when they're injured – nobody gets injured on purpose because they want to sit home and collect $150 a week. I can think that's pretty fair, right? And it never caught up with the cost of living in inflation. So now, we're finally going to increase that and give people the dignity they deserve. And I want to thank everyone involved in that fight as well. It is right, it is just, and we're finally making up for lost time there as well, so let's get that done as well.
And to everybody who is part of this here today, I want you to witness me signing these. And I want to give also a special shout out to our host here today. Manny Pastreich, 32BJ, has had my back from the beginning. And we've been to so many events together, especially this summer, and we talked about our opportunity to build more housing, but also make sure there's service by members of 32BJ. So let's give a round applause for Manny and thank him for hosting us here today.
So come on up, let's sign these bills. Let's get this done. Let's make it official. Here we go. Congratulations to our bill sponsors. Could all of our bill sponsors please stand up and be recognized here today? Thank you. Thank you for all your work. Thank you for making this happen.
Contact the Governor’s Press Office
Contact us by phone:
New York City: (212) 681 - 4640