Gotham Gazette

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Workers rights

Workers rights

  • Construction Deaths in New York Increased During First Year of Pandemic, Report Shows

    (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office)

    (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office)


    The construction industry was more deadly to workers in New York in the first year of the pandemic than in the two years prior, reversing a multiyear decline in the statewide fatality rate, a new report shows.

    Forty-one workers were killed on construction sites in New York in 2020, including 13 in New York City, according to a report published Thursday

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  • Letter to the Editor: More Lawsuits Won’t Help Workers or New York

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    New York workers (photo: Governor Cuomo's office)


    To The Editor:

    It is no surprise that the trial lawyers’ chief lobbyist and a labor advocate who curiously finds time to push the plaintiff bar’s agenda view litigation as the best way to promote worker safety (“This Labor Day, Celebrate Workers by Ensuring Their Safety,” by Halina Radchenko & Charlene Obernauer).

    It’s not.

    Over the past century, increased regulations

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  • It's Time to End Substandard Working Conditions in Home Care

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    Taking care of people at their homes (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office)


    The rapidly aging population in the United States, combined with the global pandemic, has brought the issue of home care to national headlines. As evidenced by President Biden’s proposal of a standalone ...

  • This Labor Day, Celebrate Workers By Ensuring Their Safety

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    Workers (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office)


    For the past 18 months, essential workers have heroically worked in hospitals, driven buses and subways, and kept grocery stores stocked as the deadly pandemic ebbed and flowed.

    It is not an overstatement to say that our city and state could not have functioned without these heroes. The toll on these men and women and their families was devastating, with thousands of frontline workers dying from COVID-19 or losing their jobs while many others were able to stay home and work

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  • New York Construction Workers Remain at Risk Without Legislative Action

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    (photo: Kevin P. Coughlin/Governor's Office)


    With this year’s legislative session in full-swing in Albany, special interest groups have resumed their attacks on laws designed to keep workers safe on construction sites. Construction and insurance trade groups, seeking to shed accountability and pad their pockets, have argued that labor protections like the Scaffold Safety Law are somehow undermining worker safety. However, ...

  • Take a Stand for Workers’ Rights on May Day and Every Day

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    DCA Commissioner Lorelei Salas, the author


    Sitting in front of more than 150 people, Maria Aguilar broke down in tears as she shared how often she experiences discrimination and abuse at the hands of her employers. Maria is a day laborer at “La Parada,” a street corner in Williamsburg where every day she waits and hopes for the chance to be picked up by someone looking for last-minute child care or housekeeping services. Maria is almost always a victim of wage theft and despite working long days and weeks she does not get paid minimum wage, let alone the overtime wages she is

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  • In Trump Era, Workers Will Demand New York City & State Step Up to Defend Them

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    photo: Make The Road New York


    The symbolism of Donald Trump’s nomination of fast-food CEO Andy Puzder for U.S. Secretary of Labor could not be clearer: at a time when fast food workers are leading the fight for fair pay and dignified working conditions in this country, President-elect Trump has decided to declare war on the Fight for $15 movement. And here in New York, workers like me are ready to fight back.

    Puzder has fought

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  • Grocery Worker Bill Provokes Rare Level of Council Dissent

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    Speaker Mark-Viverito on 125th Street (photo: William Alatriste) 


    When a bill comes to the floor of the New York City Council, it is guaranteed to pass. And so it was on Tuesday, when the Council voted through the Grocery Worker Retention Act, which mandates that new owners of large grocery stores maintain employment of the store workforce for 90 days. But while most bills pass unanimously and some garner only two or three dissenting votes from the Council's three-member Republican caucus, the GWRA garnered seven "no" votes.

    Five of the

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