#new york news

[iww-gnv]

New York lawmakers proposed three new bills last week that would make it difficult for wage theft violators to conduct business in the state. The legislation would bolster the power of state agencies to crack down on wage theft by stripping violators of their liquor licenses or business licenses, as well as issuing stop-work orders against them. The legislation was prompted by reports of rampant wage theft against New York workers, including two investigations published by Documented and ProPublica. The stories revealed that more than 127,000 New Yorkers have been victims of wage theft during a recent five-year period, but that the New York State Department of Labor was unable to recover $79 million in back wages owed to the workers. The stories were based on an analysis of two databases of wage theft violations obtained from the U.S. and New York Labor departments. The databases provided previously unreported details on how much money had been stolen from workers and also shed light on which businesses had committed wage theft. “We knew from our conversations with labor and from our constituent service caseload that wage theft is a chronic problem,” said Sen. Jessica Ramos, a Democrat who sponsored the legislation. “We did not have the data to understand the scale of the issue in New York state until the ProPublica and Documented series came out last year. Having this reporting as a tool set us up to put this package together and focused our attention on” the capacity of the Department of Labor. The legislation — dubbed the “wage theft deterrence package” by lawmakers — includes three bills, which are co-sponsored in the State Assembly by Assembly members Kenny Burgos, Harvey Epstein and Linda Rosenthal.

[renthony]

Cross-posted from Facebook, via a good friend:

Gooood morning, comrades! My Law360 colleagues and I walked off the job today because LexisNexis tried to illegally fire 10% of our newsrooooom! Corporate announced this plan the same day that they declared high revenue and profit growth. That day, its parent company RELX (which many of my academic friends know — OH BOY do they EVER know — as Reed Elsevier) also announced it would spend $1.25 billion in stock buybacks. Last Friday, the company went ahead with the layoffs and broke the law. The Law360 Union has walked off the job and stands united against these layoffs. We’re demanding they reinstate our colleagues and bargain fairly. You can help by: • Sharing this post and our letter about the illegal layoffs. • Contributing to our strike hardship fund, because we’re all losing pay to make this point. • Contributing to our fund to support our colleagues on the layoff list. • And, most importantly, share this with any legal practitioners, students or scholars you know and ask them to tell Law360 to stop breaking the law! We work hard to provide you with some of the best legal reporting and analysis out there, so now we need you. Help us!

[workersolidarity]

🇺🇲 🚨

SIX DRUMS FILLED WITH TOXIC CHEMICALS DEPOSITED BY NORTHROP GRUMMAN FOUND BURIED IN CANCER-PLAGUED LONG ISLAND TOWN

📹 Six 55-gallon drums filled with toxic chemicals, and encased in concrete coffins, some broken, were found buried under Bethpage Community Park in cancer-plagued Bethpage, a town on Long Island in New York State, which was deposited by U.S. military contractor Northrop Grumman.

Previously, the town of Bethpage had to contend with a 6-square mile toxic plume of hazardous waste resulting from Northrop Grumman's dumping of chemicals underground in the area.

At least one of the 55-gallon drums was found punctured, and some contained flammable chemicals.

The drums were found buried just 4-feet underground, underneath the Park's baseball field which was previously abandoned more than 20 years ago due to concerns over soil contamination.

According to a report in New York Post, a layer of clay was found under the drums, where authorities believe chemicals could have seeped into the ground.

Oyster Bay Supervisor, Joseph Saladino, called on authorities with New York's Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) to clean up the park by collecting all the contaminated soil and removing it from Long Island. The community's tax payers previously paid $20 million to clean up the site to allow local residents to use the Park's skating rink.

Saladino also filed a lawsuit against Northrup Grumman 10 years ago to reimburse the community's costs for the cleanup, while a new lawsuit was filed in December to order the further cleanup and removal of the toxic soil.

Local residents have been complaining of higher cancer rates in their community for years, arguing that surrounding communities have far lower rates to their own, while the DEC claimed the discovery posed "no immediate threat to public health."

Still, local residents say they're fed-up, continueing to call for the immediate removal of toxic substances, along with demands for a full soil excavation in the park.

“I’ve had it. I’ve had it. I’ve been working on this for over 20 years as a New York state Assembly member and now as the supervisor of the fourth-largest town in America and I’m not going to sit by idly,” Saladino is quoted as saying.

Northrop Grumman, for its part, said it continues to work with the DEC to address the situation.

#source

@WorkerSolidarityNews

[polyglot-thought-2]

[Mandarin->English] @xinwendiaocha 6:43 PM March 29th 2023 Tweet

Link to original tweet

—

 3月29日，在蔡英文总统下榻的纽约酒店外，有超过 200 名中国抗议者进行示威

On March 29th, outside of the hotel that President Tsai Ing-wen is staying at in New York, over 200 Chinese protestors held a demonstration

—

Please correct me if I made a mistake.

$5 translation commissions here

[don-lichterman]

Chinatowns More Vibrant After Pandemic, Anti-Asian Violence | New York News

Chinatowns More Vibrant After Pandemic, Anti-Asian Violence | New York News

By TERRY TANG, Associated Press The last week of April was a whirlwind for San Francisco’s Chinatown. The storied neighborhood debuted the “AAPI Community Heroes Mural,” a mostly black and white depiction of 12 mostly unsung Asian American and Pacific Islander figures on the wall of a bank. Three days later “Neon Was Never Brighter,” the first ever Chinatown contemporary arts festival, took…

[sayruq]

Cancel your NYT subscription

[zegalba]

[mysharona1987]

You just know the NYT has a “style guide” for this sort of thing.

Maybe someone there should get fed up and leak it.

[iww-gnv]

I’m straddling my road bike, carrying two boxes of Chinese dumplings in a paper tote. The DoorDash app tells me I need to sprint my payload across Manhattan – cutting across the Holland Tunnel’s on-ramp – in the next eight minutes. I’m trying out food delivery under New York City’s new minimum wage law on a frigid December afternoon. Before – I was a part-time delivery worker between 2018 and 2020 – an order like this would have paid just a few dollars, making it a frantic rush to finish and move on to the next one. Now the new rules guarantee delivery workers nearly $30 an hour of “trip time”. So I stop at red lights, yield to pedestrians, and though I end up arriving a couple minutes late, I feel surprisingly relaxed. My customer seems pleased, too. But the delivery bosses are already trying to reassert their dominance. Since the law took effect, delivery apps have made it harder for customers to tip. Previously, apps like DoorDash would ask customers to tip their couriers when placing orders, allowing workers to see the total amount before agreeing to take the job. Now, Uber and DoorDash have stopped prompting customers before checkout, and those that still choose to tip can only do so after the delivery has been made, through a button that can be difficult to find.

[universalambients]

NEW YORK (1838)

[bunnysnhi]

Jimmy Buffett, ‘Margaritaville’ singer-songwriter, dies at 76 [Video]