Study finds $200+ million of New Yorkers’ wages stolen since 2017

Aug 28, 2023

The NYC Thorn is a weekly roundup of local political news compiled by members of NYC-DSA.

A ProPublica investigation found that over a five-year period, 127,000 workers in New York suffered over $200 million in wage theft. In that time, the state's Labor Commissioner, Roberta Reardon, has overseen a decline in efforts to recover lost wages.
Contractors who work with the City's Anti-Harassment Tenant Protection program say that changes to the City's contract will force them to dramatically scale back their work in combating illegal rent increases and unsafe conditions

Many prominent Democrats, including State Senator Roxanne Persaud (District 19, East New York) and former Brooklyn Democratic Party chair Frank Seddio, rallied alongside Curtis Sliwa and other Republicans in opposition to a proposed shelter for migrants at Floyd Bennett Field in south Brooklyn.

The New York Police Department’s chief of risk management was forced to resign after criticizing the department's increased use of dangerous vehicle pursuits.

Assembly Member Jennifer Rajkumar (District 38, Ozone Park) has cultivated a highly public alliance with Mayor Eric Adams, appearing at multiple press conferences with the mayor and calling him "the greatest mayor of all time."

An NYPD sergeant threw a plastic cooler at the head of a man driving a motorbike, causing him to crash and thereby killing him. The sergeant was suspended and is now under investigation by the Attorney General.
In a recently published draft of an updated Solid Waste Management Plan, the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) proposes a new statewide fee on every ton of trash that doesn’t get recycled or composted. The example fee of $5 per ton would mean an added cost of $10 per household per year.

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