Stopping Traffic to Fund Excluded Workers

by Bella DeVaan

Esenciales por siempre. Excluidos nunca más.

Essential forever. Excluded no more, proclaimed a striking orange banner.

On March 8, this message heralded hundreds of workers, deliveristas, activists, and allies as they marched across the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges. The action stopped traffic for good reason: to secure $3 billion more for New York’s groundbreaking Excluded Workers Fund and a permanent unemployment program for excluded workers in the state’s budget.

Simultaneously shut down the BK and Manhattan Bridges, AGAIN! #FundExcludedWorkers #ExcludedNoMore pic.twitter.com/LWN0MzRwKM

— New York Communities for Change (@nychange) March 8, 2022

“During the pandemic, I witnessed coworkers, family members, and friends struggle to make ends meet because they were not fortunate enough to qualify for unemployment benefits,” recounted Laborers’ Local 79 organizer Alvaro Gonzalez during the march. “And when stimulus checks got around, they were still excluded from those packages. It seemed like there was no hope in sight. Then finally, the Excluded Workers Fund was created. But very quickly that hope went away: very few of the people I know actually got some funds, but the rest got told that there was no more money or they didn’t qualify. After being told that they were essential, they were left in the dark.”

Xichitl Gomez, a house cleaner, explained through translation that after she did not receive funds, she had no choice but to turn to food pantries — like countless other excluded workers before the fund’s creation.

The Fund Excluded Workers Coalition (FEW Coalition) formed in the wake of Covid-19 to advocate for workers who, despite providing New York with the essential labor it needed to sustain itself, were shut out from state and federal pandemic benefits. As has been well documented throughout the last two years, workers of color, women, and immigrant and undocumented workers experienced the lion’s share of economic precarity during the pandemic. These workers were more likely to serve in essential roles, earn low wages, and face high risk of  viral exposure.

“We don’t need more relief programs. We need structural change and we need equity.”

ANGELES SOLIS, FUND EXCLUDED WORKERS COALITION

“We don’t need more relief programs. We need structural change and we need equity,” said Angeles Solis, a lead organizer with Fund Excluded Workers, during a February interview with The Capitol Press Room. “We are talking about billions of dollars that have been put into social safety net programs that thousands of people cannot access. The passage of a permanent solution that will ensure that thousands of workers who contribute to our social safety net are covered in the social safety net.”

The FEW Coalition’s proposed unemployment insurance program would use similar eligibility requirements as the Excluded Workers Fund to disburse $1,200 monthly payments to below-median-earning workers whose immigration status, cash payment, self-employment, or misclassification exclude them from traditional unemployment compensation. The FEW Coalition estimates this would cost $800 million to serve 50,000 people in its first year.

Experts believe that funding excluded workers would have a significant positive effect on labor arrangements – by empowering workers and regulating contractors. The Laborer’s Local 79 union leader Mike Prohaska called the bill “commonsense” for the largely immigrant-staffed “nonunion construction workforce.”

“It will also close the gap between union and nonunion contractors, enabling undocumented workers to file for unemployment benefits, organize more freely on the job, and contribute more to our state’s economy and recovery after Covid,” Prohaska said. The law would also “level the playing field for responsible contractors who support their workers, regardless of immigration status, by paying into workers’ compensation, unemployment and payroll taxes.”

On March 14, New York lawmakers released one-house budget resolutions that largely exclude coalition demands. Instead, they aligned with Governor Kathy Hochul’s proposed $2 billion for various “pandemic recovery initiatives,” far less than the $3 billion the FEW Coalition has requested for the Excluded Worker Fund alone, despite the state’s rare budget surplus.

Regardless of what budget emerges, the FEW Coalition has situated their policy goals within the greater fight for racial and economic justice statewide, collaborating with legislative campaigns for universal healthcare, higher wages, safer working conditions, and fairer housing.

To increase pressure on their elected representatives, the FEW Coalition will soon embark on a 150-mile march from New York City to Albany. They plan to arrive in the state’s capitol on March 29, in time for an eleventh-hour push for essential workers to get their due in the final budget.

“Just because people are moving on doesn’t mean that we can ignore this issue,” said Kreyche. “There are people who still have not gotten relief from two years ago. We need to be able to make those people whole to truly move on from this pandemic.”

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This post was previously published on INEQUALITY.ORG and is republished under a Creative Commons license.

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