Zohran Mamdani Is Putting Corporate Sick-Leave Cheats on Notice

In the industrial neighborhood of Maspeth, Queens, Amazon drivers from the nearby DBK4 delivery station often stop at Angelo’s Deli. This is where drivers gathered in September 2024 before marching to the facility for the first time as union organizers. On Friday, Mayor Zohran Mamdani chose the grocery store to sit down with a dozen warehouse workers and drivers unionized with the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT) and announce that New York City will expand protected leave and crack down on employers where workers rarely use sick leave.

“We are going to look at all the ways in which an employer seeks to avoid responsibility,” Mamdani told me. “It’s time to establish a rule of law that applies to everyone, and that includes these types of companies that seem to consider themselves above it.”

Mamdani announced that the city’s Department of Consumer and Worker Protection (DCWP) would monitor how often workers at each company use their paid leave. If fewer than half of a company’s employees take leave in a year, the agency will investigate the employer for possible violations.

Jerome Sloss, 32, a driver for an Amazon contractor, said Mamdani kept his campaign promises. He told me, “His whole campaign has been about taxing the rich and helping the working class, and he’s doing what he said he was going to do.” »

DCWP based this threshold on its analysis of national data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which found that half of private sector workers with paid sick leave take at least one day off per year for health reasons. The agency said it would also investigate violations based on worker complaints.

Since 2014, New York City employees have been entitled to time off for illness, injury, or other urgent personal matters.

The new expanded protected leave law, which takes effect Sunday, grants private sector workers a minimum of 32 hours of unpaid leave per year, available immediately upon hire and at the start of each calendar year. This is in addition to the 40 to 56 hours of paid leave per year depending on the size of the company. About 3 million New Yorkers are covered by the law.

The law also expands when employees can use their protected leave to include child care, caring for a disabled family member, participating in benefits or housing hearings, responding to declared emergencies, and combatting workplace violence.

Mamdani has previously supported Amazon workers organizing with the Teamsters. On Friday, he sat down with a dozen drivers who shared stories about needing time off for medical emergencies and child care crises. Mamdani said expanding protected leave is essential to improving workers’ quality of life: “This type of legislation is essential to ensuring that a worker can do more than just work – that a worker can also live, that a worker can also take care of their family and themselves.”

Jerome Sloss, 32, a driver for an Amazon contractor at the DBK1 factory in Woodside, said workers earn paid vacation incrementally based on hours worked, or about an hour of vacation per workweek: “We don’t get it at the beginning of the year. You accumulate it over the time you work.”

Matt Multari, 25, another driver working at the DBK1 plant, said contractors can change their schedules up to 8 hours. p.m. the day before a shift. Multari asked, “How are you supposed to plan your life around this?

Other workers said that when they request emergency leave without notice or when managers question whether the emergency is justified, some contractors retaliate by canceling shifts scheduled for the rest of the week. These workers are among more than 200 DBK1 drivers who have joined the Teamsters. Nationally, the union represents between 7,000 and 10,000 Amazon workers.

Mamdani, who campaigned on reducing income inequality, said strengthening unions is key to that goal. “The more organized a workforce is, the better life those workers will be able to live. »

“Being here with Teamsters members who have been on the front lines fighting for these kinds of rights and more in the face of corporate impunity shows us the urgency of this task.