As New York’s topsy-turvy legislative session is set to end on Thursday, with a multitude of outstanding bills still left to debate, state lawmakers were forced to push the session into overtime, working well into Friday afternoon. Although some pro-worker bills managed to pass both the Senate and the Assembly, a slew of other bills have been left to languish, forcing their supporters to await yet another legislative cycle.
Among the bills that failed to pass this session, the potential legislation with the widest reach would have been Senate Bill S2762, otherwise known as the Securing Wages Earned Against Theft Bill (SWEAT) which was supported by a coalition of workers’ centers, elected officials, and labor activists. Despite attempts by the bill’s sponsor, State Senator Jessica Ramos, to get the bill before the legislature for a vote, SWEAT never managed to come out of committee. It was yet another defeat for workers in the state suffering due to wage theft. In 2020, SWEAT did manage to be passed in both the Assembly and the Senate only to be vetoed by Governor Andrew Cuomo. Although then Governor Cuomo promised to enact “the necessary protections for workers very soon” in his veto message, wage theft as an issue was left out of the 2021 executive budget.
“I have been fighting to pass SWEAT and get workers the wages they have had stolen from them since I joined the legislature,” said State Senator Jessica Ramos. “While I am...
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