Ron Adar/SOPA Images/Sipa USA via AP Images
New York State Assemblymember Ron Kim speaks at a press conference in Queens, New York, in May of last year.
This story was co-published with New York Focus, an investigative news site covering New York politics.
In April 2020, New York Assemblymember Ron Kim co-chaired a virtual town hall to discuss Asian-Latinx immigrant worker solidarity during the pandemic. Representatives from three other organizations spoke at the event, including the chief public affairs officer of the Chinese-American Planning Council (CPC), a social services organization and prominent New York advocate with a mission “to promote the social and economic empowerment of Chinese American, immigrant, and low-income communities.”
Kim had previously appeared with CPC in November 2019, when he and New York state Sen. Julia Salazar announced a plan to set up the nation’s first public payment system. CPC praised the initiative for its potential to compensate undervalued care workers.
But on Tuesday, Kim’s office released a report accusing CPC, which employs 4,500 home health aides in New York City, of engaging in rampant wage theft—and, in coordination with 1199SEIU, the nation’s largest health care union, of blocking access to courts for workers trying to win their wages back.
The explosive 103-page report, written by Kim’s legislative director and titled The Nonprofit War on Workers, Part 1, accuses CPC’s Home Attendant Program...
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