Gov. Mario Cuomo

In the name of "anti-Trump" and "progressive," SUNY-Binghamton Harvey Stenger and NYS Governor Andrew Cuomo are supporting and promoting sweatshop practices locally and across the state. We will release an open letter to all of the gubernatorial candidates. We want their supports to eliminate a sweatshop economy and not to continue the sweatshop policies that Cuomo started. We want the candidates to give pressures to Stenger to change his perpetuation of racism and the supports for sweatshop practices like mandatory overtime. Mandatory overtime and 24-hour shifts is modern day slavery!

An excerpt from the letter:

To demonstrate how the governor endorses sweatshop practices on the national level, we’d like to draw your attention to the cases of Adriana Moreno v Future Care Health Services, Inc., Lilya Andryeyeva v New York Health Care, Inc. and Nina Tokhtaman v Human Care, LLC. The plaintiffs in each of those cases were 24-hour home attendants who were not paid for the portion of their shift worked overnight. The courts upheld the home attendants’ right to be paid for all 24 hours, “regardless of whether they were afforded opportunities for sleep and meals,” but Governor Andrew Cuomo quickly undermined these legal victories through regulation changes in the DOL, and continues to support a 24-hour workday – with half of these hours unpaid – in the homecare industry. As a result, homecare agencies are now telling their workers to not care for patients at night. For example, if the patient falls down in the middle of the night, the workers are now supposed to call 911 rather than assist the patient. As our population ages, the demand for home healthcare workers will skyrocket up to 45% over the next ten years. We need to act now to ensure that home-care workers and their clients are taken care of.

Download the entire letter below.