New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani is launching the city’s first Office of Worker Power on Labor Day that the administration says will serve as a resource for labor unions and local rank-and-file employees.
Mamdani, a socialist, issued the Labor Day executive order in an effort to help private-sector workers “get informed, connected and organized,” the administration said in an announcement.
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Boosting government resources for workers has been a central part of Mamdani’s affordability agenda. MOWP builds on a series of policies he has introduced since becoming mayor, including securing $104 million in additional tips for delivery workers and establishing workplace heat protections.
“The Mayor’s Office of Worker Power will make sure workers have a seat at the table before exploitation becomes a crisis and violations become routine,” Mamdani said in a statement. “We’re connecting workers to their rights, to each other and to the organizations ready to stand with them.”
The initiative follows repeated calls by Mamdani at labor rallies to increase “union density,” the share of workers in the city who are members of labor unions. The office is said to be inspired by the Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee, a 2020 joint effort of the Democratic Socialists of America and the United Electrical Workers.
According to Mamdani’s office, an Office of Worker Power will help level the field for lower- and middle-income residents in America’s most expensive city. A new report from city Comptroller Mark Levine found that local income inequality is widening: In 2024, over 60% of the city’s total income went to the top 10% of earners, and the top 1% alone earned 37% of all income in the city.
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The office, the first of its kind in the nation, will be led by Tony Perlstein, a former longshoreman and organizing director with one of the largest unions in the country: the International Union, United Automobile, Aerospace and Agricultural Implement Workers of America.
“The city is a place where there are lots of very wealthy employers and corporations that could afford to pay their workers more,” Perlstein said. “And we are looking to help those workers stand up and speak up.”
The office will hold hearings to hear directly from workers about conditions across industries while bringing workers from different sectors together. It will also distribute information about workers’ rights and connect workers with organizations that can help them organize. Internally, the office will work with city agencies to investigate and report on workplace issues.
“We’re going to be looking to provide opportunities to working-class New Yorkers to get educated on their rights to form unions and what it means to build power,” Perlstein said. “We’re going to work to connect workers to organizations that can help them build that power.”
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Perlstein will report to Julie Su, the deputy mayor for economic justice and a former acting labor secretary under President Joe Biden.
The office will provide outreach and education to help people working “in places where they would really like their conditions to improve, but they don’t know what they can do to make that happen,” Su said.
“Whether it’s construction workers or hotel workers, caregivers, bakers, baristas, and delivery drivers, their work will be in very important partnership with the work of this office,” Su told Documented. “With the disappearance of good middle-class careers and the replacement with precarious part-time jobs in the gig economy, now is the time for the city government to take a stand on the side of workers.”
Su said in a statement that the office would not usurp the role of union organizers in pressing for workplaces to unionize or target particular employers or industries for organization efforts.
No further details about the office have been released at this time. No additional staff members beyond Perlstein have been hired, and the administration did not share budget specifics.
Mamdani will face another test of his labor stance beginning later this year, when his administration must negotiate a slew of expiring municipal contracts while coping with a projected $6.4 billion deficit for fiscal 2028.
