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Mayor's Office of Worker Power
New York City is a city of workers. Workers have rights on the job and power in numbers.
What is worker power?
Workers are this City’s greatest resource. Workers built New York and keep it running. Every business, every service, every neighborhood depends on the people who work.
Worker power is the ability of working people to have a real say in their jobs, their communities, and their City. Workers do not have to simply accept whatever they are given or whatever conditions they are subjected to. Things like pay, hours, safety, treatment on the job, and how the work itself gets done can all be improved when workers help shape them.
Why do workers have power?
Workers create the value in every workplace, delivering the package, cooking the meal, driving the bus, writing the code, caring for our seniors. And workers don’t just make the job run, they help communities run. Workers are parents, neighbors, coaches, congregants, and more. They are the people who hold this city together on the job and after the shift ends. Workers’ voices on the job and in the city should match the value they create for both.
How can workers make their power real?
Solidarity
Workers are stronger when they stand together. Workers who join together to advocate for the changes they want to see can decide who speaks for them, what goals to work toward, and what they deserve. The law protects most workers’ right to act together, with or without a union.
Knowledge
Rights on paper only become real when workers know them and how to exercise them. Workers need to know where to turn when something’s wrong, which organizations can help, and how workers join together, from the first conversation to a seat at the table.
Community
No worker has to figure it out alone. Generations of New York workers built the unions, worker centers, and community organizations that help working people stand together today. The City is here to help too. Agencies and offices across the City of New York can help workers realize their goals and exercise their rights.
Law
Worker power is backed by law at nearly every level of government. Federal law protects the right of most private-sector workers to organize, bargain, and act together, and makes retaliation illegal. New York State law extends organizing protections to farmworkers and bars employers from forcing workers into mandatory meetings about unions, and sets its own wage and safety standards.
New York City law adds some of the strongest workplace protections in the country, including the Protected Time Off Law, Fair Workweek Law, and Delivery Worker Laws, such as minimum pay for for-hire vehicle drivers and app-based delivery workers, and more. Workers coming together to share their experiences and advocate for change is how these laws passed, how the floor gets raised, and how the laws get enforced.
What does worker power look like?
Workers themselves determine how to use their power and what goals to work towards. That goal could be a union and a contract solidifying rules and rights on the job. Or coworkers coming together to figure out how to protect undocumented neighbors. It could be warehouse workers comparing pay, delivery workers organizing for a minimum rate, or nannies and home care workers building an organization across a thousand different worksites.
What can worker power win?
Whatever workers decide to organize around. Workers have won better pay, safer conditions, predictable schedules, healthcare and benefits, time to care for family, and a safe trip to and from work. Some have gone further, gaining ownership of the workplace itself. And what workers win improves not only their own lives, but also improves conditions for other workers, families, neighborhoods, and the whole city.
Worker power is good for New York City
Workers, employers, and communities all do better when worker voice is at the center of working life. For workers themselves, the benefits are direct. A real voice on the job means better pay and benefits, safer conditions, more predictable schedules, and the dignity of being heard on decisions that shape daily life.
Employers who incorporate worker voice do better too. The people who make the product, deliver the service, and deal with the public every day understand the work in ways no one else can. When workers have a genuine channel to raise problems and propose solutions, that knowledge improves how the work gets done, providing safer workplaces, better service, and streamlined operations.
Voice also builds stable, experienced workforces. Workers who are heard stay longer, and concerns get resolved rather than driving people out the door. Communities share in the gains. When workers win better pay and standards, those standards spread, as other employers improve wages and benefits to attract and keep good people.
Where more workers have a collective voice, incomes are higher, more families have health coverage, and more workers have paid leave to care for themselves and their loved ones. Higher earnings flow back into neighborhoods, and workers with stability and voice show up more fully in civic life. No city has more workers with that voice than New York.
Want to learn more about the research on how worker voice benefits businesses and communities?
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