NEW YORK DAILY NEWS / Sunday, January 4, 2015, 2:00 AM
It feels good to be able to write about something positive for New York workers in my first column of 2015. After all, measures that benefit them and rein in abuses by their bosses are as rare as snow in August.
It took a long time but on Monday Gov. Cuomo gave a last-minute Christmas gift to hundreds of thousands of low-wage laborers across the state by signing legislation making it easier for workers and the state Department of Labor to fight wage theft, which in New York has been an epidemic for many years.
“I am tired of waiting,” said Marcos Lino, who filed a complaint with the Department of Labor in 2008 after enduring four years of being shortchanged by his boss in a small Flushing grocery store. Six years have passed and his case is still unresolved.
Hopefully now Lino – and thousands more who, like him, have waited far too long to recover what is rightfully theirs – will finally get some justice.
“The groundbreaking legislation signed today will protect both workers from abuse, and law-abiding businesses from being undercut by employers who turn a profit by breaking the law,” said Andrew Friedman, co-executive director of the Center for Popular Democracy.