NYC Council Ignores Retirees, Home Care Workers on Last Day of Session
Michelle Keller [blue vest] and other supporters of Intro. 1096 shut down traffic outside City Hall back on Jan. 10. in an effort to get the New York City Council to act on the bill. It didn’t. Photo/Joe Maniscalco
By Steve Wishnia
In a flurry of votes on the last day of its session, the City Council on Dec. 18 passed long-sought legislation setting minimum wages and benefits for security guards and prohibiting app-cab companies and delivery apps from firing workers without good cause. However, absent from the more than 40 measures approved were bills that would have guaranteed retired city workers traditional Medicare and outlawed unpaid 24-hour shifts for home health attendants.
Intro 276-A, sponsored by Councilmember Shekar Krishnan (D-Queens), “makes it unlawful for Uber and Lyft to fire drivers without just cause and, in non-egregious cases, without advance notice or progressive discipline,” the New York Taxi Workers Alliance, which campaigned for the measure, said. It passed by a 40-7 margin.
The bill requires Uber and Lyft to prove misconduct by a driver before “deactivating” them, cutting off their access to the app they work through. The companies instead must give drivers previous warnings about their conduct and 14 days advance notice. The exception is that they can fire drivers immediately for “egregious misconduct.”
“Intro 276 sets the strongest standard for just-cause protections for Uber and Lyft drivers in the country,” NYTWA executive director Bhairavi Desai said in a statement. “Drivers, who go into debt just to work, will no longer have to worry about going to sleep after a grueling day on the road only to wake and find they have been unfairly deactivated, left with no income overnight at the click of a button.”
“My bill gives drivers rights—just cause, notice, and the means to appeal an unfair firing,” Councilmember Shekar Krishnan (D-Queens), the bill’s lead sponsor, said in a statement. The Council, he added, “has taken on Uber and Lyft’s billion-dollar war chest that has fueled their lies, fear-mongering, and misinformation.”
He said he hoped the bill “will start a nationwide movement to give app-based drivers the power they deserve.”
Both Uber and Lyft opposed the bill, saying it would force them to keep unsafe drivers on the streets.
Delivery Drivers
The Council also passed Intro 1332-A, which will provide similar protections for workers at app-based delivery services, by a 40-8 vote. Sponsored by outgoing Councilmember Justin Brannan (D-Brooklyn), it will prohibit the services from deactivating workers except for just cause or “bona fide economic reasons.”
“I have been proudly fighting alongside Workers Justice Project and Los Deliveristas Unidos in pursuit of basic worker protections for over a decade,” Brannan said in a statement. “Securing protection from arbitrary and opaque worker deactivations, which strip workers of their livelihoods and dignity and incentivize the unsafe operation of delivery vehicles, is a fitting capstone to our years of work together.”
Security Guards Get Standards
Intro 1391, sponsored by outgoing Speaker Adrienne Adams (D-Queens), requires private employers to give security guards the same pay and benefits they would get if they were working under a contract with the city.
Named the Aland Etienne Safety and Security Act—after Aland Etienne, the security officer and 32BJ SEIU member who was killed while trying to protect people during the mass shooting at 345 Park Ave. last July—it would cover about 60,000 private security officers and be phased in over three years, according to 32BJ.
In the first year, the minimum wage would start at $18 an hour, or $21.20 for those with some previous experience and training. In the second year, security officers would have to be given the same amount of paid holidays, vacation, and sick leave required for private-sector security officers employed on city contracts. In the third year, they would have to get the same amount of benefits, in benefits, cash, or a combination of the two.
“The Aland Etienne Safety and Security Act will ensure each and every security officer can earn a living wage, access affordable health care, and take time off to recuperate,” 32BJ SEIU President Manny Pastreich said in a statement. “This marks a historic win for thousands of working people.”
The Manhattan Chamber of Commerce opposed the bill, calling it a “one-size-fits-all” measure that would deny employers “flexibility.” But 32BJ, which represents about 20,000 of the city’s 82,000 security officers, said it was necessary to retain them on the job. It cited a report released in August by the University of California at Berkeley’s Labor Center, which said security guards in New York City earned a median hourly wage of $20.29, or $40,311 a year; that 37.8% lacked health-insurance coverage; and that their turnover rate was 77% in 2024.
“Security guards’ responsibilities have evolved to include de-escalating conflicts, managing crises, and enforcing health and safety protocols—and they do this all without the hazard pay, benefits, and training offered to workers in similar occupations,” the report said.
What was missing
The Council, however, did not take any action on Intro 615, which would have limited home health-care aide’s shifts to 12 hours except in emergencies or other limited exceptions, and Intro 1096, which would have required the city to offer its retired employees who are eligible for Medicare “at least one Medigap plan with benefits equivalent to or better than those available” for them and their dependents in 2021.
Both bills were introduced by Councilmember Christopher Marte (D-Manhattan) in 2024, with no further action after they were referred to committee.