Mamdani Creates Office To Help Private-sector Workers Organize

NEW YORK — New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani has created an office to assist organizing efforts among private-sector workers.

The new outfit, the Mayor’s Office of Worker Power, puts another democratic socialist stamp on the nation’s largest municipal government and stands to endear the mayor to the many labor unions that play a prominent role in city politics.

On Monday — in a nod to Labor Day — Mamdani signed an executive order creating the office, which he said would funnel more resources to working-class residents while cutting down on abusive employment practices.

“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 office 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, commonly known as UAW.

During a virtual briefing on the new office, Perlstein said harnessing the scale and reach of City Hall will pay dividends for workers.

“The city is a place where there are lots of very wealthy employers and corporations that could afford to pay their workers more,” he said. “And we are looking to help those workers stand up and speak up.”

In practice, that will entail holding hearings to gather information from workers about conditions in various industries while connecting participants across sectors. The office will also disseminate information on workers’ rights and will provide referrals to organizations who help workers organize. Internally, the office will work with city agencies to study and report on workplace issues.

Perlstein will report to Deputy Mayor for Economic Justice Julie Su, who during the City Hall briefing drew a distinction between what the new outfit will be doing compared to actual labor organizations that perform the practical work of unionizing.

“This office will not be directly going into workplaces and organizing workers,” she said. “We are not taking the place of unions or worker centers and others who do that work.”

Su and Perlstein highlighted the vast and growing disparity between what workers earn compared to company leaders and argued that boosting the bottom line of the working class could translate into a more robust local economy.

The new office is part of a growing focus of the Mamdani administration on altering the private sector through government action.

The Department of Consumer and Worker Protection, for example, has become a prominent fixture in city government, with the mayor touting enforcement actions and settlements over workplace violations alongside Commissioner Samuel Levine, one of several hires from the Biden administration who had focused on federal regulatory matters.

While some of the union organizations operating in New York City could see their ranks grow if the new office is successful, whatever Perlstein comes up with could conversely further strain the relationship between the mayor and the business community. Top employers in the city have taken umbrage at several of Mamdani’s broadsides against the private sector, including his desire to increase corporate taxes.