Governor Andrew M. Cuomo recently announced a first-of-its-kind statewide Task Force to root out worker exploitation issues in multiple industries in New York State. The Governor made the announcement while in the Bronx signing legislation to protect and support nail salon workers in New York – one of the Governor’s top priorities this legislative session.

VIDEO of Governor Cuomo's remarks is available on YouTube here and in TV-quality (h264, mp4) format here.

AUDIO of the Governor's remarks is available here.

PHOTOS of the announcement and bill signing are available here.

A rush transcript of the Governor’s remarks is included below:

Thank you very much. Thank you. Yay Hostos Community College! Let’s give a big round of applause to Hostos Community College. Thank you for having us here today. It’s an honor to be here. First to Speaker Carl Heastie, who is technically correct--it has been five months, but if you add the number of hours that we have worked in 5 months in compliance with the wage and hour laws, it actually comes out to five years.

Speaker Heastie stepped into a very difficult situation. We had all sorts of disruption and turmoil in the legislature this year. And his conference turned to him, at a very difficult time and they said, “you are the person we have trust and confidence, that you can steer this ship through these very troubled waters.” They were right, and he did a masterful job in bringing home a great record of accomplishment for the people of New York. Let’s give him a round of applause, to Speaker Carl Heastie.

Borough President Ruben Diaz, I love being with Borough President Ruben Diaz. He’s got all that energy, all that leadership, all that good looks. Of course he’s doing a good job, he’s got everything going for him. And on top of everything else, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, he is a highly fashionable gentleman. Stand up so we can see that shirt and tie combination. Please stand up, look how beautiful! Tell the truth, let’s give him a round of applause for his fashion sense.

Secretary of State Cesar Perales, who has forgotten more about government and policy than I will ever know. He was in the federal government, the city government, the state government, He was a pioneer in fighting for people who were left behind, Secretary of State Cesar Perales.

Mario Cilento, head of the AFL-CIO, we have a broad representation of our brothers and sisters in the labor movement today. Remember what the labor movement has done for this state and this country. It has protected workers and it has brought workers into the middle class. That would not have happened without the labor movement.

Assemblyman Ron Kim, thank you for your leadership. He’s one of the young bright stars in the assembly and he’s taken a tough issue and he’s done a great job, Assemblyman Ron Kim.

Senator Michael Venditto, you know we have issues that are – well first, we have a democratic assembly and a republican senate. To get a bill passed you have make a marriage between those two bodies. Sometimes it takes a shotgun to make that marriage. I know, because I bring the shotgun. But on this issue, there was no difference, Assembly, Senate, Democrat, Republican; this was about what’s right and what’s fair. Senator Venditto stood up, He showed leadership in the Senate, it was virtually unanimous. Let’s give him a round of applause.

To Pabitra Dash, who is with us today who represents the nails salon workers, thank you for being with us Pabitra. And to all the groups that work with workers and people in protecting their rights. They really are doing the lord’s work; let’s give them a round of applause.

This is a very exciting day for me. We have signed a lot of bills, but this is special. And what we’re doing is special. Because this really goes to the essence of New York and one of the core issues of New York. Because New York, and in many ways this country, offers a promises and poses a peril. The promise is that our gates are open and our arms are open and our hearts are open, and we welcome immigrants to this city and this state.

That is the promise. It’s the statue of liberty in the harbor saying, “come one, come all we invite you.” It was the foundation of this state; it was the foundation of this nation. It was the American experiment in democracy; that is the promise. And you look around this room, and you look around this borough, this city, this state, that’s the promise. All different ethnicities from all over the globe, all welcome and forging one community each bringing their own individual strengths. What a beautiful, beautiful promise. No other country on the globe has made that. That is the good news.

The peril, the fear, the danger is those immigrants when they come, tend to be the groups with the least amount of power in society. They don’t come with money, they don’t come with the language, sometimes they don’t come with official authorization of the federal government, so they are in a position where they can be exploited--and that is the danger. That is not new my friends. It is now happening to a new group, it is happening to the new immigrants who are here now, but this has happened for years.

I remember my grandfather, my mother’s father, God rest his soul, Charles Raffa came 15, 16 years old as a laborer. And he used to tell the same story all his life, he came as a laborer and he got a job in the construction field and the contractor put him in the back of the dump truck in the winter on the way to the job. And my grandfather was so poor, he couldn’t afford a jacket. And he was freezing in the back of the dump truck. And the owner of the company was driving the truck alone in the cab and there was more room in the cab and still he had my grandfather in the back of the truck. And my grandfather would say, he was afraid he was going to freeze to death at 16 years old. And he would say in Italian, “non comme un cane,” I wouldn’t treat a dog that way, is what he would say. And a tear would come to his eye. Not that he was recalling the pain of the cold, because he was recalling the indignity of being treated that way. That we wasn’t even being treated as a human being. That you wouldn’t treat an animal that way, it was so gratuitous. You had room inside the truck, why didn’t you let him sit inside the truck? Because he wasn’t even treated as a person. That is the peril of America.

That was 60 years ago. And it’s still happening. I’m Attorney General, I remember the story my father told and you can see it all through society. If you want to see it, you see it. So I said as Attorney General, we are going to start a series of investigations to uncover this exploitation of workers and we went to our investigation staff and we identified people who could pose as undocumented workers. And we got three or four and we sent them out. Some of them got detected, some of them couldn’t pull it off. But one guy, an Ecuadorian investigator, pulled it off. Got hired as an undocumented worker in a fancy Manhattan restaurant and was going to work in the kitchen. They hired him and he worked about a week, and he came in and he quit. I said, “what happened?” He said they’re paying me less than the minimum wage, they are making me work basically around the clock, they won’t tell me if I ever have a day off, I am working seven days a week, and they tell me if I try to take a vacation day, they’re going to fire me. He said, “I physically can’t work that hard. I just can’t do the job of a dishwasher.” I said, “you’re a state investigator, suck it up for a week and do the dishes.” He said, “I can’t.” I said, “alright, quit that job and go find another job.” He that quit that job and he went and found another job. Same thing. He literally couldn’t do the work in terms of hours and stress that were required. I called in the Head of Investigations. I said, “go hire some other people that can actually do the jobs. He said, “I can’t. Nobody will do these jobs and these hours and this stress because physically, they can’t do it and the only people who will do it are the people that have no options, who are the undocumented workers.”

That’s the peril, that’s the exploitation of workers. Now even if you are an undocumented worker, you still are entitled to the protections of laws of the State of New York in terms of wage and hours. In the eyes of the State, an undocumented worker is a worker. Just like a legal documented worker and hours and overtime, the same laws apply. What we’re saying today, the issue was brought to our attention with the nail salon workers and we focused on the nail salon workers and we want to sign a bill for the nail salon workers, but it’s not just nail salon workers. If you want to open your eyes and you want to be honest, it is everywhere in this economy. Go talk to a landscaping company, go look at a car wash, go look at a laundry service, go look at who comes in your home as a cleaning lady, go talk to the nannies. It is everywhere in society. Walk onto any construction site and see what’s going on. It’s not about documented/undocumented. It’s about fair wages and fair pay and fair hours.

So what we’re saying today is we’re going to sign the nail salon bill, but simultaneously, the Secretary of State is talking about this, the Commissioner of Labor is here. We’re going to form a joint Task Force. We have 700 investigators in the State of New York who are going to be investigating these violations with all these businesses all across the State of New York. Because we have the least powerful workers in the state who are being exploited and who are being cheated and they are getting paid the least amount. They have the fewest resources and they are the ones who are actually getting cheated the most. Not in the State of New York.

What we’re saying today is this is so widespread, in some ways we’ve all looked the other way. In some ways, it’s gone on for so long people just don’t even see it anymore. Apathy is a problem. We’re going to have our 700 investigators, and they’re going to make sure people know the law. They’re going to make sure people pay the fine if they break the law and the workers get their money back but, it’s going to take all of us. That’s why I’m so happy that our brothers and sisters in the labor movement are here and that Mario Cilento and the AFL-CIO is here and the 1199 is here and 32BJ is here and TWU is here and RWDSU is here.

It’s going to take the labor movement working with us. When you see workers who are being exploited, you let us know. It is also going to take the consumer. Ask the question. Ask the question. Ask the landscaper the question. Are you paying your workers pursuant to the wage and hour laws of the State of New York? Are you paying minimum wage? Are you paying overtime? Are you giving them vacation time? Consumers are part of this. We have a great new pope, Pope Francis, God bless him, who says income inequality, the transactions a consumer has, are not just economic transactions. There is also a moral component to those transactions. If you are giving that contractor your money, if you are giving that nail salon owner your money, you are giving that cleaning company your money, you have an obligation to ask them: are they are treating their workers fairly with dignity and within the bounds of the law? We have a 1-800 number, 1-888-469-7365. If you know of a worker who is being exploited, call us, call that number. You can call anonymously and the State investigators will have the leads they need to follow up. It is that simple.

You know in some ways there is no place better in this country to do this than New York, because in New York this is who we are. You have all these other states that are nervous about immigration and they want to build walls and build fences and they want to close the gates because they are afraid outsiders may come in. We’re all outsiders in New York! We are all immigrants in New York. We welcome immigrants. We’re not afraid of immigration, we celebrate immigration. And we love that we come from different places and have different cuisines and different accents and different cultures and we believe when you put us all together we’re actually the stronger for it. If there’s a state that’s going to stand up and say, “we celebrate immigration and we demand you respect the human dignity of workers and immigrants and enforce the law.” It’s New York. It’s not a Democratic issue or a Republican issue; it’s a New York issue. It’s who we are it’s what we believe and it’s what we’re going to enforce and we’re going to do it in this state and then we’re going to say to the rest of the nation, “this is how you treat immigrants and this is how you welcome immigrants into New York and this nation.” Our success is built on what we’ve done together and together this is going to make it a reality.

Thank you and God bless you.