In this installment of our series, “A Look at Labor,” Rockefeller Institute Director of Labor Policy Maria Figueroa interviews Roberta Reardon, commissioner of the New York State Department of Labor, about the work of the department to empower and protect New York’s workers. The discussion spans a broad swath of timely and perennial labor issues, including expanding capacity in the childcare industry, promoting green jobs, improving apprenticeship programs, advancing workplace safety protections, and more.
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Joel Tirado 00:06
Welcome to Policy Outsider presented by the Rockefeller Institute of Government. I’m Joel Tirado. In the latest installment of our series, “A Look at Labor,” Rockefeller Institute Director of Labor Policy Maria Figueroa interviews Roberta Reardon, commissioner of the New York State Department of Labor about the work of the department to empower and protect New York’s workers. The discussion spans a broad swath of timely and perennial labor issues, including expanding capacity in the childcare industry, promoting green jobs, improving apprenticeship programs, advancing workplace safety protections, and more. That conversation is up next.
Maria Figueroa 01:02
Hello everyone. We’re honored to welcome new york state labor commissioner Roberta Reardon to our podcast series focusing on labor policy. Commissioner Reardon oversees the operations of the New York State Department of Labor, including its 3300 employees and its multiple programs and initiatives prior to becoming near state labor commissioner, Roberta Reardon, served in various top leadership roles in national labor organizations, including as president of the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists AFTRA and as founding co president of sag AFTRA, the 165,000 member union resulting from the merger of the Screen Actors Guild SAG and AFTRA in 2012 Thank you, Commissioner for joining us.
Roberta Reardon 01:58
Thank you for having me. This is what a wonderful opportunity to talk about what we do.
Maria Figueroa 02:04
Well, let’s start with that the Department of Labor, the DOL, for short, plays an important role, but not always visible in our state economy. What is its mission and what are its main functions.
Roberta Reardon 02:21
So this is a really interesting agency to head up. It has a very we have a very broad mission. And you know, our our we’re focused on supporting workers. So whether it’s helping young people safely enter the workforce when they get their first jobs, helping students find a career path, or maybe helping people come back to work when they’ve been out of work for whatever reason. We’re there to help that. We help businesses so that they can find the trained workforce that they need. And often we work with businesses saying, what’s the training? You know? What’s the requirements for your job? And then we go to the to the career centers and work with potential employees and say, this is the kind of training you need. We connect a lot of people to a lot of training programs. We also protect workers when they’re on the job. So we do Wage and Hour enforcement, which is very extensive. New York State is very proud of the labor laws that we have. And we also have a public work sector. They they oversee the public work, part of of our economy. And then we also have the Division of Occupational Safety and Health, and they do things like asbestos remediation supervision. We have a Pesh, which is the public employees safety and health. It’s the state’s version of OSHA for public employees. It’s very extensive. So we help you find a job. We have a business find workers if you are unemployed through no fault of your own, we oversee the Unemployment Insurance Fund. So during the pandemic, we had 5 million New Yorkers come through our system because they were out of work. That was in 18 months. That was pretty extensive. So we help you when you’re out of work, and then we help connect you to new work, and we protect you while you’re on the job. It is, it is really, I always say it’s a wonderful mission to have. I’ve, as you said, I’ve been engaged in the labor world for a long time, and and so protecting workers is a part of my DNA, and now I get to do that professionally. And I just have to say, Governor Kathy Hochul has been such an amazing leader for us. She has been incredibly supportive of the department and of me personally, but she’s so from the day I met her when she was lieutenant governor. This was 10 years ago, our first conversation, we started talking about workforce development. She I was a brand new commissioner, and she called up and said, I want to meet the new commissioner. She came to my office, we sat down here, and we talked for 45 minutes all about workforce opportunity, and how do we help people in rural areas connect to these great jobs, as well as in cities? And we’ve continued that conversation to this day. She is such a supporter of family. And as you know, I’m sure her whole agenda now is affordability and families and so, you know, our our mission really fits into that. But because what’s, what’s better for affordability than helping somebody find a great job, and not just a job a career path? So you know, she has, really, she’s been supportive, and it just makes my life so much easier. One thing I will say about the department of labor that has really changed since I came in. We have really focused on our online opportunities. And it used to be that in order to get our services, you either had to go into a career center personally, or sometimes you could call us on the phone. We now have a very robust whole slate of opportunities online. Go to DOL, to our website and poke around. We have all kinds of opportunities, but you can, you know, you can look for jobs online. You never have to come into a career center anymore if you don’t want to. And we have a lot of dashboards and data available. Excuse me, the governor has been really abundantly clear with the cabinet. She wants us to be more transparent, and so we’re putting all kinds of data up online so people can go in and see for themselves. You can do job research online. We have a wage theft dashboard where you can look and see what that looks like in your area, lots of, lots of things online. So you know, it’s, it’s, we like to say it’s not your grandmother’s DOL anymore.
Maria Figueroa 06:29
That’s great. That’s wonderful. Yeah, thank you for that overview. And also, your department has been playing a key role in implementing policies that promote green jobs, yes, and a just transition for workers to jobs in renewable energy sectors. Can you tell us about your efforts in that area?
Roberta Reardon 06:52
So I was very fortunate to be on the Climate Action Council for I think it was three years all in, and I learned more about green energy than I ever thought were possible, but, and it was a great experience, but coming out of that was the creation of the Office of just energy transition. And so we have an actual separate office at the DOL, and their whole focus is helping workers and employers make that transition from our old fossil fuel energy picture to the new green energy world that we’re entering and and you know, it is an opportunity for us to expose young people to what these job opportunities are. We help businesses understand what their needs are it we specifically, because of the Climate Action Council and the clcpa, the law in New York State about climate specifically requires that no less than 35% of the of the benefits of the Clean Energy laws will go to disadvantaged communities. And that could be that 35% could include clean air, cleaner water, you know, but it also includes job opportunities. So we are very focused on disadvantaged communities and people who may not think that these are jobs for them, helping them get a toehold in this new, new kind of work. We’re also charged to help transition fossil fuel workers into the green space. If you go on our website, there is an ojet page. And I’ll just speak in acronyms right now. It’s the office of just energy transition. And they have a website called, let me get the name of it for you. It’s office, dash, just dash, energy, dash transition, Dash ojet. And they have a green energy page where you can go in and choose the area that, let’s say, you want to work in agriculture. So you click on that, and then it’ll be a drop down list of all these various kinds of jobs in the green space within agriculture. And it will tell you, what are the job requirements, how much training do you have to have? Where are these jobs located? What’s the possible salary range? And it really gives you a great understanding of how you go about getting into those fields. It is. It’s a great opportunity. It’s one of those. You know, you can play with the with the website, and look around for yourself. You don’t have to have somebody help you with it. So that is a great opportunity. And we also, of course, assist businesses in upskilling their current workers. So you know, you’re transitioning to greener energy in your company. What? What does that mean for maybe your maintenance people need to learn different skills to maintain different kinds of energy in the plant. So we can help you find the training for your incumbent workers and get them trained up so they can participate. It comes with a lot of funding. Of course, we do a lot of grant funding and, uh. A we are very fortunate. New York Power Authority has committed up to $25 million annually to support the clean energy industry workforce development initiatives, and a large part of that money is administered by OJT. So an example last year, the first round of the funding from Nipa, we had the renewable energy training initiative called ready. That was $4 million and it went to local workforce development boards to support workers transitioning away from fossil work and into residential clean energy workers. So weatherization, pre weatherization, retrofitting, building performance. A lot of the green work is going to be in retro. We have lots of old buildings in New York state. We’re a very old state. A lot of these buildings need retrofitting, and that’s very specific training. So this goes to local workforce boards, and they can develop training programs for their local workforce to get the training they need to succeed. So an example New York City Cool Roofs is a program that provides low income New Yorkers with paid training and work experience, installing energy saving reflective rooftops. And these programs, most of these programs that we give, these the grant money to comes with money for wraparound services. So one of the things we’ve learned in workforce is this happens also in apprenticeships, you have a training program available for a disadvantaged community member, and they go into the training but they have other needs. You know, they may have housing needs, very specifically, they probably have childcare problems, they may have transportation issues, they may have food insecurity. So we actually have money that is specifically for these wraparound services to keep these community people in the training program so that they can graduate and succeed. This is a really important part of workforce development, and it’s growing. The awareness is growing, and a lot of these green initiatives come with that kind of funding so that people don’t start the training and then drop out. We want them to finish the training and go to work.
Maria Figueroa 12:13
That’s right, yeah, no, that’s that’s excellent. And talking about apprenticeships more broadly, your department plays a key role in that area as well, right? Because you register and oversee apprentices in in a wide range of industries, beyond the construction industry and and the green jobs air sectors, right? What do you specifically do for apprenticeships and what what opportunities do these programs offer for individuals seeking to develop skills and access better jobs in in our state?
Roberta Reardon 12:57
Great question. So it’s a poorly kept secret that registered apprenticeships are my favorite program at the DOL. It’s just such a wonderful way for people to earn and learn. So registered apprenticeship and I just want to point out a registered apprenticeship program is one that’s overseen by the New York State Department of Labor. It is rigorous. It comes with a credential. That credential is accepted throughout the country. You know, you go to California, they can click on our website and see how you were trained. So it’s, it’s like, I say it’s, it’s higher education with different tools. And it really is higher education. So you that the important thing is an apprentice is working. The first day that you’re an apprentice, you’re hired, you get a job, you work at an apprentice wage, and that goes up incrementally over the length of the program. As you’re learning, as you’re working, you’re overseen by a professional journey worker who oversees the work that you do. So you’re learning your skill from somebody who’s already doing that job, but you’re working, you’re earning your money. You also have to take at least 141 I think, hours of required instruction every year. And that required instruction the the it’s overseen by sed, so it is overseen by the Education Department. So they they have that their stamp of approval. The required instruction sometimes is provided by a BOCES, a Sunni or CUNY. They’re they’re doing more and more of the required instruction a lot of the community colleges do sometimes, particularly in the in the building trades, the trades themselves have the facility to deliver that instruction themselves. I know that local three IBEW gets a lot of their required instruction from SUNY Empire, and so they’re getting rigorous instruction. They’re getting classroom instruction, but they’re also learning on the job, and when they graduate, they’ve got a career. And if you’re lucky enough to be in a union apprenticeship program, you have a career and a union that’s there to support you for the rest of your working life. It is and for the employer. So we’ve expanded this. The building trades are the gold standard, and they’ve really developed these models. I mean, some of the, some of the building trades programs are probably 100 years old at this point, they’ve they’re very well developed, and they’re four or five year programs, but we understood that this needed to be expanded. So about four years ago, I really it started before the pandemic, and then we had a pause, because obviously the pandemic, but we’ve really worked hard to expand Registered Apprenticeships beyond the trades. So now registered apprenticeships are in advanced manufacturing. McNee in New York, the Manufacturers Association of Central New York. Randy wolkin is the head of them. They came to us in 2016 and said, we really love what the trades do we want to apply this in advanced manufacturing? They’re a group, an industry group. We want to act like the umbrella groups that the trades have. So they have a way to do it. So if you belong to McNee macne, will oversee the administrative part of the program, and the individual industry will do the actual training and providing of education. So they have, you know, they’re growing across the state and advanced manufacturing. We we have a teacher residency program now, so, you know, teachers have to do student teaching, and that’s usually done for free. It’s required to be a teacher, but they’re not paid. This is, you know, this is a roadblock for certain students. They can’t afford to do it. We now have the teacher residency program where they become an apprentice, and they’re so they get support. They get paid on the job because they’re an apprentice, so they’re paid for their student teaching. And often they can get, if they’re going to a Sunni or CUNY School, they can get reduced fees for their, I believe, their master’s degree. So it’s a it’s a great way to get a more diverse teaching cohort into the schools, which is much needed. But you know, some of the other ones, it’s really exciting. I went a couple of years ago. Tiffany, the jewelers, set up a jewel setting apprenticeship, yes, so we went to their studio in downtown Manhattan. They didn’t have any samples, unfortunately. And they had, I think, 20 around, 22 or three apprentices, very diverse group, men, women, young, older, all different. One guy had been a baker. One young woman, her father was a jewelry setter at Tiffany, so her father was going to be her journey worker and oversee her work. But they, and you can imagine, it’s very meticulous. They work with microscopes, and it’s, I don’t it’s several year program, but they’re learning this art of jewelry setting, and it’s relationship. We have it in craft, brewing, healthcare. We have a growing area in healthcare. We have so many needs in healthcare. And if you think about it, Registered Apprenticeships are for people who need to learn on the job. That’s almost everybody in some way or other. So we really are working to expand it. You know, we have yoga teachers, we have groundskeepers, law enforcement. I know we have a sheriff’s apprenticeship program in upstate New York. It’s just it’s a really wonderful way to earn and learn, and I’m so proud that we get to oversee it at the Department of Labor.
Maria Figueroa 18:37
It’s wonderful. That’s us. Excellent. Yeah, congratulations on all that great work. Thank you so important. Yeah, yeah. Well, moving on to topics related to worker protections, Governor hokul issued a proclamation last year declaring June as worker safety month, which coincided with three new laws going into effect to provide workplace safety protections in three industries, the retail, warehouse and fashion industries, right? What’s the meaning of the worker safety month? And what do workers and employers in these industries need to know about these new laws.
Roberta Reardon 19:22
So I was really, really happy when the governor declared June of last year to be worker safety month, because it was an opportunity to really shine a light on these new laws. And each of them are much needed, and they’re places that people don’t normally think of workers being unsafe, and it really illustrates the the wide variety of safety regulations that we have in the state. So the warehouse worker injury reduction program built on the warehouse worker protection act from the year before the warehouse Protection Act basically said. That workers protected workers from unreasonably demanding work quotas. They you couldn’t be made to work too fast. That’s the first problem that they solved. Then last year, the injury reduction program realized that there’s a lot of in a lot of these warehouses. There’s a lot of repetitive injury problems happening, and there’s a lot of lifting and moving of boxes, and so injured, the injuries were happening, and there wasn’t anything to protect them. So this law requires the employers to implement injury reduction programs to make sure that the people who work in their warehouses are safer. And there’s a whole thing on the website about what kinds of things you have to do, and you know the kinds of requirements that you have, it really is a significant change for the people who work in these warehouses. And probably, you know this, they’re, they’re these warehouses are being automated faster and faster. They have robots that move a lot of the pallets. So the pace of of production, as it were, really can be very harmful. So that was the first the second one was the fashion workers act. People don’t know this. You know this because you and I’ve talked about the entertainment industry endlessly. Models in the fashion world are some of the most vulnerable workers in the entertainment industry. They had virtually no regulation. They don’t have a union, so they’re not protected. Most, most workers the entertainment sector are unionized one way or the other, and so they have a lot of protection. I was a unionized actor built into that but, but you’re very vulnerable in that space. And for models, they often, if they go on a photo shoot, they don’t have a lot of people around them. It might be a stylist, a makeup artist and the photographer, and it can put them in some very compromising situations. And Sarah Zeff, I believe is her name, founded the models Alliance probably 15 years ago to talk about this, and she finally got it across the goal line, and it was signed into law. So this law requires model management companies and groups have to register with us with a DOL, and we have a model management registry portal so they can do it online. And you know, if there’s a whole menu of requirements, they have to have a real contract. They had verbal agreements. I mean, it wasn’t something that would hold up in court. Now you have to have an instrument that that you can go to court with. They have to itemize the money that they withdraw from the models salary. So you, let’s say you get paid $2,500 for the day, for the shoot, and then they would take money out for various expenses, but they weren’t itemized. Now they have to say, this is for this. This is for that. So they know exactly what’s happening with their money. And then there’s a whole list of protections, things that cannot be done on the set, you know, to protect them physically, which is really, you know, people are shocked. It’s such a glamorous industry, and everybody thinks, Oh, my God, all they have to do is be pretty Yeah, they work very, very hard in very difficult situations, and they often were taken advantage of. So hats off to Sarah and all the legislators who and labor who supported their bill, and now we are helping protect models on the you know when they’re when they’re working. The third one is the retail worker safety act. And you know, people don’t think of retail workers as being an unsafe working condition. However you think about it, if you’re in a store, you know, a 711 or a convenience store or a Barnes and Noble people you know, the store is open to everybody, and there have been mounting instances of violence across the state and in other states as well, people getting assaulting the clerk or throwing something at the at the clerk for not helping them fast enough. It’s, you know, the world is more on edge than it used to be. Yeah. So this requires retail employers with 10 or more employees statewide to develop and implement training programs to prevent workplace violence, and we have examples on the website. They don’t have to create it out of whole cloth. We can help them create their work, their violence prevention programs. Those with 500 or more employees are also required to install silent response buttons or provide wearable or mobile phone based silent response buttons by January 2027, and you know, you think about it, this is really, really important. This is, you know, they had nothing between them and the public. And the public gets angry these days, so we need to protect them. This law took effect last June. I was very fortunate to go with several people from the retail, wholesale and department store union. We went to their big flagship store on Barnes and Noble on 14th Street, and had a walk through with the shop stewards, had a conversation with the workers, and they talked to us about how much. Helped how happy they were to have this law passed, and it’s just a great, a great example of it’s not a very complicated program, but, you know, owners don’t want their workers assaulted any more than the workers do. We want to make sure everybody gets home safely, so that’s what we’re doing. But we do a lot more. I mean, you know that there’s just so much in the department on the on the workforce side, worker protection is a very large part of the agency and cracking down on wage theft, huge, huge priority. This is a conversation we it’s an ongoing conversation. I get up to give speeches, and I give them the numbers, and I say, I really wish for the day when I could get up here and say I have no numbers to give you, because nobody’s breaking the law. That hasn’t happened yet. So you know a couple of things again, thanks to Governor Hochul and the legislature, last year, a law was passed that expanded our ability to hold businesses that engage in wage theft accountable. So up to this point, we could go in and do an inspection. We’d write them up. We’d, you know, they go to a hearing, they’re found guilty by the ALJ. They owe these workers money, and then they would Stonewall us, and we would have trouble finding they change the name of the company, they would disappear and we couldn’t collect, you know, the wages, or they would just not do it. We had we had carrots, we didn’t have any sticks. So last year, they gave us the stick. Now we have the ability to place tax liens on employers property, as well as seize financial assets for unpaid wages. This is after a judgment has been made against the employer, and we are already beginning to see results. We have not we’ve only begun to actually implement the liens and seizures part this year on a couple of cases, but we are seeing employers being more willing to pay what they owe because they know what’s coming. Yeah, it’s been very, very helpful. In 2025 we returned more than $28 million to over 21,000 workers, and we collected more than $1.7 million in penalties. Excellent. Now, you know, if somebody thinks that they have had their overtime stolen or whatever. If they think their wages have not been paid correctly, they should go online and fill out the form and submit it, and you know, they will be contacted. I wish I could say that we are able to make everybody whole that this happens to it’s a little bit like playing whack a mole, but we have more and more opportunity to go after the bad employers. And we know, we know the industries where this happens more, and so we keep a special eye on those industries. Those are industries that have a lot of churn in their employment, the hospitality industry, the construction industry, some grounds keeping operations, and so we’re much more aware of them, because they just pop up in our in our cases all the time. We do have the wage theft investigation dashboard, again, which is on the website, and you can go in. It has information on wage violation cases, wages returned to workers, penalties assessed, and it’s just more transparent, so people can actually see in their area. It doesn’t, I don’t think we name the employers, but it says what the activity has been I see. So there’s a lot more information available. You know, it’s, we really want to be
Roberta Reardon 28:38
more available to the public. This is something the governor, she talks about all the time. I mean, we are in a period of very low trust in government. And so the governor, we were just at a meeting, a Cabinet meeting, this morning, and she said, you know, the people in your in your agencies, you’re the face of government. And so I tell my folks all the time, we’re a very front facing agency. When you go out in the field and you do an investigation, or you’re in a career center and you help a job seeker, or you pick up the phone in unemployment and answer questions. You’re the government to that person, they’re your customer, and we need to make sure that we treat you respectfully and try to get you the answer that you need as quickly as possible, because that’s our job, and, you know, we take it very seriously. It’s, it’s a great honor to have this mission, but it’s also a great responsibility.
Maria Figueroa 29:33
Yeah, it’s the street level government, right? Yes, yeah, exactly, the front line, pretty much, yeah, line of government, yeah, that’s, that’s very interesting, yeah. Well, also last year, we became the first state in the nation to provide paid prenatal leave. That’s another protection would you like to tell us about? About that, sure.
Roberta Reardon 30:01
So this actually fits into the governor’s agenda of keeping families affordable, supporting families, and I’ll talk about that a little bit later, but paid prenatal leave, so you think about it, a worker gets pregnant, we know medically, the most important thing is for that pregnant worker to keep their appointments, because that ensures that the worker is healthy and make sure that the that the mother and the or the worker and the child are both healthy. But a lot of workers were reluctant to take time off from work to keep their appointment because they’d lose their paycheck. So this law, this is its one year anniversary. This gives eligible expectant workers, this is private sector, the ability to take paid, pre paid leave for pregnancy related medical appointments. And these appointments could include physical exams, medical procedures, monitoring, testing, fertility treatment and appointments needed with health care providers to ensure a healthy pregnancy. So we estimate about 138,000 pregnant workers per year eligible, and 72,000 of those pregnant workers are hourly workers. And that’s really why this law is so important. Because if you have to take, you know, nobody ever has a one hour doctor’s appointment. Let’s be honest, you have to get to the doctor. You have the appointment, then you get back to work. So it’s an hour and a half to two hours. Usually that’s an hour and a half to two hours of wages that you would have lost before. And for a lot of people who are living paycheck to paycheck, can’t do it. So this way that pregnant worker has the incentive to do the right thing and keep themselves healthy.
Maria Figueroa 31:44
Excellent, excellent, all right. Well, moving on to another very good development in our state, we had an increase in the unemployment insurance benefit and very significant. What made this possible, and what are the expected impacts on workers and businesses in New York of this increase from $504 per week to $869
Roberta Reardon 32:13
per week, right? So as I said, we have 5 million people go through our unemployment system in 18 months during the pandemic, and it was a very difficult time for everybody. And not only did we have the regular unemployment insurance program, we also had all the other federal programs that were created to help people who wouldn’t normally qualify for unemployment. So it was a crazy time. During that time, of course, our our state unemployment Trust Fund, went empty because of the extreme need, and you have to at federal laws, you must pay unemployment benefits. So if you go, if you run out of money in your state fund, you have to borrow from the federal government, and then you repay it on a on a particular schedule. So we ended up with a very large deficit. According to state law, which was just actually changed in 2014 we could not raise the weekly benefit if the state trust fund was in the red. So in order to raise the benefit, which would have gone up the next year, we had to get the money back into the trust fund every year the the employers were paying back the money that on a schedule, they were also paying on the interest. So it’s costing businesses more. This past year, the governor and with the support of labor and the legislature and business, they were all unified on this. She paid off that debt seven, almost $7 billion paid off the UI Trust Fund debt, which allowed us to raise the maximum benefit that you can get to $869 a week, which is really a gigantic job. You want to talk about affordability. Nothing makes affordability possible than an increase in your income. And you know, we saw last year after the Trust Fund was made whole, actually was, when did it go into effect? I don’t remember October. 58% of New Yorkers receiving unemployment insurance benefits saw their checks go up in the four weeks right after the state’s maximum benefit rate went into effect, which is October 13 through November 7. So 58% saw some increase. 29% of our customers received the new maximum. So they went from 504, to 869, game changer. But that’s not all. This also helps the businesses. So the businesses are no longer paying back that debt, and they’re no longer paying back the interest. So we estimate that this year in 2026 employers will will save on average of $100 per employee this year and $250 per employee next year. So. The businesses are made more stable. They save money. The employee, the employees get a raise when they’re on unemployment. And for us, the cyst system is stable, which is what we needed really desperately. So a big thank you to the governor and to labor and to the legislators who really came together on this. And that’s you know, she $7 billion is a lot of money. Yeah, you know, she said, that’s why we have a rainy day fund. This is the emergency that we need it for. So we are very, very happy that that it’s paid off and and, you know, hopefully people don’t stay on unemployment long. That’s why the career centers are there. We want to get you back to work as soon as work as soon as possible, but when you are unemployed through no fault of your own, make sure you file your your claim, and we’ll help you get through it. Excellent.
Maria Figueroa 35:52
That’s great, yeah. Well, also another important focus of your department has been the charter industry. Yeah. Including is capacity and labor market and child care has received a lot of public attention recently, especially after the new investments announced by government hawkell to support statewide universal child care for children under five and free child care for two year olds in New York City. What are the impacts that this increased investments could have on working families and the overall economy? So this is amazing.
Roberta Reardon 36:32
I have been the co chair of the Child Care availability Task Force since it started in late 2018 I think, and it has really been a journey. I mean, I’ve learned so much working on this task force, but the thing I knew going in was this is an economic issue. If people, if parents of young children, cannot find affordable, accessible childcare, one of those parents is going to work part time or not at all, because they can’t leave the kids alone. And in too many parts of the state, including New York City, we have childcare deserts where there’s just nothing available. People think childcare deserts are like the rural parts the Adirondacks, the southern tier, and yes, they definitely have their challenges. We have we have childcare deserts in Queens, where, you know, it’s just not sustainable for a parent to have to go 3045, minutes in one direction to drop their children off a daycare, and then another 30 or 45 minutes in another direction to go to work. That’s just not sustainable. Not to mention that there aren’t enough slots for the young people that need the care. So the governor has really focused on it. She’s been amazing. I mean, she always says, look, she experienced this as a young mother. She had her dream job, working as a staffer for Senator Moynihan, and they started their family. They had their first child, she and her husband, and they couldn’t find childcare, and so she made the painful decision to leave that job, which she loved, because she loved her child more and she needed to take care of it. Now she got back into her working world. But you know, for a lot of parents, when that happens, they don’t get back very quickly. And one of the things we know when we looked at the gender wage gap, one of the significant reasons why, over a lifetime, women earn less than men, other than the gap itself, is because women typically are the ones who drop out of the workforce for a period of two to five years, sometimes longer, to take care of small children when they Go back to work, they never make up that money. They have less in their Social Security account. They’re two to five years behind their peers in their job trajectory, and they’ve not advanced the way a lot of the the their peers have. So it has a very significant impact on the entire family, and it’s hard on employers. You know, we have employers around the state who are looking for trained, qualified workforce, and they can’t, sometimes can’t find them, because one or one or more of these parents is forced to either take a part time job or not go to work at all. So it impacts business, it impacts the parents, and it impacts the children we know. I mean all the all the studies say that quality child care before kindergarten sets a child up for success for life. Kids who go to quality child care before they go to kindergarten often enter kindergarten already doing math better. They’re socialized better. Their reading ability is better, and those are really fundamentals that they build on each year. So this is this is really significant, setting young children up for success, keeping their parents successfully employed, and helping employed. Lawyers have a steady workforce. It is an investment in our future. And when people talk about childcare, I said, it’s not the parents problem, it’s our problem. It’s society’s problem. I always say, look, I believe in in public schools and I believe in public childcare. To me, they’re kind of the same thing. It’s to it’s for the public good. I don’t have children. I happily pay my taxes to make sure that public schools are good, and I’ll be happy to pay for childcare as well, because we all benefit.
Maria Figueroa 40:32
Certainly, certainly, that’s definitely the case. This has been an amazing conversation, would you like to offer any final thoughts?
Roberta Reardon 40:46
Well, you know, again, I want to thank Governor Hochul for going to bat for workers. She She really is so clear eyed about how important it is for everybody across the state to have the ability to succeed at whatever they want to do. And you know, from the very first day I met her that, you know, 10 long years ago, this has been our conversation. She’s worked very hard to bring in a lot of new economic energy to the state. I was just at the micron groundbreaking in Syracuse. Amazing. I mean, you talk about job creation, but they need workers, and they need trained workers, and those workers need child care, and they need housing and they need transportation. That’s one of the things about our wraparound services. We want to make sure that everybody has the best opportunity to get a career that they love, so that they can live and raise a family successfully in New York State, and that’s what the Department of Labor is here for. And I just thank Governor Hochul for giving me this opportunity to stay at this work. You know her. We were just in the cabinet meetings. We were talking about the 2027, budget in the state of the state, and it’s just filled with great opportunities for workers everywhere in the state. And, you know, because she comes from Western New York, she really understands New York is a, you know, is a big state. And while downstate is has a very robust economy, some of the upstate economy has been slower, and they have challenges. You know, the transportation challenges in upstate New York are very different from the challenges to in New York City. I take a subway everywhere in New York City, but you go upstate, you’re going to, pretty much have to have a car. So, you know, those are very different challenges that we have to meet. But we are here to make sure young people have a career path. They’re connected to training. You’re protected on the job, and if you are unemployed, fill out your your claim form and see if you qualify for unemployment, because that’s why we’re here.
Maria Figueroa 42:49
Great. Thank you so much, Commissioner for being there for working people in New York State and for agreeing to speak with us today.
Roberta Reardon 42:59
Thank you so much. Thank you for asking me and thank you for the work you’re doing. Thank you.
Joel Tirado 43:11
Thanks again to Rockefeller Institute Director of Labor Policy Maria Figueroa and New York State Department of Labor Commissioner Roberta Reardon for joining us on the show to discuss the work of the department in empowering and protecting New York’s workers. If you liked this episode, please rate, subscribe, and share. It will help others find the podcast and help us deliver the latest in public policy research. All of our episodes are available for free wherever you stream your podcasts and transcripts are available on our website. I’m Joel Tirado; until next time.
Joel Tirado 43:51
Policy Outsider is presented by the Rockefeller Institute of Government, the public policy research arm of the State University of New York. The Institute conducts cutting edge nonpartisan public policy research and analysis to inform lasting solutions to the challenges facing New York state and the nation. Learn more at rockinst.org or by following RockefellerInst. That’s i n s t on social media. Have a question, comment, or idea? Email us at [email protected].
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