On October 8th, participants from the Ain’t I a Woman?! (AIW) campaign and the Flushing Workers Center (FWC) rallied in front of The Shirley A. Chisholm State Office Building demanding Governor Hochul to reopen wage theft cases, stop giving money to the Chinese-American Planning Council (CPC) and denounce the 24-hour workday.
“We ask Governor Hochul and we ask our DOL commissioner to please do what’s right, support these workers and make sure they get paid every penny that they have earned,” Senator Jessica Ramos, Chair of the New York State Senate Labor Committee, said during the rally. “No one should be forced to work 24 hours, and if you work, you should be paid for every single minute of labor that you’ve performed.”
In November 2014, Lai Yee Chan, a former home care worker, received a check of $200 from the Department of Labor (DOL) after they found that the CPC owed home care workers overtime. The check that Lai Yee Chan received was meant to compensate her for 6,000 hours she worked between 2007 and 2013. That’s when Lai Yee Chan started talking to other home care workers and complaining to her union about their unpaid overtime. The union claimed that CPC did not have to pay her for overtime because CPC is a non-profit organization…