November 4, 2024

Commissioner Vilda Vera Mayuga, Department of Consumer and Worker Protection: All right. Good afternoon, everyone. Happy Monday. Thank you for being here with us as we celebrate the signing of a piece of legislation that will enhance consumer and worker protections in the hotel industry.

I am Vilda Vera Mayuga, Commissioner of the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection. The hotel industry has always been vital to the success of New York City, providing tens of thousands of workers with stable employment and visitors with places to stay while they enjoy our city.

At DCWP, we have no reservations about protecting consumers, and we strive to create a culture of compliance with our city's laws and make sure that workers and businesses have the information and tools they need to thrive. I want to thank one of my predecessors, Councilmember Julie Menin, Hotel Trades Council President Rich Maroko, and the mayor for working to prioritize the safety of our city's workers and visitors. And now I'll turn it over to Mayor Adams.

Mayor Eric Adams: Thank you. Thank you so much, commissioner. What you have done throughout the years about protecting workers, everything from our deliveristas to our taxis and those who do for hire vehicles, this is in the spirit and energy of lifting up the lives of working people. And when you think of working people, you just have to acknowledge what HTC has done. And under the leadership of Rich Maroko for many years, and now as the head of the union, he's continued to build on his legacy. Because when working people do well, the entire city is in a better place.

So we look at this front page wraparound of showing Julie right in the middle. You should frame it. This bill means a lot. Hotels, think about it. You come here, you visit the city, you want to make sure that number one, you have a clean hotel room, but also you have a safe hotel room. And when you look at some of the actions, my good friend who has a former district attorney of Brooklyn, Ken Thompson, when Ken Thompson was in private practice, he really stood up for a hotel employee who was assaulted while she was on duty.

And many of these cases you hear over and over and over again, and Rich and his team sat down and said, enough is enough. And he had to find the right partner, and he did. He found that in Councilwoman Menin, who understood how significant this bill is, how it's going to provide the safety that hotel workers deserve, and their calls for change, they were not ignored. And so congratulations, I'm looking forward to signing this bill. I don't know if we have enough pens, guys, you know. Rich travels deep, you know, and so, but this is a real proud moment of Rich, and it should be a proud moment for you. And so we look forward to signing, but we're going to turn it over to the sponsor of the bill, Councilwoman Julie Menin.

City Councilmember Julie Menin: Thank you so much, Mr. Mayor. Thank you for signing this bill. Thank you for your support of this bill. Thank you, commissioner, for your leadership. This is a monumental day for New York City, because New York City is now going to join other cities such as Denver and Chicago and Las Vegas and Washington, D.C. and Boston and many others in finally licensing hotels.

But because we're New York City, and we always do it, bigger and better, this hotel bill goes so much farther than other cities do, and I'll talk about that in a minute. First of all, I really want to thank HTC. I want to thank its incredible president, Rich Maroko, for your unwavering, your stalwart leadership on this bill. Thank you so much, and thank you to all the members. And a special shout-out to Bob, I don't know where Bob is, but the whole team was absolutely incredible on helping us get to the finish line.

I want to thank Speaker Adrienne Adams for her support and her leadership, and the 40 councilmembers, including Councilmember Crystal Hudson, who is here with us today, who joined in co-sponsoring the bill, and the 45 members, and this bill passed by 45 to 4, who signed on and then ultimately voted for this bill and got us to the finish line.

So let me talk for a minute about the bill. We all know that tourism is, as the commissioner and as the mayor said, such an important economic driver for our great city. But it's unacceptable that certain bad actor hotels accounted for 39 murders and over 14,000 criminal complaints to the NYPD in recent years.

That is why the five district attorneys, the New York Attorney General, the PBA, and many others signed on to support this bill on public safety grounds. And the perfect example of this is, for example, in Kew Gardens in Queen, with the notorious Umbrella Hotel, where hundreds of neighbors complained about crime at that hotel, and then Mayor Bill de Blasio tried to shut it down after a murder. Well, guess what? He couldn't immediately shut it down because the hotel was not licensed. That is why licensing matters, and that is why it's so important.

The Safe Hotels Act also prohibits subcontracting in mid to large-size hotels, which is so important because we saw that many of these fly-by-night subcontractors engaged in deplorable working conditions for workers and wage theft. Now, due to this bill, workers' wages are going to rise, and that is so incredibly important. The bill also requires training to identify human trafficking, which is critical as New York State ranks fourth in the country, being one of the worst places in terms of the numbers of human trafficking.

It provides panic buttons for workers, it provides protections around hazardous chemicals, And in closing, let me just say, as a former commissioner of DCWP, that agency licenses 45,000 businesses. Now finally, hotels is going to be one of the categories that is licensed, and we are finally going to be protecting workers, we're going to be protecting communities vis-à-vis the public safety, and we're going to be protecting guests. So this is an incredible day for New York City. Thank you, Mr. Mayor, for signing the bill.

Mayor Adams: And we want to, before signing the bill, really, we want to bring on a real, a true leader for working people, the president of HTC, Rich Maroko.

Rich Maroko, President, Hotel and Gaming Trades Council: All right, good afternoon. Look, what a historic day for hotel workers, right? And that is because the Safe Hotel Act may be the single most significant and sweeping law that's been enacted by the city this year, right?

And it is, it's groundbreaking provisions, I'm certain, will transform the hotel industry in New York City into the safest, the cleanest, and the most equitable in the world. And as Julie said, look, the core of this bill is the licensing framework, which is long overdue and which will finally give the city the tools that it needs to shut down those seedy hotels that are not only dangerous to workers and guests, but are blights on our neighborhoods.

And within that framework are at least a half a dozen other discrete standards, all equally groundbreaking, which provide unparalleled worker protection, including panic buttons, a ban on subcontracting minimum standards, and the list goes on and on. As Julie said, there is no other city that matches New York City now in ensuring that its hotels are the safest and cleanest in the world.

And I would like to thank the amazing coalition that we built to help pass this law. You always need friends when you're trying to do something that is as comprehensive and as pioneering as this. So I'd like to thank them, beginning with the mayor. Mayor, thank you for signing the bill. Thank you for always having our backs.

Julie Menin, the sponsor of the bill, who has courageously championed this bill from its inception. Thank you, Julie. Speaker Adrienne Adams, who shepherded this through. The other council members, Crystal Hudson, who supported the bill overwhelmingly, as well as our other partners from law enforcement to labor, the anti-trafficking advocates and the academics.

But first and foremost, I want to thank the members of our union, hotel workers in New York City, who sacrificed their time to make sure that their voices were heard. And this important legislation that provides critical protections to hotel workers were passed. To all of you, you have my gratitude and my thanks. Thank you, everybody.

###

Public link

Please use the above public link if you want to share this noodl on another website.