Transcript: Mayor Mamdani Opens New Jobs NYC Center, Connecting New Yorkers To Good-Paying Jobs In Public Service
Zohran Mamdani on NYC Mayor's Office transcripts.
Passages
Good morning, everyone. It is an honor to welcome you to the launch of the first in-person Jobs NYC Center here in Manhattan. Can we have a round of applause for our emcee for the day? It is such a pleasure to our SBS Commissioner Kenny Minaya to be here alongside you. I also want to acknowledge, as you heard from Commissioner Minaya, the importance of DCAS. We have our DCAS commissioner who is here with us, Yume Kitasei. And we want to acknowledge that we have partners here, our City Council members, who have been helping to lead this fight both in the chambers and outside of it. We have City Council Member Shirley Aldebol, who's here on my right. We have City Council Member Shanel Thomas-Henry, who is the chair of the Small Business Committee and the chair of the Civil Service and Labor Committee. And as you heard earlier from Commissioner Minaya, we also have here the NYC BEST team that we are so excited to be swearing in today. If we can have a round of applause for them as well. To them and to our Jobs NYC team, it is truly a pleasure to be here, because today we are rolling out our job menu. Like any good bodega breakfast board, everything on it is a variation of something that New Yorkers know and love. The BEC, or as we call it, Bringing Economic Change. First up is an item that we at City Hall like to call an ECRJ. And no, I'm not talking about an egg and cheese on a roll with jalapenos, though that is incredible. I am talking about an extremely cool and reliable job. Every New Yorker deserves an ECRJ and the stability, good pay and benefits that it provides. And yet for many New Yorkers, as you just heard from Commissioner Minaya, searching for a role in City government, that opportunity has long sat just out of reach. Piles of paperwork, bureaucracy that is impossible to navigate and a lack of application assistance have made it far too difficult for New Yorkers to find positions serving the city that they love. Today, as we announce the official launch of the Jobs NYC Center, we are changing that. Thanks to the hard work of the public servants of the Department of Citywide Administrative Services, this space, which had previously been left shuttered and vacant by past administrations, has been transformed into a bustling career center. When New Yorkers walk through these doors, they will find workshops, trainings and agency hiring halls alongside job fairs. And beginning on Oct. 5, any New Yorker will be able to walk in between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. Monday through Thursday and get help filling out paperwork and applications or connect with agencies that are hiring. And they can do all of those things without even having to make an appointment. So often, New Yorkers looking for work struggle with loneliness and isolation. With this center, the job search will no longer be something that New Yorkers have to contend with alone but a process where they have the support and the backing they need. We already know that services like this work because the next item up on our BEC menu is proof of it. We call it BEST. Now the breakfast sandwich aficionados out there might think that I am talking about a sandwich with bacon, eggs, sausage and tomato. And while the Jobs NYC Center will be serving up some of those later this morning — shoutout, I think we have them coming up — I am not talking about the sandwich in this case. I am talking about our Business Express Service Team, NYC BEST, and its newest class, who are beginning their first day on the job. They are here with us today thanks to a Small Business Services hiring hall held here at 2 Lafayette following a commitment we made in Executive Order 18 to accelerate hiring across City government and to expand the BEST team specifically. Now I know there are some who might wonder, is there room for everyone? I actually just heard from a Manchester City fan that he got hired. So clearly, we are not discriminating on who we are hiring. We are hiring the best of the best no matter who they love. And after they take their oath of civil service today, each member of this team will make the lives of small business owners that much easier by acting as a point of contact with City government. No longer will entrepreneurs have to navigate the confusing landscape of permits and regulations alone. Instead, the bodegas and barbershops, nail salons and laundromats that make New York New York will now have a dedicated member of the BEST team to support them through the process and equip them with the resources to help their businesses flourish. For some BEST members like Mohammad Djouf, this work is deeply personal. Nine years ago, to this day, Mohammad arrived in America. In the years that followed, his mother built a small business right here in the five boroughs. And now, as he steps into his new position alongside all those who are a part of this team, he has the chance to build a meaningful career supporting small business owners like her. One with steady pay, good benefits and the stability of a union. This is the kind of program that makes our city work better. And it puts our city to work. Economic change is brought about by the people who know their communities best. That's what the BEC menu is all about. Now there are more hiring halls and opportunities coming up here at the Jobs NYC Center in just the next few weeks. So, if you have been looking to satisfy that craving for an ECRJ, come on down to 2 Lafayette. Who knows, there may even be some breakfast sandwiches waiting for you too. Thank you so much. With that, I am now proud to bring up the commissioner who is responsible for opening up the viewing center at the David Dinkins Municipal Building herself, DCAS Commissioner Yume Kitasei.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceSo please repeat after me. I do solemnly affirm that I will faithfully discharge the duties of which I am elected, appointed or hired to execute for the City of New York to the best of my ability and perform my duties in a manner consistent with the Constitution of the State of New York and the Charter of the City of New York. [Crosstalk.]
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceWell, I think first and foremost, we appreciate all of the different jobs that make up this city's landscape. Just a few days ago, I had a roundtable with business leaders that represented employers who were giving more — about 9,000 New Yorkers their jobs that made it possible for them to live in this city. Speaking with them about what of the city attracted them to build their headquarters here. This is, you know, across banking industries, technological industries, so on and so forth, and asking them what more could the city be doing to ensure that this would be the case for other employers. Now, we will continue to do that work. It is critically important work. I was proud to have that meeting alongside our deputy mayor for Economic Justice, Julie Su, as well as our head of EDC, Tony Shorris. And those are relationships that will continue. And then also here, to make it clear that we want to set an example as opposed to simply ask others to do this work. And for us, as one of the larger employers in our city, more than 300,000 city workers, when we look at a City vacancy, we have to ask ourselves, how can we fill this vacancy? How can we do it faster? How can we do it quicker? And when you hear from Mohammad that everybody in this room came in here a little less than a month ago, and now today are being sworn in as City employees, that's how it should work. That should be the timeline. That's what this kind of initiative does.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceSo, that is a key part of the 18 workforce centers that we have across New York City; a lot of them are focused on making connections with private-sector job opportunities. We wanted to have one place that would be focused on public-sector employees. Those, again, are public-sector opportunities in City government, state government, federal government, as well as with nonprofits that are contracted with the city. However, the other 18 workforce centers are also bringing in a focus on private-sector employment. [Crosstalk.]
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceThat is a key part of our vision for DCAS. I mean, I can bring the commissioner up here for a moment. As you heard from her, even just during the interview process, one of the key questions was, how can we operationalize what the city has in this moment? This was a vacant storefront. Now it is a storefront that is quite literally connecting New Yorkers with jobs, first with those who will do the connections, and then for those who will receive the connections. But I think across the board, we want City government to lead by example, and that also means looking at every single site that we have and asking, is there a better purpose or a better use for this? Commissioner, I don't know if you want to add anything.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceFar-left politics, like connecting New Yorkers with jobs at the NYC service center. Here we are. I think to your second question, I will leave it to pundits and analysts to make that judgment. What I will say is that I will continue to meet with anyone and everyone who can help deliver for New Yorkers. And when it comes to your first question, I think it's — it's always something to be celebrated, if the fact of our focus of $21 billion to create 12,000 new homes at Sunnyside Yard is given a national audience as it was. And it's a — think Ramy does a great job.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the source I think generally my focus is New York City. What I will say is that I'm incredibly excited to be out there in my support for Governor Hochul. When I think about these last nine months, one of the most important days was the eighth day of our administration where I stood alongside Governor Hochul on stage and announced that she was committing $1.2 billion to make universal childcare a reality in the city. And that to me is an example of the kind of partnership we have. It's also an example of the leadership that she brings to this work and to the state. You know, she often says, “Your family is my fight.” And New Yorkers has felt that over the course of time that both I've been in office working alongside her, but really since she's been in office. And that is something that I'm excited to make the case directly to New Yorkers and also to make it very clear what a Blakeman governorship would look like for a city that cares so deeply about the immigrants who call it home to have a potential governor who embraces ICE and has gone so far as to create effectively a private militia in Nassau County. That is in many ways the antithesis of what people hope for is the future of the state. And yet that's exactly what he's offering.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceI will say that it is the job of a lifetime to be the mayor of our city. And every day, what fulfilling that responsibility means is delivering for the city. So, I'm very happy to be right here focused on the things that matter to New Yorkers. And what I will say is my hopes for the midterms is that we see Democrats win across the board. And one of the priority races to me is ensuring the reelection of our Democratic governor, Kathy Hochul. And, you know, we know that, you know, the governor and I, we are aligned on the things that matter, which is how to ensure that working-class families can afford to keep living in this state. And too often politics, it feels like — it feels like a hobby only some people can afford to have. And what I so appreciate about the partnership with Governor Hochul is it has been on the things that matter. We are coming up to a month of school having started here in this year. And that's a month of 2,000 families have — being able to save more than $20,000 that they would otherwise have had to spend to send their child into 2-K that is now free thanks to the governor's leadership on this. Similarly, the leading cost, the leading driver of the cost-of-living crisis in our city is the lack of affordable housing. The governor's focus is not only on how do we deliver something tangible right now; how do we also tackle the inefficiencies in our own system? And I was proud to work with her on changes that were made to SEQRA so that could speed up the process by which we can build affordable housing. These are just a few examples that I'm excited to share with those who support me and frankly New Yorkers at large, because they are tangible, they are material and they are — they're much more than what the opposition has to offer. [Crosstalk.]
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceI've been clear that my vision is for the disbanding of the SRG. And the reason for that vision is that the SRG were created a little more than a decade ago with a intention first of dealing with threats, terroristic threats to the city. And what it has eventually become is both dealing with counterterrorism and responses to exercising First Amendment rights. I do not believe that those purposes need to be dual purposes. I believe that we should have a focus on counterterrorism that is separate from our response to the use of First Amendment — [that] continues to be a conversation I'm having with our police commissioner. I have made that promise. I will fulfill that promise. The only question is the timeline of it. And when we fulfill that promise, then those purposes will be split.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceThis is something that we will be not only continuing to discuss but will be implementing. It'll be not in an “inshallah” timeline, but an actual one. And the critical point of it is just how to ensure we're doing so while protecting New Yorkers' rights and keeping New Yorkers safe. And that's something that we're going to share more information about soon. [Crosstalk.]
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceI think it's always surreal to see a depiction of yourself on Saturday Night Live. It was — I had no idea it was coming. But to be featured on the same episode as the king of New York, as well as OG getting to relive the glory of the tip-in was incredible. And I think, you know, to your first question, I will leave that analysis to you and to others. What I will say is that at the heart of that conversation with the president was: how can we deliver on something that'll make a difference to New Yorkers' lives? And I appreciated that SNL featured the specifics of Sunnyside Yard in that sketch, because what we're talking about really is the largest housing development this city has seen since the early 1970s. And that is something that is so critically needed because when you look at the cost of rent across the city, it is skyrocketing. And what we need to combat that alongside many other things is an increase of supply.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the source I thought that was one of the funnier jokes. Yeah, I was watching it live — quite an absurd experience. Thank you, everyone. ###
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the source
Every passage above is taken from this recording: NYC Mayor's Office transcripts, Transcript: Mayor Mamdani Opens New Jobs NYC Center, Connecting New Yorkers To Good-Paying Jobs In Public Service.