Transcript: Mayor Mamdani Signs Executive Order Protecting Workers From Extreme Heat
Zohran Mamdani on NYC Mayor's Office transcripts.
Passages
Good morning, everyone. Before we speak about the heat impacting our city, I want to take a moment to update New Yorkers on another type of summer weather. A storm will move into New York City today. Heavy downpours will likely continue into the night. We may see severe thunderstorms and wind gusts reaching up to 50 miles per hour. We have been preparing for this storm since Thursday. Agencies have cleared catch basins across the five boroughs and performed targeted inspections of flood-prone neighborhoods. The Downed Tree Task Force is on alert and ready to respond to fallen trees and clogged basins, while the Tow Truck Task Force is prepared to support stranded vehicles. NYCEM has issued a travel advisory and with the Norway [vs.] Senegal kicking off this evening at New York-New Jersey Stadium, we have also issued a gridlock alert. We are encouraging New Yorkers to budget extra time for your commutes tonight. Exercise caution when you travel. Take public transit whenever you can. Do not bike or drive through flood waters. And if conditions are severe, seek shelter indoors before traveling. To stay up to date on live conditions, please sign up for Notify NYC by texting NOTIFYNYC to 692-692. Now let's turn to what brings us to the Rotunda this morning: extreme heat. I want to acknowledge a number of leaders from across our agencies as well as administrations. But before that, I want to acknowledge our attorney general, Tish James, for her leadership on this issue. The TEMP Coalition and the New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health (NYCOSH) for their advocacy. I want to thank John Mosquera, a ramp agent at LaGuardia Airport working in the heat for sharing his story with us. And I want to thank all of the unions, workers and advocates that are here. And alongside them, members of my administration, including Deputy Mayors Julie Su, Helen Arteaga [and] Julia Kerson; our NYCEM Commissioner Christina Farrell; Chief Counsel Ramzi Kassem; DOHMH Commissioner Dr. Alister Martin; DOB Commissioner Ahmed Tigani; DCAS Commissioner Yume Kitasei and MOCEJ Commissioner Louise Yeung. Now while it may be cool today, we have already had a number of sweltering days this month. And with summer in full swing, we know temperatures will only continue to rise. New Yorkers know that extreme heat can turn deadly and fast. Every year, more than 500 people in our city lose their lives due to the heat. And as climate change accelerates, summers are only growing hotter and more dangerous. Last year, we witnessed the hottest day in New York City in over a decade. On June 24, temperatures reached 99 degrees in Central Park and 102 degrees at JFK. We've already weathered two extreme heat emergencies this spring. That's why we're here together today, to keep New Yorkers safe and to help our neighbors prepare for high temperatures. First, air conditioning is one of the best ways to keep cool. New Yorkers should seek cool spaces throughout the summer, like an air-conditioned home of a family or a friend, or even your local library. And during a heat emergency, defined by a heat index of 95 degrees or higher for at least two consecutive days, or a single day at 100 degrees or high at any point, we will activate our comprehensive network of free cooling centers across the five boroughs at public hospitals, libraries, senior centers and other public locations. You can find a cooling center near you, including pet-friendly locations, by visiting the city's Cool Options Map, accessible at nyc.gov/beattheheat, or by calling 311. And now for the first time in city history, more than 2,200 LinkNYC kiosks will display directions to the nearest NYC cooling center within a 10-minute walk. We will also issue targeted alerts through our city's Advanced Warning System to protect our most vulnerable neighbors, like older New Yorkers and those with chronic illnesses. When an extreme heat emergency is declared, we will issue a Code Red alert. Directing DHS to intensify outreach operations, distribute water and other essential supplies and direct homeless New Yorkers to cool safe indoor spaces. I ask that those New Yorkers look after those who may be vulnerable. Help your auntie install her AC. Help your older neighbor find a cooling center. And if you see someone struggling, please call 311 immediately so that outreach workers can assist. For New Yorkers looking for other ways to stay cool, our Parks Department offers hundreds of spray showers, sprinklers and drinking fountains across the five boroughs. They also make it possible for New Yorkers to enjoy a summer of sand and fun across our 14 miles of public beaches, open daily with lifeguards on duty from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. And if sand isn't really your thing, our free public pools will open for the season come June 27. And for those who want to keep cool with a fire hydrant, anyone 18 or older can obtain a free city-approved fire hydrant spray cap from their local firehouse. If you're cooling down with a hydrant, do the right thing: use a spray cap. It allows hydrants to be opened safely and prevents the flow from compromising our firefighting operations. Just like with today's storm, you can stay up to date on live heat conditions across our city by signing up for Notify NYC. Once again, you could do so by texting NOTIFYNYC to 692-692, or you can visit nyc.gov/beattheheat to register. While we protect all New Yorkers this summer, we want to also focus on a critical segment that is not only impacted by the heat, but [also] essential to keeping our city running: workers. More than 1.4 million New Yorkers, a third of our city's workforce, work outside for extended periods of time. Without paid breaks or easy access to restrooms, these workers have a higher risk of heat exhaustion, heat stroke, dehydration and serious diseases like liver failure and kidney disease. For too long, working New Yorkers have been overlooked when it comes to heat protections. Legislation and other efforts that would create an enforceable workplace heat standards on both the state and federal levels have been stalled for years. That is why today I am signing our city's first-ever executive order to protect workers from extreme temperatures. This executive order will launch a multilingual messaging campaign to protect workers from heat-related illness, require every city agency to create heat illness prevention plans, direct DOB to review all heat-related construction safety requirements, compel DOHMH to analyze workers’ comp claims and strengthen reporting and data collection on worker heat illness. The EO also directs DOB to notify and remind both property owners and contractors of their obligation to report heat-related incidents during periods of extreme heat. Additionally, it directs agencies like DCWP to enforce rules like those that give food delivery workers the right to use bathrooms at restaurants for which they make deliveries. This executive order expands the scope of our extreme heat preparedness efforts to include the backbone of this city: working people. They deserve a government that understands their well-being as paramount to profit, one that fights for access to shade, rest and water on the hottest days, and one that delivers on its conviction that every person, whether they work on the tarmac at JFK, sort packages in a warehouse or write memos in an office, deserves to return home safe at the end of the day. I know this is a city full of people who love to spend their summer days outside. Wherever you are this summer, be it in the Rockaways, Orchard Beach or Prospect Park, make sure you have water, make sure that you are wearing sunscreen and make sure you are looking out for your fellow New Yorkers. We ask you to stay hydrated, stay cool and stay safe, New York, because in the immortal words of my friend, Sean Francois, “If you stay ready, you ain't got to get ready.” Thank you very much. And with that, I will pass it over to our Deputy Mayor for Economic Justice Julie Su.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceSo, first I just also want to acknowledge Commissioner Dalton who's here with us, and we have leaders from across City government. The reason being that this is an executive order that impacts the policies and the enforcement across multiple agencies. So, I'm going to go through a few specifics of what the order does. The first is the DOHMH in coordination with NYCEM and DCAS, all of whom leadership you see here, will develop worker heat illness prevention guidance and education materials to prevent heat-related illnesses and injuries for workers. A lot of this is motivated by the recognition that there is a glaring blind spot when it comes to what City government's preparation has been for workers, especially those who are working outside in these kinds of months. Secondly, the Department of Buildings is going to review current construction safety and training requirements to determine if those requirements are sufficient to actually protect workers against these kinds of conditions. We've seen — as you've heard earlier — these conditions affect New Yorkers across a wide variety of sectors. They affect those who are working at our airports, they affect those who are building our airports; and we want to make sure that this executive order applies to the full breadth of that spread of New Yorkers. And then also, what we're going to have here is actual enforcement for rules and regulations that have been on the books, but have not actually been used, not actually been followed through on. And we know that the worth of a law also comes from the willingness to follow through on that law. So, a few specific examples that we spoke about earlier. One is DOB will be proactively reminding property owners as well as contractors of their obligation to report heat-related incidents occurring on construction sites. We know that this is a crisis; we also know that there's likely under-reporting of the scale of this crisis. We want to make sure we have an accurate understanding of just how widespread this is. And finally, we spoke about this earlier, but we already have regulations to protect outdoor workers and their access to public bathrooms — you can look at Administrative Code Section 20-563. However, there has not been widespread enforcement of that regulation. And so, this executive order also directs city agencies like DCWP to fully enforce those laws to ensure that food delivery workers are not only able to but are also informed of their right to use the bathrooms of restaurants for which they make deliveries.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceThis is going to provide a full comprehensive review of actions both within the public sector and the private sector—
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceThis is starting the process to look at every single rule that's enforced and implemented, as well as ones that need to perhaps be introduced that would protect workers like John.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceI think that at the core of this we want to make sure that each and every New Yorker is safe. And so, one of our focuses when it comes to accessory dwelling units is how to bring those units up to code. So, we are proud that as part of our comprehensive housing platform, one prong of it is making it easier for homeowners to build those accessory dwelling unit and have them be built up to the code. Because what you're also referring to is the fact that many New Yorkers live in basement apartments today; and many of them are living in apartments that are not up to code. And that comes to the fore in moments of flash flooding when we realize that there aren't sufficient methods of egress from those kinds of apartments. Now, we do not want to be an administration whose answer to these kinds of crises is just a punitive one, where we are looking to find homeowners after the fact. We want to make it easier for homeowners to be in compliance and to help them create more housing supply that still allows people all of the rights that they should have as tenants. So, that has been proceeding, where we have actually started to launch a number of these programs. To your point, however, I would advise every New Yorker to stay up to date over the course of this flash flooding. It is difficult to stay on top of exactly when it's going to hit, the amount of rainfall. We have seen those numbers vary drastically in the last — just over the of the final 30 minutes before a storm is supposed to hit. And the best way to do so is texting NotifyNYC to 692-692.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceYeah, I think that, you know, we have — we are looking to make it easier for New Yorkers to breathe in this city. And part of that means that we are taking every measure that we can to prevent not only the flouting of our laws, but also the rampant idling that we see across our city and long-standing city policy is something that we do support.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceI think when anyone asks me about the Winter Olympics, the first thing that comes to my mind is: “Feel the rhythm, feel the vibe, come on boys, it's bobsled time.” I'm now going to pass it over to our deputy mayor.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceNow, I want to be very clear. We're talking about a status quo where children are being killed on a daily basis. More than 1,000 Palestinians have been killed by the Israeli military since the so-called ceasefire. Even an Al Jazeera journalist, Ahmed Wishah, was killed this past Saturday by an Israeli strike. And when I am speaking about AIPAC, I'm speaking about an organization that has been supportive of the status quo, that has fought any attempt to actually deliver safety to people not just in Palestine, but frankly, through much of the region. And it is a status quo for immorality. It is one that I will not accept. And when it comes to the way in which they defend the status quo, oftentimes they defend it through direct contributions, as we are seeing right now in New York-13. Oftentimes, they also support the status quo through dark money, by filtering money that would have previously been directly from AIPAC now through other shell organizations whose identities of their contributors are only made clear after an election. And I think that it is important that when we ask ourselves how such death and destruction is happening overseas, we also name those who allow it to take place.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceSo, I was quoting Gramsci, who said: “The old world is dying and the new world struggles to be born. Now is the time of monsters.” I used the term to describe all those who are preventing the birth of a new world. Not solely AIPAC, but frankly, super PACs at large who are spending millions of dollars in deceptive and misleading ads that are blanketing airwaves, not just in the case of Darializa Avila Chevalier. But also, we that kind of PAC spending when it comes to oppose Brad Lander, who's running for Congress, as well as Claire Valdez, as well as a number of other races. And I also use the term to describe a politics that for far too long has asked working people to lower their expectations. It has asked working people to be satisfied with small victories as their wages grow even smaller. And my use of the term is a broad use that speaks to the untenable nature of a status quo that is quite literally starving people in the city all in the name of sustaining something that we simply cannot defend any longer.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceYou know, I'm incredibly excited at supporting two Latina candidates in Darializa Avila Chevalier, who would be the first Afro-Latina to represent that district in Congress. I'm also excited to be supporting Claire Valdez, who's running in New York 7. And I think in both of these candidacies, you actually also see a commitment to working people that will uplift them in a city that is the most expensive in the United States of America. And now I just want to speak a little bit on the question of these primaries. I understand that in our city, there will be a variety of opinions when it comes to which candidate to support and which district to be involved in. One thing I do want to make clear that I find unacceptable in our city is the attempt to use the term Haitian as a slur. The trafficking and anti-Black sentiment and narratives that we have seen specifically in New York-13 when it comes to Darializa Avila Chevalier is something that I cannot stand here and say is in line with the values of the city. Let the arguments that are made for who deserves whose vote be on the basis of the race itself, not on the race of the candidates or on what communities they are alleged to belong to. And I think that it has been quite troubling to see that in the last few days.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceI'll always tell New Yorkers about the fact that they have an opportunity still to vote in these elections. Tomorrow is election day, 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. Go to vote.nyc, and make sure that you cast your ballot. I also will not blame New Yorkers, because they're too busy trying to make ends meet in the nation's most expensive city to be able to think about the problems not of today but of tomorrow and the leaders that could resolve them. However, I do know that more and more New Yorkers are starting to think this race, because we're getting to the final point of it. And I'll say that, you know, in our election last time around, I was lucky in that I didn't have to compete with the Knicks first championship in 53 years. I didn't have to complete with the first World Cup being hosted by our city in a generation. And I didn’t have to compete with what will be a summer for many of us to remember. And yet, I've seen in the last few days more and more New Yorkers coming out to vote. And I think some of it may be because also the Board of Elections is putting out those limited-edition basketballs, soccer balls. But I'm very, very excited to see more and more New Yorkers casting their vote.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceYou know, I've been clear that I'm proud of our sanctuary city status. It is a status that we have had in this city for decades. It's also a status, that when there is the conviction of more than 170 serious crimes, does allow for coordination with the federal government on that. However, beyond that, that is something that we've made clear we are not going to allow this city to become the civil immigration enforcement arm of a federal government that is hell bent on a deportation regime that would rip families apart across the city.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceI've been clear about where I stand on this, and I'm looking forward to making sure that a city where more than 3 million New Yorkers are of an immigrant background, including myself, is one where they understand we're going to follow the laws that we have and we're proud to do so.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceYou know, I'm proud to have endorsed eight candidates that are running for office — three for Congress, [and] five in contested races for the state legislature. And I am looking forward to New Yorkers hearing about Claire, Darializa [and] Brad; [and] when it comes to the state legislator, Aber Kawas, Eli Northrup, Illapa Sairitupac, Samantha Kattan [and] Brian Romero. These are all candidates that I'm very excited about. And I'm gonna spend the next, you know, today, tomorrow, doing everything that I can to help them. And then, I've said that when it comes to New York-12, I've had the pleasure of serving alongside two of those candidates in Micah Lasher and Alex Bores. Nina Schwalbe recently dropped by Gracie Mansion and left a pamphlet at the gate. But I will be keeping my vote between myself, my ballot, and I actually did keep the pen I used. If it tells you who I voted for, so be it. Alright, thank you. ###
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the source
Every passage above is taken from this recording: NYC Mayor's Office transcripts, Transcript: Mayor Mamdani Signs Executive Order Protecting Workers From Extreme Heat.