New York Governor Andrew M. Cuomo announced the launch of a special Enforcement Task Force which will immediately start making moves in order to prevent and sanction unlawful and unsafe working conditions and practices in the nail salon industry.
The announcement came yesterday and it was prompted by a series of articles that came out in The New York Times which documented, in a number of separate pieces, often inhuman conditions and practices that owners of nail salons carried out, most always at the expense of their employees.
The series of articles spoke about unfair compensation, wage theft, unsafe working conditions (with a number of procedures using extremely harmful chemicals and vapors) as well as the lack of licenses that did not stop these businesses from operating.
The task force that was announced by Governor Cuomo will include members of Departments of Labor, State, Health, Finance and Taxation, as well as the Workers’ Compensation board and it will work towards stopping and preventing wage theft, unlicensed businesses and unsafe working conditions.
The Governor said:
“New York State has a long history of confronting wage theft and unfair labor practices head on and today, with the formation of this new Enforcement Task Force, we are aggressively following in that tradition,”
He added:
“We will not stand idly by as workers are deprived of their hard-earned wages and robbed of their most basic rights. This Task Force will crack down on these kinds of abuses in the nail salon industry, enforce all of New York’s health and safety regulations, and help ensure that no one – regardless of their citizenship status or what language they speak – is illegally victimized by their employer.”
