True to her socialist ideals, Queens City Councilwoman Tiffany Cabán is on a new crusade against the city’s private sector, seeking to outlaw firing.
The city’s “Just Cause” law bars fast-food companies from firing or laying off workers or even cutting their hours by more than 15% “without just cause or a legitimate economic reason.” As The Post’s Carl Campanile reports, Cabán and city Comptroller Brad Lander want to radically expand it “to cover all employees and employers within the city regardless of size or pay.”
And the micromanaging wouldn’t stop there: Cabán’s draft bill also requires employers to fill every new or open position with workers fired for economic reasons, in order of seniority.
More: It mandates generous severance pay and bars employers from relying on worker data “gathered through electronic monitoring” in firing, disciplining or promoting employees as well as requiring them to provide ample notice of such monitoring. And it requires at least 15 days between an initial warning or discipline and termination for cause, except when the firing is for a worker’s “egregious failure” to do his or her duties.Plus, it would empower third-party nonprofits to sue over violations — an open invitation to blackmail via nuisance lawsuit.
This is insane. In the words of Kathryn Wylde, CEO of the Partnership for New York City: “Putting the recession aside, this would be the last straw for many employers. It is essentially the end of ‘at will’ employment.” Heck, it’s basically the end of employment: No business could function under these rules.
Even labor leaders see the lunacy. As one told Campanile, “What’s the point of a union when anyone can sue on your behalf and what brain-dead individual would open a small business when anyone can sue you for firing an unprofessional employee?”
He also sees a power grab by the local Democratic Socialists of America: “It’s a transparent power play by the DSA to replace organized labor with their advocacy group allies, while sinking the NYC economy in the process.”
At best, it betrays utter ignorance of how businesses work, treating all employers as would-be slavemasters, guilty unless they can prove themselves innocent.
Then again, Cabán’s connection to reality is already pretty thin. She’s a big #DefundthePolice fan, eager to see the city without police, courts or jails.
She’s a menace, pushing hard-left ideology over any hope of a safe and prosperous city. Queens voters, please give her the boot next year.
* Article from: The New York Post
