NEW YORK – In response to the New York Department of Labor’s announcement today that more than 1,900 excluded workers would receive nearly $30 million in funding from the Excluded Workers Fund, the Fund Excluded Workers coalition released the following statement from Nisha Tabassum, Fund Excluded Workers Coalition Manager. 

The payment is the final round of funding from the $2.1 billion Excluded Workers Fund, a first-of-its-kind program passed in 2021 to support workers who were shut out from financial assistance during the pandemic. 

“We welcome the news that hundreds more workers are on track to receive life-changing payments from the Excluded Workers Fund. This will be a much-needed holiday gift for families across New York who are still struggling to recover from the pandemic. 

But it underlines how many workers were left without assistance during the pandemic, and the fact that there are hundreds of thousands of workers across New York who have no way to access financial support if a crisis strikes in the future, be it a pandemic or an economic recession. That’s because our unemployment insurance system shuts out many of our state’s most vulnerable workers, especially Black, brown and immigrant workers in precarious low-wage industries. Freelancers, people in re-entry, and immigrant workers without authorization are still unable to access unemployment insurance in New York. 

If a crisis hits, it will hurt our state’s ability to recover. We need a permanent solution that will remedy the need for an Excluded Workers Fund in the future. That’s why in 2023, we’re fighting alongside elected officials and community-based organizations across the state to end the unfair exclusion of workers from our safety net – for good.”