ALBANY – In response to Governor Hochul’s 2023 State of the State address, the Fund Excluded Workers Coalition released the following statement from Nishat Tabassum, Coalition Manager: 

“Governor Hochul’s State of the State was packed with party favors for her wealthy donors, from tax breaks for real estate developers to giveaways for big businesses. Yet the Governor had not a word for the thousands of workers who kept the state running during the darkest days of the pandemic: the state’s hundreds of thousands of excluded workers, who were left out of any COVID-era assistance and are vulnerable to financial ruin if a crisis strikes again. 

The silence is deafening. Excluded workers are an essential part of our communities. They are street vendors, small-job construction workers, domestic workers, workers rebuilding their lives after incarceration, freelance writers, artists, photographers. They contribute hundreds of millions of dollars every year in taxes, and increasingly, they’re a key driver of our state’s economy. Every day, more and more workers are turning to freelance and temporary work to make ends meet – and finding themselves excluded from unemployment protections that most workers can count on when they do.

We must update our state’s worker safety net to reflect the 21st century and give access to unemployment compensation to excluded workers for the long term. Not only is it morally the right thing to do, but it will also make us better prepared for the next crisis. COVID-19 showed us that when we leave some workers out, everybody suffers. Again and again today, Governor Hochul made clear that she wanted to make our state more prepared for the next crisis. We can’t think of any better way than to invest in the state’s most vulnerable workers – and with economic storm clouds on the horizon, the time to get ready is now.”