 Thank you so much. Good morning everyone. Good morning. I'm Candice Tall, executive vice president and political director here at 32BJ and I would just like to welcome you all into this space. We're here today with union leaders and advocates to talk about the earn income and child tax credit. I'm listening folks out of poverty and these are two initiatives that will do just that. It's about making sure people can stay and live in the city that we all love. And so we're here to support it and we're here to tell Albany to get this done this year. And so up first is my president from 32BJ. Mr. Manny Pastridge. Thank you Candice. Welcome everyone to 32BJ. And welcome mayor. Thank you for being here. Welcome to my fellow labor brothers and sisters, DC 37, local 95, the hotel trades council. Thanks for being here Rich. You know, in my work, there's good days and there's bad days. And when I need to dig down deep and think about what motivates me on a day to day, there's lots of good things that we do. Respect on the job, fighting for wages and benefits, making changes in our communities. But honestly what motivates me on a given day is the conversations that I have with our members. And if there's one theme that's common to those, it is I want to make a difference for my kids. I'm working to make a better life for my kids and their future. I am proud of what 32BJ has done to lift workers and families out of poverty. Especially our efforts this year to push for legislation that has proven to reduce child poverty, including tax credits, which we're talking about today, including raising the minimum wage. But us alone is not enough. The labor movement alone is not enough to come together to fight to ensure our children's future, to ensure that our children are taken care of. That's why I am excited to join with our mayor and this powerful group of leaders to reiterate 32BJ's enthusiastic support for making permanent the New York State supplemental child tax credit and expanding the earned income tax credit. Yeah. When the federal government expanded the child tax credit in 2021, some 120,000 New York children were lifted out of poverty. 120,000 in New York City alone. That program ended in 2022, but New York State did the right thing and stepped up to continue the gains in the momentum that we had. We have something that has proven to work. We have something that ensures children come out of poverty. Ensures our future. It is our collective investment in our future and the children who will lead us in this state one day. We have the momentum and the support to make this permanent. Let's do it. Now is the time to get over the finish line. So thank you again, Mayor Adams. Thank you for your leadership on this critical fight. Thank you to the state senators, Guernardis, CUNY, Bailey, and Chu. Thank you to the assembly person's Hevesi, Raj Kumar, and all the elected officials who are making this a priority. And thank you to my labor family. And my last thanks is to all the community organizations, elected officials who are coming together. This is a powerful group of labor leaders, community, public officials, and we can get this done. So are we going to get this done? All right. So next, let me turn it back over to our Candice Tull. Next we're going to hear from Linda McPherson, Vice President of District Council 37 and President of Local 95 Head Start Employees. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. It is the weather's nice. My name is Linda McPherson. I'm the President of DC 37 Local 95. I'm here alongside my brother, Robert Ramos, DC 37 Local 205 President. We represent thousands of daycare workers in community-based organizations and head start programs across New York City. Charke represents an essential aspect of our city's economy by providing a safe and educational space for our city's children, oftentimes outside of the traditional work hours. We give parents and caretakers the peace of mind they need while earning a living to support their families. Albany has extended tax credits. Albany must, sorry, must extend tax credits for working families to keep thousands of New York City's children out of poverty while providing the financial stability their parents need to succeed. Expanding eligibility for childcare assistance would allow more than 100,000 children to become eligible. By making New York City's supplemental child tax credit permanent, our childcare programs could aim to cover all working families. This year's state budget must include proposals to extend and expand childcare and tax benefits that support lower-income families, middle-class families. Without these programs, we are endangering our children while making New York's economy and communities more vulnerable. We simply cannot afford to ignore this reality. Let's support this tax credit. Thank you. We're going to keep this Labor Party going, and next we're going to hear from Rich Morocco, president of the Hotel Trades Council. Good morning, everyone. I'm Rich Morocco. I'm the president of the Hotel Trades Council, the union that represents almost 40,000 hotel and gaming workers throughout New York State. And look, the vast majority of our 40,000 members have families to support, and they work hard every day to provide for those families to make sure that they have roofs over their head, to make sure that there's food on the table, to make sure that they have medicine when they get sick, and to make sure that their kids have a good education. And I'm here to tell you that those families need help. Look, inflation is a universal problem. It affects all of us, but it has hit working families particularly hard. Take childcare, for example, which is an expense that is almost unique to working families. You know, for many parents, going to work isn't an option, which means that childcare isn't an option. And as fast as inflation is rising, and it's rising pretty fast, the cost of childcare is rising even faster. So that today, the cost of childcare almost is equal to the cost of tuition at a four-year college. The cost of childcare is approaching the cost of housing. And look, on housing, the cost of housing for families is increasing as fast as the cost for childcare. We've seen double-digit increases in rents. And while that makes housing expensive for all of us, it makes it almost unaffordable when you need housing for a family. And when you take the increased cost in housing and the increased cost in childcare and you combine it with the rising cost of food and clothes and gas, it's squeezing working families to the breaking point, which is why I'm here to support Mayor Adams' initiative to provide relief for working families. Because tax credits for working families are desperately needed. And they're proven to work. They are proven not only to help working families make ends meet, but they have a real intangible effect on child poverty and all of the harmful effects that go along with it. So I want to thank Mayor Adams for your advocacy. I want to thank all of the other elected leaders that are here. And of course, my union brothers and sisters for their focusing in on this issue. And thank you again for your support for working people. Thank you. Okay. And now we're going to hear from the man of the hour. He's been championing this issue. He brought all of us here together today. Our Mayor of New York City, Eric Adams. Thanks so much, Manny, Rich, Candace. And thank you. And we should be really clear about the movement for it of our city. I cannot thank our Albany lawmakers enough and the city council representatives who are here. They heard the broken people agenda. And they were clear last year when we delivered on some of the most significant things that would impact broken people so much. And when we say broken people, we're talking about HCC, 32BJ, DC37, so many more of our local men and women, TWU. I could go on and on and on. And even those who are in the private sector industry. You are fighting for right now, and this is the beauty of it. You're saying, yes, this is going to impact my membership. But it's also going to impact those outside your membership. People get lost sometimes on the fights that you have that goes beyond just your membership. Your battle to increase the minimum wage had nothing to do only with your memberships. It helped everyone who was involved. And we are here once again, earn income tax credit and child tax credit. What is unique about both of them? Tax. So if you are an undocumented person and you walk into a supermarket and you pay tax on that bread, no one is asking you where is your documentation? We should not be asking people their social security number for those benefits that are coming from their tax dollars. That's what this fight is about. Albany knew that when we went to Albany to increase the earned income tax credit the first time in 20 years. They knew that when Senator Granada's pushed forward the red light cameras because if a child is struck by a car, it doesn't matter what their documentation was. We knew that when we increase the child care dollars, billions of dollars for Albany. Give it up to them again, man. Good job. Good job. We knew it in the city council when we put money into the fair futures for those who are in foster care. We knew it when we put money into those children who needed to go to college that were foster care children. We knew it when we pushed forward all of these agendas. We are clear that when you're talking about working people, it shouldn't matter what union member you are part of or if you're in a union or not. We're all part of one union that's working class people because working class people built and run this city and that's what this battle is about. And we are unified around this issue. So here we are again on our way to Albany, two important significant things as rich raise. It is clear that the earned income tax credit helps lift children out of poverty. So we can either pay now a small amount or pay later a larger amount. The goal is to lift families out of poverty. That's what my mother wanted to do when we was raised on that hard ass welfare cheese. Y'all know what I'm talking about. If she would have had that help, if she would have had the earned income tax credit, the tax credit, if she would have had the childcare of dollars, if she would have had the support that she needed, if she would have had all of those things, we would have been on a different path. If we would have done more, we would not be filling Rikers Island right now. So match with our goal of closing the building, we want to close the pipeline that feeds the building. And this is one of the ways of closing the pipeline that feeds the building. So we are unified on these two important issues among others. But I don't think we should ever lose focus on what Rich stated. The facts are here. This raises people out of poverty. For many, and Rich, and Henry, and all of our union members to come together and say, here's some particular things we could do to lift people out of poverty, just as you are laser focused on increasing the minimum wage, laser focused on those things that create poverty in the first place. This is so important. And I have this unified body of city and state and union and broken people focused on a broken people agenda. That's the way we save this city. You help bring in a broken people mayor. That's why we have a broken people agenda. And this is an important moment for us in Albany and the city council. We must be unified around lifting broken people out of poverty, building affordable housing, improving our educational system, making sure our city is safe because broken people are dealing with the violence in our city. And broken people are dealing with those systems that prevent people not to go on a pathway of violence. So it's broken people that must have an agenda that must be pushed forward in all of our chambers, in the city council, and in Albany. And that is why we're here today. I'm proud to be with my Albany and city council colleagues that are saying clearly we won't agree on everything, but we agree on enough to lift broken people out of poverty. That's why we're here today. So let's be clear on our message. We know we can't stop inflation, but inflation should not control our destination. And as long as we focus on those items, we can move broken people out of poverty. That's in our control. We don't control things outside of that. But we can control, earn income tax credit, child tax credit, and making sure we build more affordable housing so people can have a place to live and raise healthy children and families in a broken people city. Thank you, unions. Let's make it happen. Before we move forward, and we're going to hear from some of our elected officials here, I want to acknowledge our first deputy Mayor Sheena Wright. And then I also want to acknowledge the Department of Consumer and Worker Protections Commissioner, Bill DeVere and Mayaga. Okay, and next we're going to hear from Assemblywoman Jennifer Rajkumar. 32. BJ. 32. BJ. 32. BJ. I'm Assemblywoman Jennifer Rajkumar, and I have a question for you. New York State has one of the highest rates of child poverty in the entire country. Is that acceptable to you? No. 70% of low income families in this city are just one crisis away from complete ruin. Is that acceptable to you? No. One million women in this city live in poverty. Is that acceptable to you? No. Well, we are here to do something about it. We're here to turn it around. The state budget is due in seven days. And this is personal to me. Poverty in this city has a woman's face. I know it's personal to the Mayor, whose mom worked three jobs to take care of six kids. Last year, my colleagues and Albany and I expanded the earned income tax credit in the state budget. We fought for an expansion that hadn't happened in 20 years, and we got it done. And what we saw is that it works. Nationally, the tax credit increased the income of nine million women of color, and it increased women's workforce participation. And across our state, it expanded and has lifted children out of poverty. So thank you to Mayor Adams for being a champion of the issue and expanding this tax credit to ensure that 800,000 families in the city benefit. And not only pushing for it to happen, but the Mayor and his team are making sure that people in all corners of our city know how to actually access the benefit. So many families in the city are eligible for benefits that they fail to access, whether it be EITC, SNAP, or WIC. And the Mayor is going into all corners of the city, including my district in South Queens, and uplifting the immigrant families like mine, telling them how to access these critical benefits. So thank you to the Mayor and the team for that, and my colleagues in Albany as well. And let's talk about the child tax credit too. We had the opportunity to expand it in this year's state budget. 120,000 children in our state, and we know that the child tax credit works. When the federal government had a temporary expansion of it, it lifted 3 million people out of poverty, and it's good for our economy. So we can do it. We have seven days. We need to make sure that the earned income tax credit is now made permanent, permanent for our working families. We can support women in the workforce. We can lift children out of poverty. We can help families put food on the table. Are you with me? Yeah! Let's get it done. Thank you. And now we're going to hear from State Senator Andrew Garnardis. Thank you, Candace. Good morning, everyone. Good morning. You know, in Albany, there are very few issues that are black and white. A lot of in the gray. A lot of compromise. A lot of things that, you know, maybe we don't have one right answer for. But the EITC and the child tax credit are not gray issues. The EITC and the child tax credit ending poverty is a black and white issue, because there is a proven formula for how we can do this. It is an indisputable fact. You give working people money, they are able to lift themselves out of poverty. No complicated formulas, no maybe, hypotheticals. It is a proven indisputable fact. Giving families money to pay for their necessities, to put food on their table, to pay off a utility bill, to buy school supplies, or even, God forbid, take a day with the family to go to the zoo, or the aquarium, or the amusement park, or do something as a family. It lifts families up. It lifts families up. I am so proud to be the author of the proposed New York State Working Families Tax Credit, which would, if enacted, cut our poverty rate by 20% in the state of New York. And we have, when we have one of the highest rates of child poverty in the country, cutting it by 20% like that is a game changer for every working family from Brooklyn to Buffalo and everywhere in between. That's what we are here calling for. That's what we are here fighting for. And this child tax credit, this Working Families Tax Credit, our proposal that we're fighting for in the budget right now, does a couple of really critical things. As Assemblywoman just said, when the federal government passed the expanded child tax credit through the American Rescue Plan, we cut the poverty rate in this country by 50%. That's the type of bold, transformational, anti-poverty initiative we need to see right here in New York. In 2006, New York was the first state in the country to adopt a state-based version of the child tax credit. It was transformational then. But for some reason, not going to guess why, but we can all guess why, it left out children zero to three. So if you have a two-year-old, if you have a one-year-old, if you have a six-month-old, you don't get the child tax credit in New York. You don't get the state child tax credit in New York. It's not right. It's not right. So what we're calling for in this final budget is to expand the state child tax credit so that every child in this state can get the full benefit of that credit. What we're also calling for through the expansion of the EITC is to allow ITEN filers to also be able to claim the EITC, because they also need the boost because they are also working families and they've been shut out and they've been excluded. And that ain't right either. And while we're at it, let's do another thing. Let's change the regressive income requirements that says that those families that earn the least cannot get the full benefit of the credit. Does that make any sense to anybody? No. Does not. It doesn't. So here we are. We have seven days to go to get to a timely budget. Governor's budget proposed $227 billion with a B, billion dollars for the state of New York, second largest budget in the country, the seventh largest budget in the world. I can think of 227 billion ways we can lift people out of poverty in this state if we have the will to do it. So what we need to do is we need to take the energy of everyone here on the stage and everyone here in the audience and all the members and all the families that are represented here, and we need to fight like hell for the next seven days to make sure that we don't come home until we expand the EITC and the child tax credit. And what the hell? Let's raise the minimum wage while we're at it as well. Because that's how we're going. That's how we are going to lift families up. And when we lift families up, we create safe, stable communities. And that is how we can all thrive. Thank you very much, everyone. Okay. And next we're going to hear from assembly member Tony Simone. Thank you. Thank you. I'm Tony Simone on the new assembly member for this district. I love that labor is in the house and that I house many of the amazing unions of this great city and state. Look, I ran for office not for a fancy title, but to make this a more livable, safer, equitable New York for everyone. And how do you do that by investing in our families and children? We can afford to give tax breaks for big stadiums. We can afford to fully fund the EITC at $25 million and then child care tax credit. When I ran, I heard from so many constituents, moms, who said they were going to move out of this city and state because they could not afford child care. That is a crime. I agree with the mayor. All the unions here are fighting hard for this to stay in the house as we hope for an almost on time budget to fund to help our families. But unions aren't just working for their members. They're working with the great leadership of Senator Granades and others and Jennifer Rajkumar to ensure that this is a permanent tax credit for our families. And then we will truly create a New York for everyone. Thank you. Okay. I also want to acknowledge some folks that are here. Councilwoman Alexa Aviles. She has a resolution, Resolution 500 in the council right now that's in support of what we're trying to do in Albany. Next up, we're going to hear from Councilman Shawn Abreu. Thank you, Candace. Give it up to Labor in the House. I am so ecstatic to be here today and supporting our brothers and sisters in labor, making sure that we're fighting for what's right. We need to fight for the earned income tax credit, the child tax credit, and to raise the wage this year. It is the fight for working class families as the chair of the state and federal legislation committee at the city council. It is an honor to be working with our state elected officials and labor to get this to the finish line. Let's get it done. Okay. Before we hear from our last speaker, I want to acknowledge Councilmember Eric Bacha, my homie in the background. Okay. And next up, we're going to hear from Councilman Chiose. Yes, thank you. Good morning, everyone. I'm New York City Councilmember Chiose, representing Bed-Stuy and Crown Heights, a community that would greatly benefit from all of the things that we are fighting for on this stage. New Yorkers are one paycheck away from poverty. Many New Yorkers are one crisis away from homelessness. So many families in the city and in the state are one healthcare crisis away from death. So we stand here today advocating for a life-saving initiative and bill passing within the state budget that would save so many New Yorkers' lives and benefit the people that I represent. I'll keep it short. I know a lot of politicians have a lot of things to say, but thank you so much to my labor family. Thank you. And so we just want to thank you all for being here today. Remember, if you have not yet, make sure you call your senator, your assembly person, tell them that this is a priority and we want to see this done in the next seven days. In the next seven days. Thank you all.