Transcript: Governor Cuomo Speaks at Rally In Harlem For Paid Family Leave

This morning in New York City, Governor Andrew M. Cuomo announced that the New York State Conference of the NAACP, Make the Road NY, New York Communities for Change, A Better Balance, and 13 other advocacy and community-based organizations have joined the "Strong Families, Strong New York" campaign to fight for passage of paid family leave in New York State. These groups are endorsing the Governor's proposal for 12 weeks of paid benefits to allow workers to care for new children or seriously ill relatives.

A rush transcript of the Governor's remarks is below:

Good morning. Good morning. Let's hear it for Hazel Dukes. Let's hear it for the NAACP. Let's hear it for the Mission Society. I'll tell you, Hazel speaks the truth. I am still afraid of Hazel Dukes, I will tell you the truth. She calls my office -- a fear goes right through my body. I remember her from the early days and my old man was tough. He was a fighter. He was tough. Hazel was tougher. She would stand up at meetings. Boy, she would get everybody fired up. She would get everybody marching. She wouldn't take no for an answer and she, to me, represents the New York spirit. We don't take no for an answer. We're going to fight. Duke's up. Duke's up.

To Jennifer Jones Austin, thank you for your leadership. Your story is inspiring to all of us. Let's give her a round of applause. Our great Assemblyman Keith Wright -- pleasure to be with you, Keith. Senator Andrea Stewart-Cousins, our Democratic leader who's doing a great job in the Senate. To my colleagues from the Assembly, Senator Ruth Hassell-Thompson, Congresswoman Maloney -- let's give them a round of applause.

Now, we're talking about paid family leave today. It's part of the Legislative Session. We're also talking about a $15 minimum wage. We're also talking about community schools. We're talking about doing a budget that meets the priorities of New Yorkers. We can talk about all of these programs that we're working on in Albany over these next few weeks as part of the budget which is done April 1. But it's more than just about these programs. It's more than just about all these acronyms. And frankly, it's simpler than that. This is about a fight for basic fairness in this state. That's what this is about. It is that simple. You know, you can hear, you turn on the TV and you hear all these politics pundits talking about the unease that is now in the electorate and people are angry and they have all these names for wage inequality, economic anxiety, wage stagnation. What it is is, working families in this state and country are being abused. That's what it is. What they're saying is, "We want basic fairness." That's what it comes down to.

The American promise, the compact was: If you go to work, and you do what you're supposed to do and you work full time, you make a decent living. That's what this country said to people. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a great New York Governor, became President and passed the minimum wage. Minimum wage said if you work, you will be paid a wage that allows you a decent lifestyle. Decent -- why? Because there was dignity in work and if you were working and you were pulling your weight, you deserved dignity and you deserved respect and a decent life. What is a decent life? Decent life is, you don't drive a Cadillac but you don't walk, either, right? A decent lifestyle. A middle class, working family's life. That is not what we get today for the minimum wage. You cannot pay the rent and pay for food on the minimum wage in the state of New York.

We said we want to raise the minimum wage to $15. Why? Because $15 is fair. Now, when you're walking the halls, as Hazel Dukes has commended us, you're going to hit two arguments. They're going to come to you and say, "Oh, $15. $15 is too high. It's too high." That's their first argument. Really? Too high? Do you know where $15 comes from? If you took the minimum wage in the 1970s and you indexed it for inflation, do you know where it takes you to? Our proposal for $15. That's where it takes you to. The second thing they're going to say to you is, "Oh, this is interfering in the private marketplace. The private market should set wages, not government." Oh really? This is interfering in the private marketplace? Do you know what's interfering in the private marketplace? This is what interference is: you take big companies that pay the minimum wage -- we just went through this with the fast food companies, Burger King and McDonald's -- they pay their workers the minimum wage. When you make the minimum wage in New York, you are still below the poverty level. So you go to government and you are entitled to government benefits. You get welfare payments, you get food payments on top of what Burger King and McDonald's pay you. The way it works out is Burger King pays you about $18,000 at the minimum wage. State of New York taxpayers give you about an additional $7,000 for a minimum wage worker in a fast food company. So we wind up subsidizing Burger King and McDonald's. Do you know how much it costs the state of New York? $700 million per year to subsidize Burger King and McDonald's. I say it's time to get out of the hamburger business and let them pay a decent wage and let them pay instead of the state taxpayers paying.

Now, the way workers are treated is part in what they're paid, but it's also their relationship to the employer. More and more workers are treated like they are totally replaceable commodities. "You're just a worker and if you walk out the door, I will just replace you because there are ten others that need your job. You're like a laptop; if you break, I throw you out and I get a new one." So, if a minimum wage worker -- a worker without power, worker without power -- goes to his or her employer and says, "Look I have a situation at home, I need a few weeks off because of the situation I have at home." A parent who is sick, my wife is having a baby, a situation at home. "I need a few weeks off." You know what that employer will probably say? "You can take the few weeks off, as a matter of fact don't even bother coming back, you know, take more time."

The power relationship has shifted. The employee doesn't have the same amount of power, doesn't have the same amount of respect in the workplace. So we say paid family leave, because there should be a balance between work and family and your life and in the relationship of the employer and the employee, it is not there anymore and we want to make sure that people can actually live their life. If a loved one is sick, they can be there for a loved one, or if a loved one is dying and they say, "You know what, I want to spend some time with a loved one before they leave this earth because that is important; I want to spend some time with the new born baby." They should have that right and it doesn't require that they be rich enough to take that time off but the paid family leave, because everyone deserves -- everyone deserves that decency.

Now, let's be real this morning because we are listening to real people and we listened to Hazel Dukes and the Assemblyman and the Senator. The economic inequality is actually compounded by something else and that is the racial inequality, it is bad to be poor and white but on the numbers it is worse to be poor and a minority. That is the truth. Economic inequality and racial inequality starts very early in our society. You know where it starts? In the first grade. It starts in the first grade. Because your economic potential in this society is determined by your educational accomplishment and it starts in the first grade. Do you know why we are working so hard to change failing schools? New York City there are 91 failing schools. Some failing schools have been failing for years and years and years. Some failing schools in this state have been failing for over a decade. Think about that. A failing school for a decade and what have we been doing? We keep sending children to that school. Every year. You know it is a failing school, what were you thinking when you sent that child back to a failing school? Did you think miraculously that the school was going to change and come up with a different outcome? What did you think before you condemned that child to a school that is failing? How did you do that year after year after year?

91 failing schools in New York City, what is the racial composition of those 91 schools? 90 percent black and brown. 90 percent black and brown, do you think the same thing would be happening if that school was 90 percent white, let's tell the truth this morning. That would not be and when you are not providing the education what happens when that young person can't get a job? That is why you have double the unemployment rate for young minority teens, 20 year old minorities. Double that of whites. 40 percent unemployment for black and brown twenty year olds, they can't get a job and when you can't get a job you are exactly right what happens? You get into trouble, hang out on the corner. You go to jail.

State prisons, 75 percent black and brown. It is a continuum and it starts very early and we have to change it. We have to change that pattern, we have to change that conduit that continuum. One of the proudest things that I have done with my colleagues in Albany when they write the history books, we will have closed more prisons than any administration in the history of the state of New York. That is what we will have done. Closed more prisons and more alternatives to incarceration because it is just wrong. You just do more damage to more young people who are going into those prisons. Nobody comes out of a prison stronger or better or more educated than they went into that prison. That is why doing something about Riker's Island right here in New York City is so important. Riker's Island, 90 percent black and brown. 90 percent.

You want to hear a real injustice? 85 percent of those people in Riker's Island haven't even been convicted of a crime, haven't been convicted of a crime. And they are in Riker's Island suffering dangerous conditions and civil rights abuses and they haven't even been convicted. And we call that they justice system, when it is really one of the grave injustices in society today.

So, the fight for fairness -- the fight for fairness says let's do something about failing schools, let's turn them into community schools, let's give them the resources they need to fight poverty, provide the full services they need to young people. Let's make work pay, let's raise that minimum wage to $15, let people live a decent life in balance. Let them spend it with their families and pass paid family leave so people can attend to their families. Let's do it here in New York. Let's do it this year, let's show them what leadership is all about, let's tell them you don't have to take no for an answer. We can have a better society, a fairer society, a more just society, we can believe in opportunity for all. That is what New York State is all about we are going to do it with your help and we are going to lead the way, and we are going to say to the rest of this nation, "You follow New York to a fairer future for all of us."

Thank you and God bless you.

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