The Queens Center Mall is among the most profitable malls in the entire country. In 2008, the mall had sales of $876 per square foot. The mall’s location, ample parking, and accessibility via the buses and subway trains generate foot traffic of over 26 million visitors annually.

The current owner of the Queens Center Mall is Macerich, one of the country’s largest owners of malls. Macerich receives over $100 million in tax breaks but most of the 3,100 jobs at the mall pay around $7.25 and do not include health benefits. As a result, the mall has helped create an entire community that is struggling under the weight of poverty-wage jobs.
We, the taxpayers are giving millions of dollars to Queens Center Mall, and then footing the bill when workers at the mall are forced to seek out public assistance to make ends meet.
Join Make the Road Action Fund in asking the owners of Queens Center Mall to respect our communities and give back. Sign our petition to ask that:
• mall retailers pay a living wage with benefits,
• respect their employees’ right to organize without intimidation or threats,
• and offer a community space to provide much needed services, such as job training, youth services, financial counseling and more.

To learn more about the Queens Center Mall Campaign click here: http://www.queenscentermall.org/pagedetail.php?id=3

Sadly, Wage Theft is rampant in New York – in NYC alone, unscrupulous employers steal more than $18.4 million a week, almost $1 billion each year, from their workers by cheating them out of the minimum wages and overtime benefits they are due. Penalties for this all-too-common practice have been so low that there is a perverse incentive to steal your workers’ wages – it costs less, even if you eventually get caught, than paying people what is required by law. Law-abiding businesses are put at a disadvantage when their competitors are reducing costs by stealing workers’ pay.

The Wage Theft Prevention Act will change that by increasing penalties, increasing protection for workers who speak up, and adding tools that the Department of Labor and Courts can use to investigate cases and actually collect the money that workers are owed. Make the Road New York drafted the WTPA, and led a strong community-labor coalition to pass the bill. (Read more in the NY Times, NY Daily News, Village Voice, and see below for list of key allies who helped make this victory a reality.)

Workers, like MRNY member Luis Olivo, who worked at the Fine Fare supermarket in the Bronx for more than seven years as a bagger – for more than thirteen hours a day, six days a week for pocket change and tips – will now have the law behind them when they stand up for their dignity and demand that their employers follow the law. Read more about Luis’ story in the Daily News.