NYC NOW - Evening Roundup: Local Governors Prepare for their State of the State Addresses, Senate Hearing on Lee Zeldin’s EPA Nomination, Employment Authorization Checks at NYC’s Tin Building and a Community Champion

Episode Date: January 13, 2025

New York Gov. Kathy Hocul and New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy are delivering their respective State of the State Addresses on Tuesday. Plus, New York Rep. Lee Zeldin is set to appear before the Senate this Thursday. Also, WNYC’s Sean Carlson and Ryan Kailath uncover why nearly 100 workers lost their jobs at the Tin Building in late December. And finally, we meet a teenager who bakes muffins for a class of English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL).

Welcome to NYC Now, your source for local news in and around New York City from WMYC. I'm Jenae Pierre. Two governors in our region are gearing up for their state-of-the-state addresses on Tuesday. New York Governor Kathy Hokel will present a few of her key proposals, including a $3 billion inflation refund that would deliver direct payments to more than 8 million taxpayers. Hockel is also expected to discuss the largest expansion of the child tax credit ever, which she says will help more than a million families with up to $1,000 per child under four. In his address, New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy is expected

to tout his achievement as governor over the last seven years and his plans for his final year. The Democrat's second term is coming to an end, and the race to replace him is already heating up. New York Republican Lee Zeldon will appear before the Senate this Thursday, WNYC's Tiffany Hanson, has more. President-elect Trump tapped the former Long Island Congressman to lead the Environmental Protection Agency. Zeldon previously called for the reversal of New York State's ban on fracking during his failed bid for governor in 2022. Chairman of the State Republican Party, Ed Cox, praised Zeldon's appointment as a, quote, testament to President Trump's commitment to the EPA. His confirmation hearing is scheduled for 10 a.m. on Thursday. Trump also chose New York Republican

Elise Stefonic to serve as ambassador to the UN. Her confirmation hearing has not yet been set. An employment authorization check at New York City's 10 building last month led to the termination of nearly 100 jobs. More on that after the break. NYC Now. Over a few days in late December, more than 100 workers lost their jobs at the 10 building. It's a massive food hall at the South Street seaport. The mass exodus came after a surprise check of everyone's identity and employment authorization papers. For the scoop on what happened, my colleague Sean Carlson talked with WMYC's Ryan Kaila. For those of us who are not familiar, what exactly is the tin building?

Yeah, everybody I talked to asks me that. They're like, oh, the tin building, I've heard of that. Never been there. Same. It's kind of the whole problem the place is having. So years ago, the celebrity chef, Jean-George, people know him, restaurants all over the world, Michelin stars. Years ago, he teamed up with this big development firm, which owns like half the seaport, to do a gigantic food hall there. It took years, $200 million.

They took the bones of the old Fulton fish market and literally moved them across South Street, rebuilt on top. And Jean-George had a big food hall open in the space in 2022, the tin building by Jean-George. restaurants, bars, grocery, reet. It's like an eatily kind of thing. Only problem, not enough customers. I looked at their financials, which are public, because it's backed by this big real estate company, Seaport Entertainment Group. And the tin building is losing them more than $100,000 a day on average. So yeah, I've been looking at this place for a while because I'd cover restaurants. I think it's financial failures are interesting. And thus I got a tip just before New Year's that this immigration action went down. So what exactly happened?

Let me first say, you know, I got this from seven current employees and managers of the place. They would only speak anonymously since they don't want to lose their jobs. On Friday night, December 27th, and I saw screenshots of this stuff, employees started getting texts from their managers that are like, hey, you have an HR meeting. Bring documents for the I-9 form, you know, like either your passport or two other forms of ID. In some cases, folks had 14, 15 hours notice for these meetings. And as a result, more than 100 people didn't show up to work that weekend. Half the place had to close. Sources tell me it was largely Latino kitchen workers, custodial workers, you know, dishwashers, prep cooks, line cooks, janitors.

The company, Seaport Entertainment, they wouldn't confirm that number of people. They did confirm the, you know, these staffing issues led to those closures or cutbacks in hours in December. And employees tell me none of their teammates who left in December are back at work, as far as they know. The companies say why they did this? I mean, kind of. A spokesperson said they just had to do this last-minute authorization check before the new year. They said there's been a restructuring behind the scenes. The employees worked for a Jean-George company subsidiary.

Now Seaport Entertainment wanted to onboard the workers onto its own payroll before January 1st, which is why the document checks were so sudden in last minute. I talked to multiple labor and immigration lawyers who said, you know, not legal advice, But the sniff test on this thing is it's more complicated. The company already had everyone's documents from when they were initially hired. The workers' jobs didn't substantively change. You know, they closed up the shop one night as employees of one entity and came in the next morning working for another. And that Seaport Entertainment likely didn't necessarily have to do this.

What does the company say? They say they had to do it for, quote, business reasons undisclosed. Do we know how many undocumented workers are in this? state's restaurant industry, Ryan? Estimates are tough. There's a study from the Center for Migration Studies that looked at 2018 data. They found that in New York State, there are about 75,000 undocumented workers in the restaurant industry alone.

Does this happen often in the city, given how reliant the food industry is on undocumented labor? The head of a trade group for the city's bar and restaurant industry told me he had not heard of anything else like this going on. It could be an outlier. it could be for financial reasons, right? Like the place is struggling and labor is their biggest expense. But the company would not elaborate any further on why this happened.

You know, what we do know is that apparently a ton of people lost their livelihood, basically overnight. One employee who's still there told me, you know, he said, I was out for two days and when I got back, half the building was gone. And it's made the remaining workers, like, extremely upset and demoralized, as you can imagine. And another worker told me, quote, undocumented immigrants hold up the whole hospitality industry. That's WMYC's Ryan Kylath talking with my colleague, Sean Carlson. New York City communities thrive on everyday people trying to make a positive impact on those around them. We're calling them community champions. Meet Jonas Coates, a 17-year-old Manhattan resident who has been baking and donating muffins every Friday morning to students at the Mercy Center in the Bronx.

The class is called ESOL, or English for speakers of other languages. I started baking maybe when I was five or six, really with my grandmother. And that's maybe why I started to fall in love with baking as sort of a way to express joy and love for those around you. I got involved with baking for the ESOL classes around a year ago. My family's been pretty involved with the Mercy Center for a while. And one day, my dad came home with an email from the head of the center, saying they had this need on Friday mornings for their ESOL classes because many of the participants were coming hungry and that was creating this barrier to learning. So I decided to start baking muffins for those classes. And since then, I've been baking weekly.

I usually make four or five batches on Thursday nights. I get home from school, I finish up all of my work, then I go to get all of my ingredients. I usually try to do something different each week, really pouring my soul into baking the same way I've seen those bakers around me do. And then the next morning, I take the muffins up to the Bronx. Usually I'm not able to see them enjoy the muffins, unfortunately, because usually I'm there before these students in the classes actually get there,

but I still feel like my work is meaningful because I hear this positive response from the people working there, and I know that I'm having this positive impact. To be able to do this thing that I love, and it brings joy to people around me, just makes me very happy. Jonas Coates lives in Manhattan. Thanks for listening to you. NYC now from WNYC. Catch us every weekday three times a day.

I'm Jene Pierre. We'll be back tomorrow.