How 3 key Mamdani policies could affect NYC employers

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Zohran Mamdani won the Nov. 4 election for New York City Mayor by campaigning relentlessly on a message of affordability, with a platform that he said would uplift working class people. In his victory speech that night, he reiterated proposals to deliver on this promise, including a rent freeze, fast and free buses, and universal childcare.

The mayor-elect also pledged to “stand alongside unions and expand labor protections,” arguing that “when working people have ironclad rights, the bosses who seek to extort them become very small indeed.”

We dug into three Mamdani proposals that could have implications for HR teams and the wider workforce.

Raising the minimum wage to $30. Mamdani has said he wants to raise the minimum wage for New York City workers from $16.50 an hour to $30 an hour.

The mayor-elect wants to implement the proposed wage hike in phases, reaching a $30 minimum by 2030, according to a plan shared with City & State. Small businesses with 10 or fewer employees would see the higher minimum wage phased in over a longer period of time.

Some business leaders expressed concern about this proposal ahead of Mamdani’s win. A $30 minimum wage would be “unsustainable” for some business owners in Queens, the president of the borough’s Chamber of Commerce, Tom Grech, told the New York Post. “The average merchant can’t afford a minimum wage increase now. That would kill the bottom line. They’d have to cut employees,” he said in June.

Paul Piccigallo, a management-side labor attorney with Littler, told Law 360 he believed the proposed wage hike would have a “monumental effect on employers,” pointing out that small business owners are already struggling to keep up with “extraordinarily high rent [and] business costs.”

Paying higher wages doesn’t always hurt businesses’ bottom lines, as some companies have discovered in states like California, HR Brew recently reported. Other jurisdictions have already enacted similar hikes to what Mamdani is proposing—Los Angeles tourism workers, for example, will be entitled to a $30-an-hour minimum wage starting in 2030.

Providing universal childcare. Offering free childcare to parents of kids between six weeks and five years old was one of Mamdani’s central campaign promises. In a video explaining the pledge, Mamdani argued that the lack of affordable childcare in the city represented a “major cost to our economy.” New York City lost $23 billion in 2022 because parents left or downshifted their careers as a result of caregiving responsibilities, according to an analysis by the New York City Economic Development Corporation.

In recent years employers have tried to better retain working parents by partially subsidizing the cost of childcare. One Los Angeles-based shapewear company, Cakes Body, even covers the entire cost of childcare for its workers—though a benefit this generous is quite rare.

If Mamdani delivers on his promise to offer free childcare to New Yorkers, the benefit could provide a boost to HR leaders who are trying to address workforce losses that started during the Covid-19 pandemic, and have worsened in recent years. Labor force participation among mothers with young children dropped by 3 percentage points in the first six months of this year, the most significant decline in more than 40 years.

If New York City HR leaders want to understand how universal childcare could affect their workers, New Mexico might be a good place to start. On Nov. 1, it became the first state to offer free childcare to its residents, funded by revenue from oil and gas production.

Banning non-compete clauses. A federal ban on noncompete agreements was thwarted by the courts before it took effect, and efforts to limit the practice in New York state have also been unsuccessful. Mamdani says he wants to implement a “total ban on coercive noncompete clauses,” working to revive legislation introduced by New York City Council members to this end last year.

Noncompetes, which typically prevent employees from going to work for a competitor for a certain period of time, are a common feature of employment contracts in industries ranging from sales to food service. The Mamdani campaign argues that noncompetes and other similar labor practices “restrict workers’ rights, weaken their negotiating power, suppress wages, and have no place in a just economy.”

Even if New York City bans noncompetes, there are still other restrictive covenants HR teams may consider including in contracts to protect confidential information or trade secrets, such as non-solicitation provisions. Multi-state employers likely have experience navigating non-compete restrictions in other jurisdictions, as well.

At least one member of Mamdani’s transition team could be helpful in carrying out a noncompete ban. Lina Khan, who was the Federal Trade Commissioner when the agency tried to ban noncompetes, will serve on this team, according to a Nov. 5 Politico report.