NEW YORK CITY COUNCIL

COMMITTEE ON CIVIL SERVICE AND LABOR

December 5, 2014
Dear Colleague;
As members of the City Councils Committee on Civil Service & Labor, we have dedicated our
time in public service toward making New York a fairer and more just city for workers. It is in
this spirit that we write to you to ask that the jobs provided to working people through the horsedrawn carriage industry are preserved.
The industry employs roughly 300 individuals as carriage drivers and support staff. Most
workers have dedicated their lives to the trade, have little experience or interest in another job,
and have long provided for their families through these positions.
In fact, the horse and carriage industry has long been a vehicle for economic mobility. It is an
occupation that has been historically, and currently remains, populated largely by immigrants. It
is one of those increasingly rare careers where a middle-class wage may be earned without a
college degree. As policy makers, these are the kinds of jobs we want to increase, and we
desperately try to keep those that exist from leaving New York.
Drivers have told us stories about how they got here; starting as stablemen, working their way
up, and eventually becoming full-time carriage drivers. They have also told us about their
dreams; watching their children grow, sending them to college, and going back to school
themselves. The carriage drivers success stories are what we want for all New York immigrant
workers.
Not only are these good jobs, they are union jobs. Labor unions are the backbone of the middle
class and, moreover, we cannot forget that labor unions have been an essential force in
increasing and protecting the middle class. As a City, we should be encouraging and supporting
organized labor, because throughout history empowering workers has brought widespread
prosperity. It would be a tragedy to lose 300 good, union jobs. This is especially true with a local
unemployment rate of 6.4%, and an economy that has still not recovered from the Great
Recession.

It is our belief that these workers and this industry should be sustained in Central Park. They
welcome tourists to New York. They celebrate anniversaries and Quinceaeras with our
constituents. And they do it all in one of the most scrutinized, highly-regulated industries, with
rarely an incident.
The carriage drivers are proud of the work they do and have done it well; this should be enough
reason to keep them here.
We need to be realistic about what is being proposed: three hundred New Yorkers could be
unemployed at the stroke of a pen. When a factory leaves the city, we provide job retraining
programs and talk about alternative industries. However, this does not make up for the trauma
and stress it puts on impacted families, let alone the lost income and vanished job stability. To
put it bluntly, we provide retraining for an unemployed manufacturing worker because its the
best we can do, not because it makes the circumstances acceptable. And we never would wish
them unemployed in the first place.
We hope you take this letter for what it is, an opportunity to think about this issue from the
perspective of the 300 families that stand to lose everything. Lets seize this opportunity to
preserve good jobs and move forward toward creating prosperity for all New Yorkers.
Sincerely,

I. Daneek Miller
Chair, Committee on Civil Service and Labor
District 27

Costa Constantinides
Member, Committee on Civil Service and Labor
District 22

Elizabeth Crowley
Member, Committee on Civil Service and Labor
District 30

Robert Cornegy
Member, Committee on Civil Service and Labor
District 36