Gov. Cuomo signs bill to reform New York nail salon industry

NEW YORK (WABC) -- New York Governor Andrew Cuomo on Thursday signed into law tougher regulations of nail salons to protect employees, many of them female immigrants, from workplace mistreatment and exploitation.

The bill applies to manicurists, hair stylists and cosmetologists. For nail salons, the bill specifically authorizes officials to shut down unlicensed operators, while adding sex trafficking and compelling prostitution to the list of criminal convictions that prohibit licensing.

It requires manicurist trainees to obtain a certificate to work under a licensed nail practitioner, and it says that a year's active training and completed course, which can be done online, qualify trainees for licenses.

Cuomo says the state will not tolerate worker exploitation in any industry.

The new provisions require salons to:

--Post a worker bill of rights covering over-time and pay

--Provide gloves that must be worn when polish remover is used

--Provide masks with acetone to make it safer for workers

The bill signing, though, turned in to a rally not just about nail salons, but about worker exploitation in businesses like car washes.

Cuomo is promising a new task force with 700 inspectors that will also take a closer look at the restaurant business and how wait staff and dishwashers are treated.

And they'll focus on day laborers as well.

"And it's not about documented or undocumented, it's about fair wages and fair pay and fair hours," Cuomo said.

Cuomo says immigrants from Mexico or wherever are welcome and need to be protected, and he blasted the message of GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump.

"I find it offensive and wrong," he said.

Several union leaders are backing the governor in trying to protect not just nail salon workers, but all low-income workers.

"If we really want to consider ourselves an enlightened society, we have to do more for those who have the least," AFL-CIO leader Mario Cilento said. "That's what today was all about."

A multiagency task force set up by the Cuomo administration has inspected some 755 salons, issuing 1,799 violations, in the two months since rampant labor abuses at nail salons and the dangers posed by the chemicals manicurists work with came to light.