Chipotle, Amazon, and Uber All Land on New York City’s Employer Wall of Shame

New York City released its first wall of shame for employers in the Big Apple that includes the likes of Chipotle, Uber, Amazon, alongside plenty of other big names. 

New York City Comptroller Brad Lander released the list in early September, along with a dashboard that compiles employers within New York City that have violated some type of labor law. This encompasses everything from harassment and wage theft to union busting efforts and offering unsafe working conditions.

The list is interactive, allowing users to punch in a given company’s name and see its violations. Users can also search the list by given violations. For example, there’s designated sections for “discrimination and harassment” and “wage theft,” which can be toggled to. When clicked on, those sections then display employers guilty of violating said provision.

“When companies steal their workers wages, commit unfair labor practices, or put workers’ lives at risk, the public should be able to clearly see it,” Lander said in a press release. “This tool can serve as a resource for workers, customers, neighbors, and other businesses as they are looking to work with employers who respect workers’ rights.”

The tool itself draws from labor law violation data compiled between 2020 to 2023 at the local, state, and federal level. Top offenders like Chipotle, Amazon, and Uber ended up on the Comptroller’s so-called “Employer Wall of Shame,” a list for employers who’ve committed the most violations within recent years.

The employer violation dashboard, which spans 234 pages, is itself vast and doesn’t only contain large companies. Numerous small businesses have also made the list.

The comptroller’s office isn’t the only agency to publicly shame businesses. New York City’s department of sanitation has called out businesses on social media for improperly disposing of their trash. The New York City-based Blank Street Coffee drew ire from the account this week for littering the sidewalk with bags of trash, rather than placing trash bags inside of trash bins. 

NYC has company in its shaming escapades. New Jersey’s labor department uses its own tool, called WALL (Workplace Accountability in Labor List) to keep tabs on businesses guilty of bad behavior. Different locales of the Teamsters labor union post their own dedicated employer wall of shames as well for those that commit unfair labor practices.

The goal of these public shaming campaigns is to spur better behavior among employers. It’s unclear if they’re having that desired affect, since the program in NYC, at least, is new. At the very least, business owners could use the tool to shed light on their competitors–and potentially give them more leverage in poaching star employees and customers.