Mayor Zohran Mamdani spent Labor Day announcing a new City Hall office built to do one thing: help private-sector New Yorkers organize unions, learn their workplace rights and report their bosses to the city. He signed the executive order creating the Mayor’s Office of Worker Power on Thursday, September 3, then formally rolled it out Monday, September 7, for the holiday.

The administration describes the office as the first of its kind in the nation. It will not organize workers itself, and it does not carry its own enforcement powers. It is set up as a middleman: educating workers about their legal right to organize, connecting them to unions, worker centers and community groups, holding public hearings, and feeding what it hears into city policy. The office will only serve private-sector workers. A City Hall spokesperson told The City Reporter that public-sector employees are left out to avoid legal conflicts over management interference in their unions.

Leading it is Tony Perlstein, a former longshoreman who most recently ran the organizing department of the United Auto Workers. He reports to Deputy Mayor for Economic Justice Julie Su, a former acting U.S. labor secretary under President Joe Biden. Perlstein is the office’s first and so far only announced hire. City Hall has not disclosed a budget or a staffing target, Su could not provide a budget or headcount when asked, The City Reporter and amNewYork reported.