New York gubernatorial candidate Cynthia Nixon released her labor platform last week. It contains support for a safe-staffing law, a perennial demand of nurses unions that mandates nurse-to-patient ratios that are high enough to ensure nurses aren’t run ragged and patient safety is strong, as well as provisions for increased safety and apprenticeship programs in the building trades — a group of workers Nixon previously upset with remarks suggesting they would have to take pay cuts to help lower the cost of subway construction.

Arguably more important are the broader, more ambitious, and more difficult proposals: support for universal just-cause protections, which would shield all workers from arbitrary firings and discipline (standard in union contracts), and a $15 minimum wage across the whole state, not just the New York City metropolitan area. Especially important, though, is Nixon’s call to establish the legal right to strike for public sector workers in New York state.

While New York is legally favorable to worker organizing in many ways, it has some of the most draconian anti-public sector labor laws in the country, most of which are compiled in the Public Employees Fair Employment Act, commonly known as the Taylor Law or the Taylor Act.