New York City hair salon owners demanded a reopening timeline at a Bronx demonstration Thursday — saying previous plans to help struggling restaurants amid the coronavirus crisis aren’t going to cut it for their industry.
Joined by Councilman Ydanis Rodriguez (D-Upper Manhattan), roughly a dozen salon and barbershop workers — wearing face masks and maintaining social-distancing guidelines — urged the city to include them in future legislation and reopening plans.
“We need to be heard, to talk about how and when we can reopen. My livelihood depends on running my salon, and with it being closed I am suffering, my employees are suffering, my family is suffering,” said Placida Soto, owner of Carmen House of Beauty in the Bronx, where the demonstration was held.
Their demands come after the city council on Wednesday passed an emergency bill imposing a 20 percent cap on restaurant delivery app fees to help struggling eateries — and after Mayor Bill de Blasio unveiled a vision for reopening shuttered restaurants and bars at partial capacity.
But none of that helps folks who cut hair professionally, demonstrators said. Workers in the field should have a stronger voice on the city’s influential Small Business Sector Advisory Council in order to discuss reopening with preventative measures, they said.
“What are we calling for today? For the City of New York, the State of New York, to sit down with the leaders of the beauty salons and put together a plan on how they can work toward addressing when people can get their hair cut again,” said Rodriguez, who spoke through a face mask at the demonstration. “We want to be addressing the future of the beauty salons.”
Many salon and barbershop employees can’t claim unemployment because they are illegal immigrants, he added.
“This is also about people that rely on the beauty salons to make the money. Many of them cannot file for unemployment. Many of them cannot quality for any social services,” he said. “It’s a whole other reality for the people that are just trying to survive.”
