After more than two years of lobbying, a first-of-its-kind bill that aims to create labor protections for fashion models is one step away from becoming law. The Fashion Workers Act, which had long been stalled in the New York State legislature, passed the Senate on Thursday and was approved by the Assembly on Friday. It now goes to Governor Kathy Hochul’s desk for final approval.
In the years since the MeToo movement revealed how fashion models are particularly vulnerable to abuse, many major brands and publishers that regularly hire models have announced safety provisions or codes of conduct. But the Fashion Workers Act represents the first set of industrywide, legally enforceable provisions that could reframe how models, agents, and brands interact. The bill would require modeling agencies to provide models with copies of contracts and deal memos ahead of any job and allow models to opt out of signing over power of attorney to agencies, among other provisions around pay transparency, commission-rate limits, and workplace safety.
Industry advocacy group Model Alliance, whose founder, Sara Ziff, helped craft the bill, said Friday that the act will give models “basic rights and protections” that will “close the loophole through which model management agencies evade regulation and prohibit a variety of predatory practices that keep models working in debt and vulnerable to abuse.” The Model Alliance lobbied heavily to pass the bill in recent months and hosted a press conference outside the Metropolitan Museum the afternoon before the Met Gala in May, supported by SAG-AFTRA, the Condé Nast Union, and the Writers Guild of America East, among other labor groups.
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