New York State amends Retail Worker Safety Act

On February 14, 2025, New York Governor Kathy Hochul signed into law an amendment to the New York Retail Worker Safety Act (RWSA). A key provision of the amendment delays the effective date for the Act’s training, policy, and notice requirements from March 4 to June 2 of this year.

Panic buttons

The January 1, 2027, effective date for installing “panic buttons”—now termed (under the amendment) “silent response buttons”—remains the same.

The panic buttons would have directly alerted law enforcement. The amendment, however, provides for the silent response buttons to request assistance from managers, supervisors, or security officers at the retailer. Further, before the amendment, any retailer with 500 retail employees nationwide would be required to make panic buttons available to retail workers. The amendment now mandates only that any retailer with 500 retail employees statewide must provide silent response buttons.

Violence prevention training

The RWSA originally required retail employers with at least 10 employees to give employees workplace violence prevention training upon hiring and each year afterwards. The amendment eases this requirement for retail employers with fewer than 50 employees. Such smaller employers will still have to train retail workers upon hiring but will now need to provide workplace violence prevention training only once every two years after the initial training.