By Corinna Barnard, Women’s eNews

Mayor Bill de Blasio ticked off such “fairness” victories as universal pre-Kindergarten for the state of New York; the city’s Earned Sick Time Act, or paid sick leave; and a major affordable housing initiative for a city with the widest income gaps in the country.

Later in the session, when Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand took the podium in the windowless auditorium of the old U.S. Custom House here in the financial district, she frowned at the U.S. Senate’s failure to pass a $10.10 federal minimum wage.

But she fed into the insurgent mood in the room by trumpeting a bill she is coauthoring that would transform the unpaid federal family leave law into a paid program funded by an independent trust fund that employees would pay into each week with a contribution that would cost them “less than a cup of coffee.”

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