About Us

The New York State Industrial Board of Appeals was created by the Legislature in 1975 as an independent review and appeals board charged under the Labor Law with providing an impartial administrative review of the validity or reasonableness of rules, regulations or orders issued by the Commissioner of Labor. The broad review powers of the Board provide the many individuals, businesses and unions in this State who are affected by the Labor Law, with continued exercise of sound and established principles of due process in administrative proceedings.

In addition, pursuant to the Business Corporation Law and the Not-for-Profit Corporation Law, the Board is empowered to review and approve, or disapprove, certificates of incorporation and other corporate documents where the powers and purposes of the corporation include labor related activities or where the proposed corporate name may indicate such a purpose.

Board hearings and other functions are conducted on a statewide basis and the Board maintains offices in Albany and New York City.

The Board consists of five (5) members, each appointed by the Governor and confirmed by the New York State Senate, at least one (1) of whom must be an attorney. The Governor designates one (1) member of the Board to serve as Chairperson. The Chair and Deputy Counsel are compensated annually, and the other Board members are paid per diem.

Mission

It is the mission of the Industrial Board of Appeals to provide all parties a full and fair opportunity to be heard and to render decisions that are based on the record and are legally correct.

Powers and Duties.

The main statutory duty of the Board is to provide an impartial administrative review of the validity or reasonableness of any rule, regulation or order made by the Commissioner of Labor.

The Board's major review activities include:

• Hearing and adjudicating appeals concerning the reasonableness or validity of health and safety standards promulgated by the Commissioner of Labor for public employee safety.
• Hearing and adjudicating petitions for review of compliance orders issued by the Commissioner of Labor to enforce safety and health standards.
• Hearing and adjudicating appeals from decisions of the Commissioner of Labor on variance requests from safety and health standards.
• Hearing and adjudicating petitions for review of compliance, penalty and interest orders issued by the Commissioner of Labor under the various wage provisions of the Labor Law.
• Hearing and adjudicating appeals concerning the reasonableness or validity of minimum wage orders promulgated by the Commissioner of Labor.
• Approval of certificates of incorporation and other corporate instruments where the powers and purposes of the corporation include labor related activities, or the proposed name may tend to imply involvement in labor related activities.

The Board does NOT have jurisdiction in the areas of unemployment insurance, workers' compensation or public works contracts.

Molly Doherty was designated to be the Board Chair of the New York State Industrial Board of Appeals in August 2018, after serving as a Board Member since June 2016. Ms. Doherty has dedicated her career to public service. Prior to joining the Board, she was the Director of Litigation at Manhattan Legal Services, part of Legal Services NYC, the largest civil legal services provider in the United States. In that role she directed the affirmative and complex litigation docket on a range of issues, including employment, civil rights, housing, and consumer matters. She was the Director of the Comprehensive Rights Unit at Manhattan Legal Services prior to that, where she oversaw employment, consumer, re-entry projects, as well as the project serving people living with HIV. Ms. Doherty created the Fair Housing Testing project in the New York State Attorney General’s Civil Rights Bureau, where she developed and managed a housing discrimination testing program that operated throughout New York State. Ms. Doherty began her legal career representing tenants in housing court and other forums at Goddard-Riverside Community Center’s SRO Law Project, where she eventually became the director of the Law Project. Before attending law school, Ms. Doherty worked in a youth advocacy organization in New York City that focused on comprehensive sex education and other issues facing New York City public school students. Ms. Doherty received her law degree from CUNY Law School and her undergraduate degree from CUNY’s Hunter College.

Michael Arcuri was appointed to serve as a Board Member of the New York State Industrial Board of Appeals in 2014. Mr. Arcuri served as Congressman from the New York’s 24th Congressional District from 2007 to 2011, where he served as a member of the Rules Committee, as well as the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. Prior to serving in Congress, Mr. Arcuri was elected Oneida County District Attorney, and was subsequently re-elected 3 times, becoming the longest serving District Attorney in Oneida County history.  While District Attorney, Mr. Arcuri created the Oneida County drug task force. He also helped to create the Oneida County Child Advocacy Center, the first facility of its kind in New York State; the first drug courts in Oneida County; and victim impact panels. Mr. Arcuri is currently a partner in the law firm Ward Arcuri PLLC, where he focuses his law practice on representing corporations and LLC businesses, labor and employment law, real estate law, and litigation. Since 2000, Mr. Arcuri has also been an adjunct professor at Utica College teaching Constitutional Law in the Criminal Process, Congress in the Legislative Process and Politics, and American Government. He is also a founding member of the Washington, D.C.-based public policy company, Cannae Policy Group. Mr. Arcuri received his law degree from New York Law School and his undergraduate degree from the University at Albany.

Tricia Kakalec was appointed to serve as a Board Member of the New York State Industrial Board of Appeals in June 2019. For more than twenty-five years, Ms. Kakalec has represented employees, and the interests of employees, as a lawyer in both the private and public sectors.  Her practice at Kakalec Law PLLC is currently focused on representing employees in wage and hour and discrimination cases and on advising employees about severance agreements, employment contracts, and other legal issues. Ms. Kakalec also represents farmworkers and other low-wage workers in class actions in jurisdictions around the country. Before entering private practice, Ms. Kakalec served as the Bureau Chief, Deputy Bureau Chief, and Special Counsel of the Labor Bureau of the New York State Attorney General’s Office, and as Chair of that office’s statewide Equal Employment Opportunity Committee. Ms. Kakalec was the co-founder and Executive Director of the Workers’ Rights Law Center of New York, and an attorney with Farmworker Legal Services of New York, and in both of those offices she represented farmworkers and other low-wage workers around New York State. Ms. Kakalec began her legal career as an associate with LeBoeuf, Lamb, Greene & MacRae in New York City. Ms. Kakalec received her law degree from Harvard Law School, cum laude, and her undergraduate degree in history and religion from Duke University. After law school, she clerked for the Hon. Denis R. Hurley in the U.S. District Court, Eastern District of New York. Ms. Kakalec was a Wasserstein Fellow at Harvard Law School (awarded to “outstanding public interest lawyers”) and an Echoing Green fellow. Ms. Kakalec speaks Spanish and often represents Spanish-speaking clients. Ms. Kakalec regularly speaks and conducts trainings on employment law topics. Her most recent publication is an article about joint employment in the volume “Who is an Employee and Who is the Employer?: Proceedings of the New York University 68^th Annual Conference on Labor” (Series editor: Samuel Estreicher; Volume editor: Kati L. Griffith) (with Annie Smith). She is on the Board of the National Employment Law Association – New York.

Najah A. Farley was appointed to serve as a Board Member of the New York State Industrial Board of Appeals in June 2019 and became the Deputy Counsel for the Board in June 2023. Prior to becoming Deputy Counsel, Ms. Farley was a senior staff attorney at the National Employment Law Project (NELP) for six years. There, she  focused her work on improving work quality through policy advocacy in the areas of wage theft enforcement, retaliation and stopping the usage of noncompete and forced arbitration agreements. Prior to joining NELP, Ms. Farley was an Assistant Attorney General in the Labor Bureau of the New York State Office of the Attorney General. While there, she investigated violations for underpayment of wages and other related violations of New York State Labor Law. Ms. Farley also represented the New York State Department of Labor in its enforcement of state labor laws. Previously, Ms. Farley worked as a trial attorney at the United States Department of Labor in the Philadelphia Regional Solicitor’s office, where she litigated violations of the Mine Safety and Health Act in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Virginia. Ms. Farley also clerked for Justice S. Bernard Goodwyn of the Supreme Court of Virginia. Ms. Farley received her undergraduate degree in African American Studies from Yale University and her law degree from the University of Virginia School of Law.

Sandra Abeles was appointed to serve as a Board Member of the New York State Industrial Board of Appeals in June 2021. In January 2022, she was appointed to serve as Executive Deputy Comptroller of Management and Operations for the New York City Comptroller’s Office. Ms. Abeles provides senior policy and operations support to the Comptroller, and is responsible for overseeing the bureaus of Administration, Audits, and Contracts. The Office currently has nearly 700 staff members and an operating budget of approximately $100M. Prior to that, Ms. Abeles served as Acting Commissioner and First Deputy Commissioner at the New York City Department of Consumer and Worker Protection, an agency with a $40M budget and a broad mandate to provide consumer protection, business licensing, financial empowerment, and enforce local workplace laws. Under her leadership, the agency expanded its enforcement efforts and implemented several initiatives to improve productivity and transparency. Ms. Abeles also led the Worker Protection Division at the New York State Department of Labor which enforces labor standards and safety and health regulations; served as an Assistant Attorney General working to obtain nationwide reform of the consumer reimbursement system for out-of-network health care charges and nearly $90M in settlements from the industry and to combat immigration services fraud. Before entering public service, Ms. Abeles worked in commercial litigation at Mayer Brown and Thompson Wigdor LLP. Ms. Abeles received her law degree and undergraduate degree from New York University and holds a Master’s Degree in Social Work from Columbia University.

Benjamin Shaw was appointed to serve as Counsel to the New York State Industrial Board of Appeals in January of 2020. His entire legal career has been spent in public service. Prior to joining the Board, he worked in the Administrative Review Division of the Workers’ Compensation Board, litigated and managed cases for the Department of Labor, prosecuted abuse and neglect cases as Counsel to the Commissioner of Social Services in Columbia County and spent 7 years as an Assistant Public Defender in Schenectady County. Through this various employment, Mr. Shaw litigated a wide variety of cases, sat on multiple steering committees to implement drug courts and family treatment courts, provided mandated reporter training and continuing legal education courses, and volunteered with high school mock trial teams. He also has extensive experience drafting statutes and regulations concerning wage and hour law and has conducted outreach with the regulated community. Mr. Shaw received his law degree from Albany Law School and his undergraduate degree from SUNY Geneseo.

Jane Ipanaque joined the New York State Industrial Board of Appeals in March 2008 and she became the Board’s Executive Assistant in May 2022. Ms. Ipanaque manages the administration of the Board. Prior to her work with the Board, Ms. Ipanaque worked in the Labor Bureau of the New York State Office of the Attorney General, and spent ten years working in various sales and administrative roles in the private sector. Ms. Ipanaque studied computer information systems and business management at Queensborough Community College. She is fluent in written and verbal Spanish.

*The Chair and Deputy Counsel are compensated annually as full-time state employees and thus their compensation is not included above pursuant to Executive Order 203-b. The other Board members are paid per diem.