Gov. Cuomo’s bid to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour for all entry-level workers would cost state and local governments – as well as publicly funded nonprofit groups – hundreds of millions of dollars year, a fiscal watchdog said.
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Gov. Andrew Cuomo continued his push for a higher state minimum wage on Saturday. The governor also announced that he would next work to set $15 as the standard minimum wage for every type of industry. That recommendation went to New York State Commissioner of Labor Mario Musolino, and I am pleased to announce today that the state of New York’s labor department has accepted the wage board recommendation in full, and 150,000 fast-food workers will see their wages rise to $15 an hour!
Fast food restaurant owners in the state are reportedly considering mounting a legal challenge against the minimum wage hike.
State Senate Majority Leader John Flanagan (R-Suffolk) has expressed reservations about raising the wage so high, saying the state needs to proceed cautiously. Meanwhile, it was just a few months ago that Cuomo pushed for a much smaller increase in the minimum wage. While it is almost $22 an hour in New York City, it is far less upstate, areas like the Adirondacks, and the Utica and Binghamton areas have median wages that are between $15 and $16 dollars an hour. “It goes far beyond anything anyone has ever seriously proposed before”.
Cuomo’s, speaking to reporters, says the plan would be phased in over several years, by 2018 in New York City and 2021 upstate, and to make it easier for businesses to adjust and perhaps more palatable for republicans in the legislature. “We’ve raised the minimum wage a number of times”, Cuomo said. Or in Seattle or Los Angeles, two other cities that are boosting their minimum wages to $15 an hour.
State Senate Republicans will also create problems for Cuomo’s plan.
Under the three-step program approved in 2013 that will increase the minimum wage to an hour at the end of this year, the state’s baseline hourly wage has recovered most – but not all – of its purchasing power.
Making his vaulting aspiration all the more stunning is the fact that, just this February, Cuomo was pushing $11.50 as the appropriate level – and dismissing Mayor de Blasio’s goal of $13 as a political “non-starter”. If he formed an administrative panel to raise the fast-food minimum, he could do the same for other targeted low-wage jobs, like health care or day care workers.
The increase was recommended by the state Wage Board and does not need legislative approval.
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Cuomo, who earlier this year called a proposal to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour a “non-starter”, now said he will spend 2016 convincing the legislature to enact it.
