New York State’s fast-food wage board is expected to vote Wednesday on raising the minimum wage of some restaurant workers to $15 an hour, several news organizations reported Monday.
The board, which has scheduled a Wednesday afternoon meeting in New York City, will likely recommend the wage hike to be phased in over several years, unidentified sources told both Bloomberg Business and the Wall Street Journal.
New York’s minimum wage is now $8.75 an hour, and that is scheduled to increase to $9 an hour at the end of the year.
“It is not clear what the fast-food wage board will recommend,” Andrew Rigie, executive director the New York City Hospitality Alliance, told Nation’s Restaurant News in an email Monday.
“We urge that their recommendation does not … stifle local entrepreneurs whose companies are creating good jobs, sourcing local New York products and looking to sustain and grow their companies,” Rigie added.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo ordered the fast-food wage panel’s formation last May to make recommendations to the state’s labor commissioner, who would have to approve any increase and other details.
The New York legislature had opposed Cuomo’s earlier efforts to raise the $8.75 minimum wage for all workers, so he urged the creation of the restaurant industry panel.
Mario J. Musolino, the state’s acting commissioner of labor, in ordering the creation of the panel, said, “I am of the opinion that a substantial number of fast-food workers in the hospitality industry are receiving wages insufficient to provide adequate maintenance and to protect their health. When I refer to fast-food workers, I mean those workers who prepare food and serve customers in limited service restaurants, where customers order at the counter and pay in advance.”
He noted that many of those workers were on public assistance and said he wanted the three-member wage board to investigate “adequate minimum wages” and regulations for fast-food workers.
Bloomberg reported that Bryon Brown, the panels chairman and mayor of Buffalo, N.Y., told a June meeting in Albany: “The three members on the board are in agreement that there should be a substantial increase.”
Wednesday’s wage board meeting will be open to the public, but no public testimony will be taken.
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