New York will ring in the new year with a minimum wage hike.
On Thursday, the state’s minimum wage jumps to $9 from $8.75. Tipped workers, who earn between $4.90 and $5.65, will see their minimum hourly rate increase to $7.50, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Fast food workers—whose wages have earned so much attention this year through the “Fight for 15” protests —will see their own particular increase as the state slowly moves toward achieving a $15 minimum wage for them. In New York City, those workers will be paid at least $10.50 per hour, and workers outside of the city will earn at least $9.75.
But the minimum wage jump, particularly for tipped workers, has many restaurants concerned about their ability to make ends meet. On Tuesday, the New York State Restaurant Association sent a letter to Gov. Andrew Cuomo asking for a freeze on raising the tipped minimum wage for five years.
“Employers in the hospitality industry are being hit with a whopping 50% increase to the tipped wage this week,” said association president Melissa Fleischut in the letter, as reported by the New York Daily News. “The industry needs time to adjust to this dramatic increase.”
New York is one of 14 states raising minimum wages in 2016. While two of those states, Massachusetts and California, are the first to raise their minimum wage to $10, the rest are incremental raises similar to New York’s.
Some West Coast cities, like San Francisco and Seattle, are slowly phasing in a $15 minimum wage that is non-exclusive to the fast food industry. That’s an agenda item that Democratic Gov. Cuomo will address in the coming year, as he seeks to raise New York’s minimum wage to $15 across the board. Cuomo is expected to outline his plan, which includes giving tax cuts to businesses struggling to pay the wage, in his State of the State speech in early January.
