Minimum Wage in NY

New Yorkers Who Earn the Minimum Get a Raise

By ANTHONY RAMIREZ

Published: January 1, 2006

For the last few months, Valentin Alonso, 31, has sold doughnuts, scooped ice cream, mopped floors and delivered food for a combination Baskin-Robbins and Dunkin' Donuts shop in Spanish Harlem.

He has been paid $6.50 an hour, a bit more than the state minimum wage of $6, which rises today to $6.75 for 360,000 workers in New York.

His wife, Janery Melendez, 28, has a part-time maintenance job for the City Department of Parks and Recreation. Their earnings must cover $990-a-month rent for an apartment in Long Beach, N.Y.; rising fuel costs; health insurance; and the costs of raising their 12-year-old son, Luis.

"You know what 12 years old means?" said Mr. Alonso. "It means another bill. It means sneakers. It means a jacket. It means school supplies."

Mr. Alonso does not think much of the new minimum wage. "You need a minimum wage of $9 an hour just to begin to survive in New York."

Today's rise is the second stage of a three-year increase. The minimum wage will rise again, to $7.15 an hour, on Jan. 1, 2007. The national rate is $5.15.

For workers who get tips, the minimum wage will go to $4.35 from $3.85, and will rise again next year, to $4.60.

The State Legislature approved the increases in 2004 over the veto of Gov. George E. Pataki.

The raise has been criticized by business lobbyists as a job destroyer that encourages businesses to move to nearby states that have lower minimums. New Jersey's is $5.15, but Connecticut's is $7.10. Mark P. Alesse, the New York director of the National Federation of Independent Business, a lobbying group, said of the increase, "We opposed it successfully for years and got the governor to veto it." The group's 15,000 members in New York State employ an average of fewer than 10 workers, and it is businesses that size that are most affected by the minimum wage, he said.

He doubts that the increase helps the people that minimum-wage advocates say it helps, he said. "This isn't for low-wage heads of households," he said. "It's for the unions."

Many union contracts use formulas, for example, pegging salaries at $20 above minimum wage. "This is a way of getting an across-the-board wage increase without negotiating for it," Mr. Alesse contended.

Besides, Mr. Alesse said, "We take care of our working poor." New York, he said, has "the most comprehensive social safety net in the nation."

Dan Cantor, the executive director of the Working Families Party, which lobbied the State Legislature for the increase, said it was untrue that companies move jobs to states with lower minimum wages. "McDonald's does not close down and move across the state line when you raise the minimum wage," he said.

James A. Parrott, the chief economist at the Fiscal Policy Institute, a liberal research organization in Manhattan, said that while job growth in New York State had lagged behind the national rate, the increase in the number of low-wage jobs in New York State had outpaced that of the low-wage jobs across the nation.

For Noemi Rodriguez, 21, and her 2-year-old daughter, the minimum wage is a simple matter of going hungry. Ms. Rodriguez, a single mother who lives with her mother, makes $8 an hour as the chief photo technician at a Duane Reade in East Harlem. Six months ago, she said, "I earned the minimum wage when I started here, and I was still going hungry," she said. "It's not enough to pay utilities, buy food and take care of my baby."

She sees a solution, however. "I'm moving to Florida," she said. "I can get a $500-a-month, two-bedroom apartment and earn $9 an hour. I leave in April."