Good News for New Yorkers who Work for Tips: the Minimum Wage Will Rise

Written by Lanning Taliaferro (Patch Staff)

New York state’s Labor Commissioner today ordered an increase in the minimum wage for people who work for tips.

The order will apply to everyone in the hospitality sector who works for tips; currently, there’s a 3-tier system in place differentiating food workers, service workers and hotel workers.

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“I believe this recommendation strikes the proper balance,” Acting Commissioner of Labor Mario J. Musolino said in his order. “It increases wages for those who have been without a raise for too long and and completes the goal that was postponed in 2009 of establishing a single rate for all tipped workers.”

The increase to $7.50 an hour will take effect by the end of the year.

The order was applauded by Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

“We are looking at a polarization of income in this nation that we have never seen before,” he said in remarks Tuesday at a rally of the Hotel and Motel Trades Council (See video below).

“We are seeing an economy where the rich are getting richer and middle class and the working families are being left further and further behind in a way that they can’t even catch up. We are saying that is not what New York is all about and that is not what America is all about and it is time this state stood up and showed the rest of the nation what fairness and decency and community means: that the sweetest success is shared success,” said Cuomo.

But officials of the New York State Restaurant Association said this is just too much in one year.

Melissa Fleischut, President and CEO of the NYSRA, warned when the state’s new Minimum Wage Board made its recommendations that upping the wage for businesses like restaurants that operate on marginal profits would handcuff small businesses’ ability to create jobs, decrease the pay of non-tipped employees, and reduce hours for tipped employees.

“It’s troubling that the Acting Commissioner ignored legislative precedent and the pleas of nearly 1,000 hospitality industry representatives who asked him for a moderate increase phased in over time,” she said in a press statement after he issued his order. “By rubberstamping an extreme, unprecedented 50 percent increase it becomes hard to believe New York is really ‘Open for Business.’”

Photo: Screen shot of Gov. Cuomo at the Hotel and Motel Trades Council rally.

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