A maximum minimum
Gov. Cuomo is swinging for the fences with his forceful call to raise New York’s minimum wage to $15. That’s a hike of more than 70% over the current hourly minimum of $8.75 — rising to $9 in the new year — and would be the highest statewide rate in the nation.
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 “nonstarter.”
By May, however, the governor was engineering a $15 minimum for fast-food chains — invoking a little-used law that empowers the labor commissioner to intervene when wages in a particular industry are insufficient to support workers’ lives and health.
Then on Thursday — with Vice President Biden cheering him on — Cuomo announced his push to make $15 the hourly baseline for all New York workers, which would require approval from the Legislature.
Clearly, an extra $6 an hour would be a wonderful boost for the growing ranks of New Yorkers struggling to get by on minimum-wage jobs.
Contrary to myth, most are not teenagers but adults who have been shut out of middle-class employment, and many are supporting children.
Imagine trying to live decently on $8.75 an hour in 21st century New York City. You can’t.
A new report from the website Street Easy found not a single neighborhood where a minimum-wage worker could afford the median private-sector rent available on the market.
Meanwhile, the payrolls of major chains like McDonald’s and Walmart are full of people poor enough to qualify for food stamps and Medicaid.
The question is whether Cuomo’s high-flying goal of $15 is workable — both politically and economically.
The Republican-led state Senate would probably go along with some increase, especially given that 2016 is an election year and a hike would be popular in many GOP districts.
But getting GOP senators all the way to $15 will be a tall order, on the magnitude of Cuomo’s previous improbable victories on gay marriage and gun control.
Cuomo must also demonstrate that $15 an hour would be affordable for the state’s employers — not just in the five boroughs, but also in the economically weaker corners of upstate.
A 2013 study by the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago illustrated the balancing act: It projected that increasing the federal minimum wage to $9 an hour would have the positive effect of boosting the gross domestic product by 0.3% in the short term — but also push businesses to eliminate thousands of low-wage jobs.
As the Empire Center for Public Policy’s E.J. McMahon points out, $15 an hour is higher than the average pay for roughly half of all jobs in upstate’s Southern Tier region, along the Pennsylvania border.
Testifying in Albany on Thursday, the owner of a Ben & Jerry’s franchise in Saratoga Springs said a $15 minimum would nearly double his labor costs, which are a fifth or more of his expenses.
Recognizing such risks, Cuomo properly took steps to soften the blow of his fast-food hike.
He applied it only to chains of 30 outlets or more, exempting smaller operators. He also phased it in over four years for downstate enterprises, and six years for the rest of the state — the same gradual schedule he proposes to follow for the across-the-board increase.
As he noted on Friday, that roughly equates to a $1 hike per year for upstate businesses.
On the plus side, meanwhile, the higher pay would lift thousands of workers out of poverty, make them less dependent on public benefits and — as they spend their extra cash — pump millions into the larger economy.
Finding the right balance — and selling his plan to skeptical lawmakers and business leaders — shapes up as one of Cuomo’s biggest fights yet.