ALBANY — Advocates for New York businesses and farmers are stepping up their efforts to convince lawmakers to ease up on their push for further increases in the state minimum wage, which is now set at $14.25 an hour for the upstate region.
With just two weeks before the deadline for a final state budget, both houses of the Legislature are calling for minimum wage hikes as well as crafting a system that would index the wage to inflation, a method that could set New York on a path to annual increases.
The federal minimum wage remains at $7.25 per hour. But proponents of increasing the minimum wage to more than $20 an hour say rampant inflation has eaten away at the buying power of those at the wage floor in New York. They also cite polling data suggesting the public agrees the minimum wage should go higher.
Small businesses and the farm lobby are questioning the need for further hikes, contending such a move would only worsen the economic climate across the state.
Gov. Kathy Hochul, who as a Democrat is in the same party that controls both chambers of the Legislature, also supports an increase in the minimum wage.
Ashley Ranslow, state director of the National Federation of Independent Businesses, said the measures advanced by the Legislature in their budget bills “are much more detrimental” than the more moderate approach staked out by Hochul.
Hochul, however, has been having a tough time getting her way lately with lawmakers, with one of the biggest setbacks she has...
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