New York State Department of Labor officials are taking steps to raise the minimum wage in our area.
Commissioner Roberta Reardon issued an order to raise it by one dollar, from $13.20 to $14.20 in all counties outside NYC, Long Island, and Westchester. The minimum wage there is already $15 per hour.
Paul Sonn is the state policy program director at the National Employment Law Project. It’s a research and advocacy organization that focuses on workforce policy. They work on policies surrounding minimum wage, unemployment insurance, policy affecting gig workers, workplace health and safety, etc.
Sonn supports the raise.
“The Hochul labor department’s one-dollar raise in the upstate minimum wage will make sure the pay for workers like home health aides and retail workers keeps up with the keeps up with the huge increases that they’re seeing in the cost of food, gas and housing,” Sonn says. “Hundreds of thousands of workers upstate will benefit. But all it’s doing is helping those workers tread water by kind of preserving their purchasing power. It doesn’t deliver them a raise in real terms.”
Sonn says the problem is that upstate minimum wage was set lower than other states as part of a deal in 2016 when the state last raised it.
“As a result, the upstate wage is not that high,” Sonn says. “And in the rest of the state it’s stalled at $15 an hour and hasn’t increased in several years. Our minimum wage has fallen far behind many...
Rebel Wilson appeared in a Sydney court on Monday, April 20, at the start of a defamation case brought by Charlotte MacInnes, the lead actor in Wilson's directorial debut "The Deb." The legal battl...