A state wage board has voted, unanimously, to raise the minimum wage for restaurant workers to $15 an hour. The public has two weeks to file any final objections
Franchise owners have filed formal objections to Gov. Andrew Cuomo's plan to raise the minimum wage of fastfood workers to $15, a prelude to a possible lawsuit.
Last month, the state labor board decided to raise the minimum wage for fast-food workers to $15 an hour from $8.75.
At that pay rate, a fastfood worker will make $600 a week for 40 hours of work, or $31,200 a year.
New York City restaurants will have until Dec. 31, 2018, to phase in the increase. The rest of the state will have until July 1, 2021.
The minimum wage for all other workers is $8.75 an hour, which is scheduled to increase to $9 an hour Dec. 31.
The pay increase covers chains that have more than 30 restaurants nationwide. And it applies to anyone who owns those franchises. That means a business owner with just one chain restaurant would have to pay the new wage, according to a spokesman with the state Department of Labor.
New York is the first state in the country to increase the minimum wage for just one industry. There are cities that have raised their minimum wages to $15 an hour, Los Angeles and Seattle are the most recent, but those increases apply to all workers.
At a press conference and rally following the wage board decision, Cuomo said the day was among the best in his five-year stint as governor. But Several groups plan to take the state to court over the wage increase.
Attorney Randy Mastro wrote a letter opposing the hike and saying it is unfair and that the increase would "improperly target only a sliver of a segment of a single industry, without support in data, logic or law" and that implementing the increase would be "arbitrary, capricious, irrational, unreasonable, invalid and contrary to law."
