Yesterday, NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio made a historic announcement: by 2018, he’ll raise the minimum wage for city workers to $15/hour. From WNYC:
[T]he mayor described the move as part of his larger OneNYC plan to move more New Yorkers out of poverty: “Our goal is, again, 800,000 people over the next 10 years and one of the central ways to do that is to raise wage levels.”
“We’re going to be able to do that now for 50,000 employees, which means thousands and thousands of family members will be affected as well,” said de Blasio.
The news of the wage boost comes just two weeks after the mayor told WNYC he would issue an executive order to guarantee all non-union city employees at least six weeks of fully-paid parental leave and up to 12 weeks when combined with accrued vacation time.
The wage increase will impact 20,000 direct city employees, including school crossing guards, job training participants and seasonal workers.
The other 30,000 will be comprised of employees at not-for-profits that contract with the city, including child care providers and teacher aides.
Read the full story at WNYC.org.
Meanwhile, thanks to the “Mario Cuomo Campaingn for Economic Justice,” SUNY workers are poised to see their wages rise to $15/hr by 2021, while some schools will see wages rise to that level by 2018. CUNY workers, meanwhile, will not be included in this initative. From Gothamist:
Notably, the SUNY raise does not encompass the CUNY campuses, which receive 10 percent additional funding from the city government but were facing a $51 million budget shortfall as of December. CUNY has failed to give 25,000 of its workers a raise since 2010, partially because of a lack of the state funding that accounts for about half of its budget — a matter that recently prompted presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders to pen a strongly-worded letter to Cuomo urging him to “show New Yorkers that [his] concern for working people and people of color includes a commitment to their ability to achieve a college education.”
See Gothamist for more.
