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���������� Note: There was a time when the nonprofit sector, especially community workers supporting individuals with disabilities, could barely compete with McDonald’s. Now, with the Governor’s much lauded plan to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour, fast food workers will make over almost double what some of those workers are currently paid. And last week, the Governor extended this to state workers (see below)!

���������� strongly backs the campaign to extend the $15 per hour minimum wage to nonprofit workers and plans to make it one of our top priorities this session. Stay tuned…

$15 Minimum Wage For All

��������on November 16, 2015

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Gov. Andrew Cuomo would be a hypocrite to lead the campaign for a fair minimum wage but not include the estimated 10,000 state employees who make less than $15 an hour.

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So the governor’s pledge last week to lead by example and unilaterally phase in hourly pay increases for the lowest-paid state workers is the right move. But correcting the injustice of having such low-paid workers cannot stop there.

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According to the ���������� Council of Nonprofits, some 550,000 employees of not-for-profit organizations across the state are paid at or near the state’s current minimum wage of $8.75 an hour.

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Many are the people we entrust with such jobs as caring for preschoolers and the disabled, and with providing many other key front-line human services.

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This sector was already facing pressure from earlier action when the governor’s labor commissioner approved a phased-in hourly wage hike for employees of fast-food restaurants. Their hourly minimum wage will rise gradually to $15, taking full effect in ���������� City at the end of 2018 and in 2021 for the rest of the state.

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Most nonprofits rely heavily on state and/or federal funding; their leaders are concerned that their low-paid employees may flock to the soon-to-be better paying fast-food industry.

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Local school districts and municipalities across ���������� have similar fears. They employ thousands of employees at or near minimum wage, so raising their salaries to meet the new competition could make it near impossible to hold their budgets within the state tax cap, which is usually about 2 percent. The state Association of School Business Officials estimates meeting the governor’s proposed new wage would force districts to hike property taxes an average of 2.6 percent, costing property owners their annual state tax rebates.

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It’s right for Mr. Cuomo to exercise his executive authority to raise the minimum wage for both state workers and private fast food employees, but he needs the state Legislature to make it the law for others. Opposition is mounting from the business community, with its advocates making doomsday predictions.

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The conservative Empire Center predicts a phased-in $15 minimum wage could cost between 200,000 and 588,000 jobs. The state Business Council echoes the scary estimate.

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While the Democrat-controlled state Assembly has long supported a minimum wage hike, the challenge will be to win over the reluctant Republican-controlled state Senate. With state workers and the fast-food industry getting the new fair wage, it will provide needed political pressure to ensure others share the benefits.

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The governor rightly argues that his proposed pay hike will help everyone, citing numerous economic studies that show most minimum pay hikes in fact spur economic growth. But his plan must thoughtfully consider ways to help the nonprofits and local schools and municipalities. Unless he does, those who rely on their services will end up paying the price.

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Cuomo to Raise Minimum Wage to��$15 for All ���������� State Employees

������ ������������ Times�� November 10, 2015

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ALBANY — Gov.����announced on Tuesday that he would unilaterally establish a $15 minimum wage for all state workers, making ���������� the first state to set such a high wage for its public employees.

The increase will place the pay of ����������’s state employees far ahead of the current minimum wage in other states, and positions Mr. Cuomo at the vanguard of a national movement to address stagnant pay for millions of American workers.

Using executive authority, Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat, would gradually increase the hourly rate: State workers in ���������� City would earn $15 an hour by the end of 2018; state workers outside of the city would also see wages rise, though more slowly, with rates climbing to $15 by the end of 2021. All told, some 10,000 workers — about 6.5 percent of the state’s permanent and seasonal work force — would see an increase in pay, according to the governor’s office, with the vast majority of those living upstate or outside the city.

The governor’s action came on a day when fast-food workers across��a uniform $15 hourly wage, a movement that he��as a growing number of��.

Two states, Massachusetts and Oregon, have recently agreed to raise minimum wages to $15 for home care workers, who are private employees but often receive public funds. But Mr. Cuomo’s action is the first time a governor has increased mandatory hourly pay to at least $15 for employees of a state itself.

At a raucous rally in Lower Manhattan, Mr. Cuomo framed his decision as part of a larger fight against poverty and economic inequality, criticizing fast-food companies like McDonald’s for being culpable in “a scam on the taxpayers of this country.” He also summoned the legacy of another ���������� governor, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and argued that “if you work full time, you should have a decent lifestyle for you and your family.”

The state’s current minimum wage of $8.75 was failing that promise, Mr. Cuomo said. “You can’t pay for housing and food and clothing on $18,000 a year, period,” he said. “And that’s what today is all about.”

The aggressive tone struck by the governor — his voice straining with emotion — was a departure from statements made in March,��.

But in recent months, Mr. Cuomo, a pragmatic centrist in many realms, has come to embrace raising the minimum wage. In July, he won an increase in the minimum wage for fast-food workers in ���������� through a state wage board.

And although Mr. Cuomo in September did discount the option of raising wages only for state workers — “That’s not an optimum situation” — he did so because he said he wanted it to apply to all workers.

��federal, state or municipal employees from minimum wage requirements, but Mr. Cuomo’s office said he would act on his own through his Division of Budget, directing the initial wage increases taking effect at the end of year. He would also seek to change the labor law in the coming legislative session, which begins in January, to prevent future governors from using executive powers to roll back the wages. Mr. Cuomo will be up for re-election in 2018, at the end of which the $15 rate will be put into effect in ���������� City.

The job categories affected by the plan include lifeguards, office assistants and custodial staff, some of which are seasonal. Wages in ���������� City would be raised first, administration officials said, because of its higher cost of living.

The notion of a statewide $15 minimum wage for all employees, public and private, has faced resistance from��, and some conservative fiscal groups,����would be disastrous for the state’s economy and job growth. On Tuesday, Senator John J. Flanagan of Long Island, the Republican leader in the State Senate, had no comment on the governor’s decision.

Mr. Cuomo’s announcement was met with an enthusiastic response from labor leaders like George Gresham, the president of 1199 S.E.I.U., the nation’s largest health care workers union, who applauded the governor’s action. Mr. Gresham said it could potentially set a $15-an-hour standard of pay for tens of thousands of the union’s home-care workers, “who do this important work, but who are not necessarily state employees.”

The announcement prompted the city’s public advocate, Letitia A. James, to call for a $15 minimum wage for city employees. A spokesman for Mayor Bill de Blasio, a fellow Democrat and frequent sparring partner of Mr. Cuomo’s, noted that the city had already promised its lowest paid workers more than $12 an hour in 2016, while the governor’s plan would accelerate past that level only at the end of 2017.

“Of course, the mayor will continue to fight to ensure all workers, across every industry, make a wage on which their families can live,” the spokeswoman, Amy Spitalnick, said.

Mr. Cuomo’s move comes on the heels of several other executive actions seemingly meant to appease and please the liberal wing of his party, which has����for his working too closely with Republicans, who hold the majority in the Senate. Mr. Cuomo has also empowered the state attorney general, Eric T. Schneiderman, a Democrat, to look into police-related killings. And last month,����building on a 1945 state law that banned discrimination on the basis of sex.

Mr. Cuomo’s decision was based in part on pending negotiations with two large public-sector unions, Civil Service Employees Association and the, both of whom also praised the governor’s actions on the wage. It was also hailed by groups that have seen a building momentum for higher pay.

While symbolically significant, the estimated cost to the state will be just a small fragment of����— about $20.3 million annually by 2021, his office said.

On Tuesday, Mr. Cuomo, long rumored to have national political ambitions, seemed to sense the broader appeal and impact of the issue.

“The nation is going to watch us and we’re going to raise up this state and we’re going to raise up this nation to a higher level than it’s ever been,” he said, to a cheering crowd. “That’s what we are going to do.”