Raising the Minimum Wage
THE CRISIS
Workers are facing a wage crisis. With prices rising at the fastest rate in 40 years—for everything from gas and rent to groceries—working New Yorkers are squeezed and families can’t make ends meet on $15 an hour. Meanwhile, wealthy corporations report record profits while continuing to exploit workers. This wage stagnation, combined with the impact of the pandemic and rapidly rising costs, has eroded the minimum wage’s value across the state. Families are living paycheck-to-paycheck, at or on the brink of poverty. This is a moral travesty. The current minimum wage is no longer enough; raising wages across the board and ensuring that they never fall behind the cost of living again will help protect and restore the dignity of New York’s working families.
THE MOVEMENT
Workers have been fighting against low pay and bad working conditions for decades. Ten years ago, fast-food workers in New York led the way when they walked out of their jobs demanding a $15 minimum wage and a union—a demand that would gain momentum nationwide and become the movement known as the Fight for $15. The Raise Up NY coalition is continuing the fight for living wages and economic justice in New York. We are a broad coalition of workers, labor, community, and responsible businesses, and we are committed to ensuring that workers earn wages that cover the basics and help them thrive.
OUR WINS
In 2023, Raise Up NY won a minimum wage increase to $17 in downstate NY and $16 in upstate NY by 2026. After 2026, the minimum wage will be indexed to inflation when unemployment is low. This wage increase means over 1,100,000 New Yorkers will earn an extra $670 in their pockets.
Raise Up NY is also supporting organizing at a municipal and county level to raise the minimum wage. In 2024, local unions, worker centers, and community organizations successfully pushed legislators from the Ithaca area to vote 11-3 in favor of a resolution to evaluate gradually raising the local minimum wage.
WHAT WE ARE FIGHTING FOR
- Wage Increases Statewide: Establishing a statewide minimum wage of $17 by 2026, restoring upstate and downstate parity.
- Wages That Increase with the Cost of Living: Fighting to remove a loophole that denies workers a cost-of-living raise in years when unemployment goes up. If the loophole had been in effect since 2000, inflation adjustments would have been suspended in six out of 23 years. That’s nearly one in four years.
- Supporting Local Fights: Workers upstate aren’t waiting for our Governor to act. We’re supporting the fight to raise the minimum wage at a municipal and county level.
- Racial, Gender, and Worker Justice: A higher minimum wage benefits workers of all racial, ethnic, and gender categories. But women and workers of color stand to benefit the most as they have been disproportionately impacted by the pandemic and are recovering at a slower pace.
For more information about this campaign, contact Lucas Shapiro at lucas@alignny.org, and visit www.raiseupny.com