New York Fast Food Workers On Passage Of The $15 Wage: ‘It’s A Dream Come True’
On Wednesday, the wage board New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) convened unanimously passed a proposal for a $15 an hour minimum wage for the state’s fast food industry. The labor commissioner is expected to approve the recommendation and issue a wage order raising these workers’ pay to at least that amount. The minimum wage for fast food workers will reach $15 an hour in New York City by 2018 and in the rest of the state by 2021.
Outside of the final wage board hearing in lower Manhattan where its decision was announced, Rebecca Cornick, who has worked at Wendy’s for nine years and makes $9 an hour, said that a $15 minimum wage will have a huge impact on her life. “I’d stay out of rent court, I’d be able to put food on my table, I won’t have to pay exorbitant late fees for my rent,” she said. “It’s going to be amazing, it’s going to be a relief.”
She noted that it’s “impossible” to live on her current pay. “I have to do other things in order to make the money to compensate for my rent and for my food,” she said. It was her daughter who got her involved with the Fight for 15 campaign that has been pushing for higher wages in fast food, and she said she did that “because she was tired of seeing me suffer and live in poverty.” So Cornick got involved. “My back was against the wall. I didn’t know what else to do but to step forward.”
All that is different now. Her daughter “thought this would be a solution, and it turned out to be the best solution to the problem,” she said with a smile and a laugh.
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2015/07/22/3683378/new-york-fast-food-15-wage/
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