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Gov. Cuomo Says $11.50, but Mayor de Blasio Urges Employers to Voluntarily Raise Minimum Wage to $13

Mayor Bill de Blasio delivers remarks at the Association for a Better New York's breakfast. The Pierre Hotel, Manhattan. Thursday, March 5, 2015 Photo: Demetrius Freeman/Mayoral Photography Office After Gov.
Mayor Bill de Blasio delivers remarks at the Association for a Better New York's breakfast. The Pierre Hotel, Manhattan. Thursday, March 5, 2015 Photo: Demetrius Freeman/Mayoral Photography Office
Mayor Bill de Blasio delivers remarks at the Association for a Better New York's breakfast. The Pierre Hotel, Manhattan. Thursday, March 5, 2015
Photo: Demetrius Freeman/Mayoral Photography Office

After Gov. Cuomo set forth his plan for a statewide minimum wage increase from $8.75, to $10.50 and $11.50 for NYC, Mayor Bill de Blasio is calling on the private sector to voluntarily raise the minimum wage to $13 an hour, reported the Daily News.

In a speech on Thursday to the pro-business Association for a Better New York, some of the city's most powerful business leaders, he asked them to "do their part" to battle income inequality by boosting take-home for low-wage workers. And that would include a minimum wage hike to $13.

"We all need you to take responsibility for providing the great people of this city with the opportunities of better wages," he said at the breakfast in the Pierre Hotel on Fifth Ave.

He called raising the minimum wage  the "crucial issue of our times," and said that City Hall was doing its part to give big business a skilled workforce.

But the fact that Cuomo does not support de Blasio's $13 may doom him, because the business community will comply to law but are more concerned with their bottom lines than fighting income inequality.

Besides, said Kathryn Wylde, CEO of the Partnership for New York City, a pro-business civic group that supports Cuomo's proposal, businesses "don't like city mandates on employers, who have to make decisions based on their individual situation."




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