For the last few months, Valentin Alonso, 31, has sold doughnuts, scooped ice cream, mopped floors and delivered food for a combination Baskin-Robbins and Dunkin' Donuts shop in Spanish Harlem.
He has been paid $6.50 an hour, a bit more than the state minimum wage of $6, which rises today to $6.75 for 360,000 workers in New York.
His wife, Janery Melendez, 28, has a part-time maintenance job for the City Department of Parks and Recreation. Their earnings must cover $990-a-month rent for an apartment in Long Beach, N.Y.; rising fuel costs; health insurance; and the costs of raising their 12-year-old son, Luis.
"You know what 12 years old means?" said Mr. Alonso. "It means another bill. It means sneakers. It means a jacket. It means school supplies."
Mr. Alonso does not think much of the new minimum wage. "You need a minimum wage of $9 an hour just to begin to survive in New York."
Today's rise is the second stage of a three-year increase. The minimum wage will rise again, to $7.15 an hour, on Jan. 1, 2007. The national rate is $5.15.
For workers who get tips, the minimum wage will go to $4.35 from $3.85, and will rise again next year, to $4.60.
If you're for a minimum wage, you obviously discount any economic impact that such a law makes. So why not just make it $20 an hour. Hey, businesses make a lot of money...they can pay it.
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