The American workers’ association One Fair Wage launched the ‘Make America Affordable Now’ campaign in New York on Monday with the main demand of raising the minimum wage for waiters from $17 to $30 per hour, a measure that the city’s elected mayor, Zohran Mamdani, also wants to implement.
The Democratic lieutenant governor of the state of New York and candidate for governor in 2026, Antonio Delgado, assured EFE during the event that “the current minimum wage in New York is a poverty wage.”
Minimum wages for New York waiters recently grew from $16.5 to $17. However, the group One Fair Wage demands that the increase to 30 be approved.
“For a single person without children, the basic cost of living is about $27.5, so earning $16 or $17 is not enough,” he said.
Delgado, of Latino descent, said that “these poverty wages disproportionately affect the Latino immigrant community, as many work in the restaurant industry.”
Read also: Unions and employers in Argentina fail to reach an agreement on a new minimum wage
“We need to get to $30 by 2030. Half of the people in New York state don’t earn more than $30. That’s a lot of people of all races and backgrounds,” he added.
The leaders of the ‘Make America Affordable Now’ committee highlighted that the salary of $30 an hour “is not enough,” and that waiters should earn between $40 and $45 an hour to be able to cover main expenses such as accommodation, food and, in many cases, send some extra money to their families in their country of origin.
On the other hand, One Fair Wage assures that at the Los Angeles airport (LAX) hospitality workers will be paid $30 next summer during the Olympic Games, which “indicates that in New York we cannot be left behind,” they comment.
With information from EFE
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