What Cons and Pros Does a Minimum Wage Increase Mean for Your Business?

As a rural winery, I would love to afford to pay every employee $15/hour. However, I see three glaring issues.

If you are going to be paid $15/hour, you must have higher skills or work much more efficiently. Currently, we employ 6 people at lower than the $15/hour wage and most of them are selling wine behind a bar. All but one are part time (they are college students or have full time jobs and work with us for extra money and fun). While cannot sell wine without them, if I were to increase their pay by 50%, I will have to increase the price of my wine by 20-25% -- you can only give quality customer service to few people as an efficient staff member. I do not believe that my customers will absorb that increase in retail price, nor will my wholesale customers be willing to pay more for my wines.

Secondly, those currently making $15/hour will demand a higher wage because they do possess the skills needed to afford the higher wage. In other words, what have all these minimum wage employees done to merit an increase other than show up for work? No additional abilities have been fostered or learned.

Thirdly, we are located in a very rural area roughly 7 hours driving from NYC. Our cost of living is very low compared to NYC and it's surrounding counties. When most of these suggestions for higher wages are made, they are considering issues downstate where life is much more expensive (rent, food, transportation, etc.) I do not believe that a "one size fits all" approach is logical or fair.

I own a small gym. I have employees at the front desk that make the minimum wage. I also have teachers that get more than that. If the wage goes to 15 an hour, I will have to fired a couple of those employees at the front desk, and work myself at that position for more hours. I open my business one year ago and , still don't make any money. I just pay the outrageously high rent price in Manhattan so I basically work for my landlord and the teachers on my gym. My front desk people are students that stay at the front desk checking their Facebook pages, or studying while they check in the members. AGAIN, if the wage goes to 15, I will fired two or three of them, and do it myself. HORRIBLE!!! I can't believe how much you work for your business, and how difficult is making a living out of it. I employee about 40 people, but with the new $15, will be about 30s and with the risk of closing because I wont be able to keep on working 7 days a week, and not making ANY profit. Can somebody help instead of making it more difficult?

First of all, miminum wage was NEVER designed to be a LIVING wage...it's an entry level wage for teens and unskilled labor. Having said that, the hike is going to affect ALL businesses, but small businesses in particular. Labor will be cut to make up for the loss, unemployment will go up, which means even more money spent by businessess. For me personally, there is no way I can afford to hire anyone at that price.

Reality is that when you are in retail, this hurts bad. If I am paying a high school kid with little to no skills, then why should I pay them a rate that high? The idea is that skilled work should be compensated, but most of the jobs require very little training and therefore is why the entry point is low. The idea is to work hard to get the better jobs, move up and get better pay for a more skilled, tenured job. I think it will adversely affect many small businesses.

I support a minimum wage increase, but not to $15. Why this huge jump? I agree that you get what you pay for and we all know it's hard to find good help. Most of today's youth do not understand a work ethic, and the age at which that starts to improve is rapidly getting higher. I think small companies might do better to offer some sort of investment in their company to the employees - vested interest.

And how we treat our employees (other than pay) makes a great difference as well. When employees feel appreciated and respected, they are happier at their job, perform better and have a lower turnover rate. The employee issue in a company is not something to just throw money at, and I don't think being mandated to do so will help small businesses. But that's just my opinion :)

I think it doesn't matter one way or another. The market will bear what it will bear. One thing that I think people are naive to is that they think this is free money. It's not. It will translate in a numbers of things: 1) higher prices of goods, 2) reduction of quality of product and service, 3) a higher demand being placed on the worker for that extra money.

The reality is, minimum wage is a farce. If you got rid of it altogether people will only be able to accept a wage that they can exist on. If they take less then they leave the moment someone offers them an extra 25¢/hour.

This is why minimum wage jobs turn over so frequently. Nobody worries about losing them. The smart businesses today are offering more and expecting more - and getting better employees because of it.

To put a different perspective on it, EMT's make about $20/hour. This minimum wage increase puts people who flip burgers closer to the perceived value of an EMT. What happens? We either see burger jobs decline due to automation or the number or EMTs decline when they don't get paid more and become burger flippers because that job is easier and much less stressful. Oh, or $40/hour EMTs.

If we want to give our people a better quality of life (often touted as a living wage, another farce) then let's call this what it is - a higher corporate tax being imposed on big business. Make those businesses offer solid free healthcare because they can afford to do so due to their ability to scale and drive high margins.

This will allow them to still stay competitive because small businesses can't necessarily offer this and it allows small businesses to still hire people at lower wages but offer better pay than burger joints.

Eveyrone wins.

"Jobs" that pay minimum wage (typically low skill level positions) are not intended to be "careers" (typically higher skill level positions). Minimum wage jobs should be stepping stones... A starting point! No more no less. If a worker wants/needs more money and they go the extra mile (eg: work harder/smarter... to be a more productive staff member, or to obtain additional skills) they will move up the ladder to positions of increasing responsibility and higher pay.

The problem here is not the lack of a so called "living wage"... Rather the problem is a lack of initiative and opportunity. Initiative on the part of the minimum wage worker that does not try to better their lot (don't get me wrong... There are a lot of hardworking minimum wage workers out there.) and opportunity on the part of government that creates an environment that smothers business w/ unnecessary and burdensome regulation such as this.

when talk about small business, you think of companies that employ 50 or more employees, the real small business owner under 50 employees are going to have down size their staff and create more part time positions. I do not believe this is what NY needs in this economy.

i agree with Dan, this will mean more money for the corrupt politicians in Albany via higher payroll taxes. This is the same old story, a few years ago with pushing the minimum to $9 per hour so that these people could survive, we are there, why are they not able to survive? Because the price of everything goes up, especially health care. Now with the Unaffordable Care Act saying 30 hours is full time, this law is hurting workers. We keep all part time people under 30 hours so we don't go under due to additional health care costs.

Big corporations killed their best customer by sending jobs overseas, now the working people of this nation don't have the money to spend on the goods and services that these big corporations offer. I personally have cut way back on personal spending due to the fact that the economy sucks and our business is in survival mode like almost every other business owner I have talked to.

I am tired of working 70 hours a week, with little profit due to the cesspool economy of upstate New York, just to provide jobs and health care to employees. I am ready to go to work for somebody else, take a pay cut, hopefully have health insurance, so that maybe my family will know who I am.

I am not against paying people a fair wage to work, especially an employee that has experience and knowledge, they are an asset. However, being forced to pay $15 per hour to a 16 year old school kid is insane. We employ many kids still in school, their first job, they are not worth this wage. Usually, one out of four is a decent employee, if they stay. Also, now I have to increase wages for older or more long term part time employees to keep them happy. Then, full time employees will become more upset if we don't increase their hourly wage, to keep them above part time employees. The only recourse I see , is to stop paying 70% of their health insurance, maybe make it a 50/50 split, but with the high rate of inflation with health insurance, will this keep them happy?

All of this still means more costs due to higher payroll taxes, something no one understands unless they have run a business themselves. Additionally, with three small business's under one ownership, we have to deal with the tabulating of hours and 1095C reporting. Make a call to state government for help or questions regarding issues, see what happens. You are sent in a circle, referred back o an entity that you have previously called, and still no help or answers.

Who is kidding whom? Raising the minimum wage in NY will put many small businesses out business, increase the unemployment rolls by a lot, force the few companies that would be able to stay in business to raise prices dramatically, forcing customers to go out-of-state or overseas to get lower prices.

I hope to be able to join many small business owners, employees, and customers at some kind of a demonstration, protest rally, or a "stop-the-minimum-wage-hike-State-Governor's-and-New-York-State-congresses" movement.