Welcome to our new web site!

To give our readers a chance to experience all that our new website has to offer, we have made all content freely avaiable, through October 1, 2018.

During this time, print and digital subscribers will not need to log in to view our stories or e-editions.

LAS CRUCES CITY COUNCIL

Council backs minimum wage increase

Posted

Following a two and one-half hour Las Cruces City Council special work session via Zoom on Sept. 22, Mayor Ken Miyagishima told the city’s chief budget officer to proceed with advertising increases in the city’s minimum wage for regular employees and tipped-wage earners that will take effect Jan. 1.

With cost-of-living adjustments, the city minimum wage will rise from $10.25 to $10.40 an hour for regular workers and from $4.10 to $4.20 an hour for tipped workers, typically restaurant servers and bartenders. Employers are responsible for making up any gap between the amount a server earns in tips and the prevailing minimum wage.

The mayor scheduled the work session to discuss his recommendation that the city minimum wage for tipped workers drop temporarily on Jan. 1 to the state’s rate of $2.35 an hour instead of increasing to $4.20.

“I wasn’t looking at this to be permanent,” Miyagishima said at the special work session. Instead, he said a period of three or four months during the winter with the lower wage would give local restaurant owners a financial break as they continue to cope with restrictions imposed by state public health orders in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Miyagishima said an increase in servers’ wages during the pandemic could force some restaurants out of business.

The non-voting work session was opened to comments from business owners and employees about the minimum wage. Also speaking was New Mexico Department of Workforce Solutions Sec. Bill McCamley. 

  • McCamley: “A fair day’s work deserves a fair day’s pay.” Wage theft (employers not paying the prevailing minimum wage to their employees) is “by far the highest” in the state’s restaurant industry. “Some of the things we see are not on purpose, they’re paperwork issues. Every single dollar for a low-wage worker counts big time.”
  • Marci Dickerson, owner of The Game Sports Bar and Grill: Dropping the tipped wage back to the state level would not have a negative impact on most servers, because they derive most of their incomes from tips, not base salaries. The reduction would give restaurants “a brief breather, a time out,” and help them catch up from the loss of income for 2020.
  • Amy Miller, general manager of Courtyard by Marriott Las Cruces at NMSU: “The COVID-19 pandemic has severely damaged the tourism industry in New Mexico,” with projected 2020 losses of $4.3 billion. “I would like to ask that there’s no minimum wage increases for 2021.”
  • Councilor Gabe Vasquez: “I can’t separate helping businesses without helping workers. The overall earning power of a server, $13 an hour, $27,000 a year. It’s incumbent on us to use the city’s financial position to create business assistance programs that don’t have to be on the backs of workers.”
  • Councilor Tess Abeyta-Stuve: She worked as a server and spent what she earned on “the necessities of life: food rent and basic utilities, she said.” “You do have a lot (of tipped workers) that it is every single dollar that really does count.“
  • Councilor Johana Bencomo: “We cannot live in an economy that keeps people in poverty. We have to look at anti-poverty programs in our city.”
  • Councilor Gill Sorg: Through a city grant program to help small businesses, “Let’s target those businesses that are in trouble.”
  • Mayor Pro-Tem Kasandra Gandara: “We have to look at different strategies. I just can’t in good conscience agree to reduce someone’s income by a couple of dollars.”
  • Councilor Yvonne Flores: “It’s really heartbreaking that we’re looking to reducing the minimum wage. To think that somebody’s wages are going to be lowered, which are already pretty low.”
  • City Manager Ifo Pili: The city should look at businesses on an individual basis to determine where help should go. I think it takes listening to individual businesses and their individual needs and trying to attack it with the sniper approach and not a shotgun approach.”
Las Cruces City Council

X