Vice President Joe Biden is set to join New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo at an event Thursday announcing the governor’s proposal to raise the state’s minimum wage to $15 an hour, according to multiple reports.
Biden will reportedly endorse Cuomo’s proposal at the event, although it is not clear if he will be backing the idea nationally or just for New York.
Either way, the announcement reflects how intensely the idea of a $15 minimum wage has caught on among liberal Democrats over the past year. Biden is mulling a potential White House bid, and endorsing the proposal would boost his chances among activist Democrats.
A Labor Department spokesman told the Washington Examiner last month that the Obama administration backed an increase of the federal rate, currently $7.25 an hour, to $12. That was up from the beginning of the year, when the administration backed an increase to $10.10 an hour. However, Labor Secretary Tom Perez has spoken at events promoting a $15 minimum and the department’s official blog has featured “guest commentaries” endorsing the rate.
Cuomo earlier had resisted calls to raise the state minimum wage, currently $8.75 an hour, to $15. He said as recently as February that the idea was a “non-starter” due to opposition in the state legislature. In July, he moved away from that, backing a $15 minimum wage for fast-food industry workers, without saying exactly how those workers would defined.
Activists groups led by organized labor began the $15 push about two years ago with the intention of pressuring fast-food chains to raise their wages to that level. That effort bore little fruit, but local politicians in liberal-leaning areas joined the effort. Within the last year and a half, Seattle, San Francisco and Los Angeles city and county have adopted proposals to raise their minimum wages to $15.
Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., has mounted an unexpectedly strong challenge to front-runner Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination partly by touting his support for a national $15 minimum. He has sponsored Senate legislation to make the change.
Clinton has backed the White House’s proposal to raise the national minimum wage to $12 an hour, up from its current rate of $7.25. Last month she told reporters that while a $15 minimum might make sense for New Yorkers in the fast-food industry, it would be economically harmful if it were instituted nationally.
Conservative groups have scorned the effort, saying it was really a bid by organized labor to eliminate competition from low-wage labor and the politicians were merely currying favor with unions. “The governor’s decision was driven by intra-party politics and political posturing,” said Ryan Williams, spokesman for Worker Center Watch.
Most federal minimum wage increases have been modest, incremental ones. There is no precedent for nearly doubling it, as supporters such as Sanders want. So it is difficult to predict what impact it would have on the economy, analysts say, because there is no real-world comparison to draw from.
