Continuing to push for higher wages for the state’s lowest-paid workers, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo announced on Tuesday that all of the waiters, waitresses and others who work for tips in New York City will soon get a raise of their minimum wage to $7.50 an hour.
The increase was ordered by the acting labor commissioner, Mario J. Musolino, and will go into effect at the end of the year. It will consolidate three categories of tipped workers — whose minimum hourly wages range from $4.90 to $5.65 — into a single class to be paid at least $7.50 an hour.
The governor appeared with labor leaders at a union hall in Manhattan to celebrate Mr. Musolino’s decision and to repeat his own call for an increase in the statewide minimum wage for nontipped workers to $10.50 an hour. Mr. Cuomo also restated his view that the general minimum wage in the city should be even higher, $11.50 an hour, because of the higher cost of living.
The statewide minimum is scheduled to rise to $9, from $8.75, at the end of the year. But Mr. Cuomo said that increase, which translates to about $18,000 a year before taxes, was insufficient