(Long Island, NY) Butch Yamali, owner of Long Island’s largest catering company, Dover Caterers, which owns restaurants, popular fast-food spots, summer camps and ice cream trucks that employee thousands of young people each summer and throughout the year, warned that New York State’s new $15-an-hour minimum wage law could severely hiring of high-school and college-age people who depend on the extra money to help pay school and other necessary costs.
As Long Island’s largest catering business for decades, Dover has served as a place where young people could spend a summer working with customers and children and learning the business, in addition to earning extra money. That experience may be sharply curtailed for many of the young employees because of the new law just signed by Gov. Andrew Cuomo, Mr. Yamali said.
“We have always hired as many young people as we could each summer and have enjoyed working with them,” Mr. Yamali said. “They have benefited from the work, and we have benefited from their participation at our eating spots, summer camps and ice cream trucks. But this new state law mandating $15-an-hour salaries will cut into our ability to hire. This is something that hurts our business, and also the lives and welfare of our young workers who have always served us so well and have been a part of the Dover family.”
Even leading economists in New York State have questioned the wisdom of the minimum-wage raise, saying man businesses, large and small, will not be able to absorb the additional costs and will have to cut back on hiring, and some may even have to shut their doors.
The rise from the current $9 minimum is to be phased in over nearly six years. It is a key part of the budget agreement reached Thursday between Gov. Cuomo, who pushed for the pay hike, and state legislators.
The law has been passed just as warm, spring-like weather is arriving in the Long Island area, and young people are making plans for summer jobs. Parents are also planning to place their kids in summer camps. Ice-cream trucks are gearing up for sales at parks, on Long Island streets and at festivals and fairs planned for the summer season.
“This new law clouds the early spring season,” Yamali said. “We had hoped to staff up as usual. Our plans may no longer be the same as they were before the passage of the law.”
