PORT ARTHUR — By David Ball and Amy Moore

The News staff writers

The restaurant just opened Tuesday, but already the owners of the new Sonic Drive-in in Port Arthur are having to increase employees’ wages.

Thursday the U.S. Department of Labor increased the federal minimum wage to $6.55 from $5.85 giving hourly employees 70 extra cents per hour. With this change, employees who are covered by the federal Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) cannot be paid less than $6.55 per hour.

“It’s like everything else. Minimum wage goes up and in time everything else goes up, too,” Sonic owner Ron Pisana said of rising prices.

Pisana admits that salaries are one of the biggest expenses for any business owner, but his daughter, Vanessa Box, who co-owns the store, said she doesn’t mind paying more than minimum wage for qualified employees.

“Generally we start at minimum wage, but I don’t mind paying more if the person has experience and is a good employee,” she said.

Hiren Patel, owner of two Subway restaurants in Port Arthur, said an increase in the minimum wage will not affect his business dramatically, but it will definitely affect his employees’ payroll because of what he calls “the big jump.”

“That will be an increase of 70 cents a hour, or $15 to $20 per employee and per week for a total of $100,” Patel said. “It’s the biggest expense (payroll) after food costs. With the competition going around, we can’t increase the prices. We have to make up in volume and control the price.”

Owning a store on Memorial Blvd. and Ninth Ave. with 16 employees, Patel said his business will need to get the most out of the employees. He said he will probably need to cut back on the hours worked or reduce the hours the stores are open.

“If wages go up, we may cut down a little on each. We can give them extra work as the same hours they work and push them to do more to make up the difference. Nobody will be laid off,” Patel said.

When the minimum wage increases next year to $7.25 an hour, Patel said he will definitely have to shuffle prices, schedules and store hours.

Despite the added costs, Box is still on the look out for qualified employees for the recently opened Sonic on FM 365.

“We’ve got 56 employees but I need cooks,” she said.

The wage increase is the second of three provided by the enactment of the Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2007. A third minimum wage increase to $7.25 an hour will become effective on July 24, 2009. Last year the minimum wage increased to $5.85 an hour.

Patel feels that if the government did a better job with the economy, there would be no need for an increase in the minimum wage.

“With everything going up, the minimum wage has to go up because of economic conditions,” Patel said. “As the upper level economics are taken care of, if the state and national levels control the economics in a better way, there is no need to control the minimum wage. They need to control inflation. The dollar is getting weaker and weaker everyday.”

Last week, the Labor Department reported the fastest inflation since 1991 — 5 percent for June compared with a year earlier. Energy costs soared nearly 25 percent. The price of food rose more than 5 percent.

The minimum wage hike is "a drop in the bucket compared to the increases in costs, declining labor market, and declining household wealth that consumers have experienced in the past year," Lehman Brothers economist Zach Pandl said.

Brian Bethune, chief U.S. economist at consulting firm Global Insight believes the increase in the minimum wage could push food prices even higher by rising the pay for agricultural workers.

But he said he did not expect the change to have a major impact on the economy because recent increases in productivity, which enables companies to produce more with fewer workers, are keeping labor costs in check.

The Associated Press contributed to this article.