COLUMBUS, Ohio – Ohio's minimum wage workers are earning 25 cents more per hour this year than last, but some lawmakers and policy analysts contend $8.55 an hour still isn’t enough.

A 2006 ballot measure set Ohio's minimum hourly wage at $6.85 and indexed it to inflation.

But Michael Shields, a researcher with Policy Matters Ohio, says that doesn't cover the cost of living for many families.

His group's latest research shows wage growth and economic growth are out of sync.

It means Ohio minimum wage workers earn 28 percent less than their counterparts in 1968, when wages were at their peak value.

"In Ohio, the most common jobs – the 10 jobs that employ the largest number of workers – six of those are paying a wage that's so low that people are dependent on food aid if they're supporting a family of three," Shields point out.

House Bill 34, introduced last week, calls for a $12 per hour wage floor in 2020, then a $1 bump each year until hitting $15 in 2023. A similar bill introduced last year didn't succeed.

Opponents argued that it would be costly for business and result in job losses.

Shields says the research is mixed, with most studies revealing little effect on overall job numbers.

"It's meaningful when we see wages increase and employers not responding by decreasing jobs,” he states. “What that means is that low-wage workers are already producing wealth for their employers and for the economy. They're just not bargaining for it successfully to capture their share of it."

Shields says about 1.5 million workers would directly benefit from a higher minimum wage, along with another 450,000 indirectly, as employers adjust their overall pay scales.

Shields adds that increased business costs due to higher wages are minimal. For example, the Greater Cleveland Food Bank's lowest paid employees were given a 21 percent pay hike when the organization raised its minimum wage to $14 an hour in 2017. He says operating costs increased by just one-half of 1 percent.

"When we're looking at how this impacts organizations, how it impacts businesses, the
proportional benefit to folks who would be impacted by higher wages is much, much greater than the relative costs that employers are taking on to make this a reality," Shields points out.

The Cleveland Clinic, Nationwide and Amazon are among Ohio companies raising hourly pay to $15.

And last week, Illinois lawmakers approved a $15 minimum wage by 2024, similar to laws in California, Massachusetts and New York.

Reporting by Ohio News Connection in association with Media in the Public Interest, and funded in part by The George Gund Foundation.


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National proposals to end taxes on tips might have mixed effects on New Yorkers.

Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump have developed variations of the policy, which would let workers keep more of their tips. But many tipped workers do not earn enough income for a living wage because they make a subminimum wage, which is $16 with tip credits in New York.

Saru Jayaraman, president of the advocacy group One Fair Wage, said both candidates would take separate approaches to implementing their policies.

"Trump's proposal also would provide that same tax exemption to hedge fund billionaires and Harris' proposal, you know, when she elevated it did call for raising the minimum wage in addition to ending taxes on tips," Jayaraman explained.

She argued the best way to implement change is by ending the subminimum wage. Several states and cities have done it, but New York's bill faces opposition from groups like the New York Restaurant Association. However, restaurants in different states are seeing dividends from paying workers a full minimum wage with tips. Several states have ballot measures this year to end the subminimum wage.

On average, tipped wage workers in New York earn almost $18 an hour with tips. But the living hourly wage for a single New Yorker is closer to $27. Beyond state-level hesitation to pass such laws, Jayaraman noted a big challenge to make sure if Congress passes a bill, it is done so equitably.

"The only way it's fair to other workers is if you're exempting taxes on tips that are above the minimum wage, not tips that bring you to the minimum wage," Jayaraman emphasized. "Because otherwise other minimum wage workers are paying tax on the minimum wage and then you'd have tipped workers not paying taxes on their minimum wage."

Advocates said it could also lead unscrupulous businesses to switch to a tipping model so they would not have to pay their workers a full minimum wage. She argued there would have to be some kind of guard enacted in the policy to prevent it from happening.

Unionized workers with the federal agency responsible for processing immigration and asylum paperwork claim they are being forced to turn their jobs over to non-union labor, in violation of federal law.

United Electrical, Radio, & Machine Workers of America members say the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Nebraska Service Center is laying off union workers in Nebraska and other states, and moving the jobs to non-union operations.

UE Local 808 President Dawn Meyer calls the center's move "union busting."

"What they are doing is, they're taking good union jobs," said Meyer. "They're outsourcing them to places that are paying less money, are less efficient, are far less vigilant in accuracy. They're risking people's ability to get immigration benefits."

Meyer said UE workers are a skilled, experienced workforce that performs clerical and pre-adjudication tasks.

They serve the immigration pipeline for asylum seekers, refugees, and victims of human trafficking and domestic violence.

The U.S. CIS did not respond to a request for comment.

Meyer said the U.S. CIS is playing a "shell game," laying off union workers and moving their jobs to the non-union Lockbox location in Dallas.

The work there principally involves the processing of fee-bearing petitions. She said the decision to relocate this work has resulted in predictable delays in processing.

"All these contracts are supposed to be open to the public because SCA is supposed to be a transparent process," said Meyer. "So it makes it very difficult for the common person to go looking for, 'Hey, what's my government doing?'"

UE locals in Lincoln, Essex, Vermont, and Laguna Niguel, California have recently held protests of the layoff policies - calling for the government to stop so-called "rolling layoffs," aimed at reducing the unionized workforce at all three locations by about two thirds between 2023 and 2025.


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New data show fast food jobs have been on the upswing in the four months since the minimum wage in the sector went from $16 to $20 an hour.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics found California added 11,000 new fast-food jobs from April to July and showed increases year over year each month since January.

Michael Reich, professor of economics at the University of California-Berkeley, said the data contradicts doomsday predictions from opponents of raising the minimum wage.

"The knock is that a minimum wage increase would lead to businesses closing, workers getting laid off, and much higher prices," Reich recounted. "That's been the knock on every minimum wage increase since 1938. Indeed, a large number of studies have found that minimum wages do not reduce employment in fast food."

Reich noted while fast food work is expanding, its growth has slowed because overall economic growth has slowed but not because of the higher minimum wage. He said the effect of higher fast-food workers' wages on the overall economy is too small to detect.

Reich pointed out higher wages have certainly benefited workers' bottom line, which leads to more spending in the local economy. They have also led to slightly higher restaurant prices.

"Fast food prices may have gone up one or two percent, compared to how much they increased in other states that did not raise their minimum wage," Reich explained. "That's not enough to reduce consumer spending. So the minimum wage essentially leads to an income transfer from the people who eat in those restaurants to the people who work in those restaurants."

Some individual fast food managers worried they would lose business if they increased their prices to offset higher labor costs. But Reich countered the cost increases affect all fast food restaurants, so individual businesses would not lose market share.


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