Ohio's minimum wage: what's at stake at polls

(Cleveland Plain Dealer)

Ohio's minimum wage: what's at stake at polls

What will Issue 2 do?

Raise Ohio's minimum wage from $5.15 an hour to $6.85 beginning Jan. 1, and adjust it automatically for inflation every year after that.

Raise the minimum for tipped employees to half of that from $2.13 to $3.43 an hour in January and adjust that automatically for inflation every year afterward. Employers must demonstrate that workers are earning the full minimum wage when tips are figured in.

Some businesses and employees would be exempt. Workers under the age of 16, for example, could be paid the federal minimum wage $5.15 an hour - instead. Businesses with annual gross receipts of $250,000 or less also could pay their workers the federal minimum. It's not clear how many businesses and employees would be affected.

Require employers to maintain records for each employee - including name, address, occupation, pay rate, hours worked each workday and the amount paid - for at least three years after the employee's last day of work - and provide a copy of those records upon request without charge to an employee or person acting on behalf of the employee.

Require employers found guilty of violating the amendment to pay - within 30 days - back wages; damages equal to two times the back wages; the employee's costs; and reasonable attorney fees.

Those in favor of Issue 2 include Democratic gubernatorial candidate Ted Strickland and U.S. Senate candidates Republican Mike DeWine and Democrat Sherrod Brown. Republican gubernatorial candidate Ken Blackwell supports an increase in the minimum wage but opposes Issue 2 because of what he considers its intrusive aspects.

What Ohio proponents

say about Issue 2

Those in favor of raising Ohio's minimum say it's the moral thing to do. A person working for the current minimum wage - $5.15 an hour - earns $10,712 a year, almost $3,000 below the federal poverty level for a family of two.

THEY ALSO SAY:

Issue 2 will be good for Ohio's economy. States with a higher minimum wage have seen more new jobs than states without.

The minimum wage, when adjusted for inflation, has not been this low in more than 50 years.

When workers earn more, they're less likely to quit. Lower turnover leads to higher productivity, and lowers recruiting and training costs for business.

Issue 2 will raise wages for more than 700,000 workers in Ohio; about 300,000 of those earn less than $6.85 an hour now. The other 400,000 earn up to $1.50 more an hour than that and are likely to see a small boost, too.

Hundreds of thousands of Ohio workers are not sharing in recent economic gains. One example: chief executive pay in Ohio grew at an annual rate of 3.4 percent between 2000 and 2005, while the average worker's pay grew at 0.2 percent.

Worker productivity is at an all-time high while the minimum wage is at a 50-year low in terms of what it can buy.

What Ohio opponents say

about the increase

Those opposed to Issue 2 point to the fine print and say the amendment will give third parties, including unions, access to private information such as workers' home addresses, number of hours worked and salary, and that that puts them at risk of identity theft.

THEY ALSO SAY:

Issue 2 will cost businesses millions of dollars because it requires employers to, among other things, pay the cost of providing records to those who ask for them.

Puts employers at an additional risk of harassment because there is no limit to how many times or how frequently a person can ask for the records.

Ohio will lose jobs because businesses won't want to come to a state that, unlike other states, burdens them with these new record-keeping regulations.

Workers now earning minimum wage or just above it are young, not their family's primary wage-earner, and the majority of them live in households earning more than $52,000 a year. In addition, 40 percent are teens; nearly half live with their parents; and almost two-thirds are under the age of 24.

Because the amendment is vaguely worded, it could lead to years of lawsuits as courts interpret exactly what it means. And because Issue 2 is a constitutional amendment, the General Assembly won't be able to change it. Any modification will require a vote of the people.

Ohio can better help its neediest citizens with earned income tax credits and by creating better-paying jobs and educational opportunities to prepare them for those jobs.

What legal experts say

Two law professors who specialize in privacy and labor issues say claims that Issue 2 will invade employees' privacy are not true.

"These arguments are simply ludicrous," says Matt Finkin, who specializes in labor and employment law at the University of Illinois. "There's no evidence to support any of these claims, " says Finkin, the author of "Privacy in Employment Law" and co-author of "Legal Protection for the Individual Employee."

Robert Covington, a federal labor law scholar at Vanderbilt University, also says that Issue 2's language, which says employers must provide payroll information to an employee "or person acting on behalf of an employee," does not open the door for anyone to obtain those records.

"That phrase, among lawyers who were probably the drafters of this is regularly used to mean 'legal representative,' " says Covington.

"It is my personal opinion that the phrase 'on behalf of' would be interpreted by your courts most likely to mean an authorized representative of."

More information

To read the ballot language go to www.sos.state.oh.us/ and click on Election Day: November 7, 2006, then scroll to State Issue 2.

To hear more about what the opponents say, go to www.otppp.com

To hear more on what the proponents say, go to www.raisethewage.org

For general information on the minimum wage, go to www.dol.gov/dol/topic/wages/minimumwage.htm