Is State Issue 2 on the Money?

Canton Repository

By G. Patrick Kelley

Should the minimum wage be higher than $5.15? State Issue 2 would raise it to $6.85. Labor, community and religious organizations back the raise.

But a host of business organizations say the proposed constitutional amendment could cause job losses, and it carries some dangerous fine print that has nothing to do with the minimum wage.

John McGough, spokesman for Ohioans to Protect Personal Privacy, a campaign organization created to oppose the minimum wage amendment, said the businesses and organizations in the coalition are divided over raising the wage.

But the group’s research shows that less than 10 percent of the affected workers are the sole earner of a family with one or
more children, but the wage hike could cost 12,000 jobs for those people, McGough said.

Many are teens

About two-thirds of minimum wage earners are younger than 24, almost half still live with their parents and 40 percent are teenagers, he said.

The average annual income for homes with a minimum wage worker is $52,000 because so many of them are teens and younger workers who live with their parents, he said.

Another problem is that the minimum wage would be tied to the consumer price index, and rise with it, McGough said.

If that index should skyrocket like it did in the 1980s, there is no quick fix for a constitutional amendment.

Increasing the federal Earned Income Tax Credit