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Ohio, Arizona Minimum Wage Increases Head for November Ballot |
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Even in the hot August dog days of summer, the nationwide drive to raise the minimum wage rolls on.
In Ohio, the union and community coalition Ohioans for a Fair Minimum Wage turned in more than twice as many signatures as needed to put a minimum wage increase on the Buckeye State’s fall ballot. In Arizona, the secretary of state certified that the 210,000 signatures the Arizona Minimum Wage Coalition submitted in late June were more than enough to put the issue before voters in November.
The AFL-CIO America Needs a Raise campaign is leading the drive to raise the minimum wage in the states through legislation or ballot initiatives such as those in Ohio and Arizona—while Republican leaders in Congress continue to block efforts to raise it on the federal level.
AFL-CIO President John Sweeney praised the hard work of the Ohioans for a Fair Minimum Wage.
In the face of continued inaction in Congress, Ohio working families have taken matters into their own hands to remove politics from the equation. Working families in Ohio and across the country are sending a clear message that they won’t wait around for Congress to act.
The Ohio ballot measure would raise the state’s minimum wage to $6.85 an hour and protect it against inflation by indexing it against the cost of living. Until this spring, the Ohio minimum wage was just $4.25 an hour. When Republican lawmakers saw the momentum build for a minimum wage increase and the voter turnout it is expected to generate, they tried to defuse the issue by passing legislation bringing it to the $5.15 federal level.
Tim Burga, Ohio AFL-CIO legislative director, says that move by Republicans has done little to dampen the support for a real pay hike. Minimum wage activists gathered more than 765,000 signatures—more than twice the number needed to put the wage issue on the ballot and into the state constitution if voters approve. Burga says:
It’s time to take politics out this issue and put the minimum wage in the Ohio constitution….We believe that honest work deserves honest pay and that hard working Ohioans deserve a raise.
Meanwhile yesterday in Arizona, the secretary of state made it official that the signatures Arizona activists gathered were valid and put the measure to raise the state minimum wage to $6.75 an hour and index the wage to inflation. It will be known as proposition 202.
Along with Arizona and Ohio, voters in Colorado, Nevada, Montana and Missouri will have a chance to raise their states’ minimum wage in the fall elections.
Along with qualifying ballot initiatives, activists in the America Needs a Raise campaign are working in 19 states to raise the minimum wage through legislation. Earlier this month, Massachusetts became the latest state to increase its minimum wage when the Legislature overrode a veto by Gov. Mitt Romney (R). Last month, North Carolina and Pennsylvania joined the growing list of states to raise their minimum wages.
Meanwhile, members of Congress have not raised the federal minimum wage in 10 years, while giving themselves nine pay hikes totaling $35,000. Before returning home for their annual five-week summer vacation in August, Republican members of Congress tried to poison a minimum wage bill that would have increased the wage to $7.25. They sought to weasel through a $753 billion estate tax cut for the nation’s 8,200 wealthiest families along with the minimum wage increase—a cynical move lawmakers voted down.
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