Ohio AFL-CIO backing $13 minimum wage

Union adds support to effort to get issue on November ballot.

The Ohio AFLCIO is backing a proposed $13 minimum wage ballot issue, giving the initiative additional organizing strength as its backers work to gather signatures to try to make the

November ballot.

While it hasn’t publicly announced its support, the AFL-CIO has asked its regional labor councils to help circulate petitions among its members. Ohioans for Raising the Wage need to collect roughly 443,000 valid voter signatures from 44 of Ohio’s 88 counties by Aug. 5 to make the ballot.

The AFL-CIO is Ohio’s largest organized labor group with roughly 500,000 members. It was a major backer of the last constitutional amendment to hike Ohio’s minimum wage in 2006.

“We believe the minimum wage to be too low to be a living wage,” said Mike Gillis, an AFL-CIO spokesman. “And we were very active on the last minimum wage hike. And while that was a good step in terms of moving it in the right direction, it hasn’t moved fast enough to where it needs to be.”

Before the AFL-CIO got involved, the Service Employees International Union Local 1199 was the only labor group to officially back the ballot issue. Leaders of the Ohio Education Association, another major labor group that represents teachers, support the campaign, but the group’s members have yet to officially vote on the measure.

The proposal would raise Ohio’s minimum wage, currently $8.70 an hour for non-tipped employees, to $9.60 an hour on Jan. 1, 2021, according to the proposed amendment text. It then would raise it further each year until stopping at $13 an hour in 2025. After that, it would be tied to inflation.

The Ohio Ballot Board, chaired by Secretary of State Frank LaRose, approved petition language for the measure earlier this month, clearing the way for the campaign to begin collecting signatures.

The minimum wage hike is not the only possible constitutional amendment that could appear on the November ballot. A different campaign backed by the Ohio ACLU is pursuing a ballot initiative that would expand Ohio’s ballot access laws. The ballot board rejected the group’s petition language earlier this month, but the campaign is expected to resubmit language soon.