Good-paying jobs key, leaders told at summit

Local business leaders seem to be awakening to the plight of low-income workers struggling to meet basic needs, including buying food for their families.

At a summit Monday at the Mid-Ohio Food Bank in Grove City, more than 200 business, government and community leaders met to discuss the threat that poverty and hunger continue to pose in central Ohio and steps that can be taken to ease that threat.

One obvious solution: incomes that provide a stable living.

Steven D. Steinour, president, chairman and CEO of Huntington Bancshares, was one of the panelists. Afterward, he spoke about Huntington raising its minimum wage three years in a row, from $12.50 an hour to $15 today.

“We think it’s good business,” Steinour said. “It creates more happy colleagues and employees.

“We think it’s in the shareholders’ best interests.”

Unemployment rates are low — 4.5 percent in Ohio in August, just 3.8 percent in Franklin County — and incomes are finally increasing. In Franklin County, the median annual household income increased 9.4 percent from 2013 to 2017, to $59,227.

Yet nearly a third of Franklin County’s 1.2 million residents — 31.9 percent — had incomes lower than 200 percent of the poverty threshold for 2017, or less than $49,200 a year for a family of four.

“Jobs aren’t the answer to poverty. It’s wages,” said Matt Habash, executive director of the Mid-Ohio Foodbank.

Other local companies have boosted minimum wages recently, including Nationwide, which now pay $15 an hour. Others that operate here that have raised their minimum wage to $15 include PNC Bank, Fifth Third Bancorp and Sinclair Broadcast Group, which owns WSYX Channel 6 and operates WTTE Channel 28 and WWHO Channel 53.

The food bank raised its minimum wage to $15 four years ago.

Still, 41.7 million Americans earn less than $12 an hour, Habash said.

“We’ve had this huge suppression of wages at the bottom,” he said.

“The first line of defense is income,” he said. “Income is the solution to putting meals on the table.”

Nick Akins, president, chairman and CEO of American Electric Power, said the utility pays no one less than $15 an hour.

“There has to be a living wage for employees for this company or any company,” Akins said. Also, communities have to train workers to provide them with skills for the next generation of jobs.

“It’s time for corporate America to stand up.”

In the 20-county region the food bank serves, 525,000 individuals go to pantries for food. About half of them are in Franklin County, Habash said.

Dr. Mysheika Roberts, Columbus Public Health’s commissioner, who was also on the panel Monday, said the turnout at the event shows that the community as a whole is interested in boosting incomes and reducing poverty.

“When you look at a successful company like Huntington, and a nonprofit like the Mid-Ohio Foodbank, it can be done,” Roberts said.

“Wages are important. They aren’t everything, but they are a lot of it.”