Even those who don’t usually bet may be willing to place a wager on this: Ohio will have a $15 minimum wage.

There is less certainty about how this will happen. Will voters approve the raise for low-wage workers in a November ballot measure to amend Ohio’s Constitution? Will the state legislature approve the recently introduced S.B. 256, which calls for the wage hike? Ohio’s minimum wage is currently $10.45 per hour. 

The differences between the competing proposals

While both have a goal of a $15 minimum wage, they will affect a worker’s wallet in different ways. The differences include how long it would take to reach $15, whether tipped workers would be covered, and how easy it would be to revise or reverse what either voters or legislators approved. 

One Fair Wage (OFW), a nonprofit focused on eliminating a lower minimum wage for restaurant workers, is among the organizations that are part of the  Raise the Wage Ohio campaign working to get the amendment on the ballot. Supporters have until early July to submit the roughly 443,000 signatures that are required. The amendment would basically revise the 2006 constitutional amendment that ties yearly minimum wage increases to the inflation rate.  

Republican State Sen. Louis Blessing III of Colerain Township, near Cincinnati, recently introduced S.B. 256. In order to become law, the bill has to undergo a fairly lengthy legislative process that includes hearings in both the Ohio Senate and the Ohio House.

Below are some ways passing a constitutional amendment for a $15 minimum wage would differ from passing a bill.  

Constitutional amendment would raise minimum wage to $15 in 2026; it would take until 2028 under a state bill

The proposed constitutional amendment would raise the minimum wage to $12.75 on Jan. 1, 2025, and to $15 on Jan. 1, 2026. S.B. 256 would raise it to $12 on Jan. 1, 2025, gradually increasing the minimum wage yearly until it reached $15 on Jan. 1, 2028. All new minimum wages would be indexed to inflation because of the 2006 amendment.

“The average income for restaurant workers and other low-wage workers is not sustainable in terms of the cost of living, in which they have lost their purchasing power,” said Mariah Ross, ballot initiative director for OFW and campaign manager for Raise the Wage Ohio.

Economist Michael Shields, who recently authored a report on the impact of a $15 minimum wage in Ohio, said $15 in 2028 will be less than $15 in 2026. He is with Policy Matters Ohio, the liberal, nonprofit, nonpartisan state policy research institute. The current inflation rate is 3.5%. Even if inflation returns to 2%, which many economists view as acceptable, Shields said workers would still lose by having to wait for a raise.

Blessing fears that raising the minimum wage too quickly could have a negative impact. He  partly based his bill on research by the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, which supports small minimum wage increases coupled with tax policies such as the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC.) The federal EITC is a tax break for low- to moderate-income workers and families that results in higher tax refunds.  Ohio has an EITC, but taxpayers can’t receive refunds. If they owe taxes, that amount can be lowered.  Blessing’s bill would modify the state EITC so that taxpayers could receive refunds.

“The refundable EITC complements a slower moving minimum wage, and the two together are more beneficial to low income workers than either policy on its own,” he wrote in the email to Signal Cleveland.

Shields said Policy Matters supports a refundable EITC but is skeptical that the General Assembly would vote in favor of it.

“It’s the kind of legislation that should be championed, but because of the legislature’s track record, there’s no way to ensure full implementation once the threat of the citizens’ vote has passed,” he said in a news release.

Tipped workers get a $15 minimum wage with ballot measure; half of that with state bill

Tipped workers in Ohio, as in many states, have a minimum wage that is considerably less than that of employees who don’t receive tips. The tipped minimum wage in Ohio is $5.25 for workers who regularly receive more than $30 per month in tips. If tips don’t bring a worker to at least $10.45 an hour, the employer is supposed to make up the difference.

S.B. 256 would make the tipped wage half of the non-tipped wage, which is the current ratio. Blessing said tipped workers ultimately would still be guaranteed the higher minimum wage, as they currently are.

“Many tipped workers make more than $15/hour now and are worried that the ballot initiative will lead to the end of tipping and thus a significant cut in their pay,” he wrote.

Shields said having tips being a vital part of the tipped minimum wage is problematic. The amendment would gradually raise the tipped minimum wage until it was basically phased out by 2029, Policy Matters projects. 

“It just creates the opportunity for a lot of labor abuse, including wage theft,” he said of having a tipped minimum wage.

Wage theft is when employers cheat workers out of their pay. In the last several years, national and statewide studies have shown that Ohio has a problem with wage theft.

“I looked at this question two years ago and found that Ohio employers steal from some 213,000 Ohio workers every single year through minimum wage nonpayment,” he said. “This does not include things like not paying time and half for overtime or not paying workers their last paycheck.”

Shields said he likes that the constitutional amendment eliminates other lower, or subminimum, wages. They include the youth minimum wage for workers under 16, currently $7.25, which is the same as the federal minimum wage.

Constitutional amendment makes it harder to reverse a $15 minimum wage

Once an amendment is enshrined in Ohio’s Constitution, it can only be revised through a ballot measure. This means it would be difficult to undo a $15 minimum wage indexed to inflation. If a new minimum wage is set by a bill, it can be changed by passing another bill, although sometimes that isn’t so easy to do. On the federal level that has been difficult. Congress hasn’t raised the federal minimum wage since 2009.

Blessing says legislation is more nimble than a constitutional amendment.

 “[I]f this ballot initiative passes, and the results prove to be problematic, the General Assembly is powerless to remedy the situation given that it will be in the Constitution,” he wrote in a recent guest column in the Columbus Dispatch.

Shields question how anything can potentially be problematic about improving the economic status of low-wage workers.

“The legislature can modify the minimum wage and could even reduce it later,” he said. “There’s precedent for that.” 

He was referring to what happened in Michigan in 2018 when the “legislature decided to adopt increases in the minimum wage outlined in a ballot initiative, but did so with the intent to water them down,” according to a Michigan Advance article.

What happens if both the constitutional amendment and the bill pass?

In the constitutional amendment versus the bill battle, there will be no clear cut winner until after November’s election.

Even if the state legislature passes a $15 minimum wage before the ballot measure deadline, supporters can still have the constitutional amendment questions put before voters.

“Yes we can and will,” Ross said.

Blessing remains confident in his approach.

“[I] believe that Ohioans would likely support a $15 minimum wage, so this proposal is a good faith attempt at delivering that while minimizing harmful side effects,” he wrote in his email to Signal Cleveland.

🗳️For more on this year’s election, visit our Election Signals 2024 page.