One of the many voter initiatives on the ballot in Ohio is Issue 2, the "Ohio Fair Wage Amendment," a proposal to enshrine an ever-increasing minimum wage in the Ohio state constitution. If it passes (and polls suggest it will by a large margin) the Ohio minimum wage will rise to $6.85 an hour in 2007, and increase with inflation thereafter.
There's no need to rehash the economic arguments about the minimum wage here. (For those interested, see my NRO commentary on Issue 2 here). There are several other aspects of Issue 2 that are worth comment. First, for a constitutional amendment, Issue 2 is quite unweildy. Only a small portion of the thousand-plus-word amendment concerns wage rates. The rest details employer record-keeping, reporting, and disclosure requirements, and provides for a private cause of action against employers who fail to comply with the new law.
Issue 2 opponents have focused their efforts on portions of the amendment that they claim threaten workers' privacy. A group called Ohioans to Protect Personal Privacy, for instance, argues that the amendment's "fine print can also make your payroll records public: how much you make, when you worked, where you live."
This charge is overstated. According to Ohio State's Peter Swire OTPPP's claims are "wrong" and display an "an ignorance of actual privacy law." That said, I believe Issue 2's non-wage provisions are still cause for concern.
Issue 2 requires employers to maintain payroll records for all employers for three years after their employment. Under the Amendment, "Such information shall be provided without charge to an employee or person acting on behalf of an employee upon request." An individual "acting on behalf of an employee" is presumably someone like an attorney or authorized union representative, and herein lies the potential problem.
Another provision of Issue 2 provides that:
An action for equitable and monetary relief may be brought against an employer by . . .an employee or person acting on behalf of an employee or all similarly situated employees . . . for any violation of this section or any law or regulation implementing its provisions.This provision, read in conjunction with the rest of Issue 2, seems to create the possibility that an attorney retained by a current or former employee could bring a class-action suit on behalf of all "similarly situated employees," and then seek the relevant employment records by claiming that they are acting on their behalf. Why would they do this? Perhaps to facilitate a litigation strategy or union organizing campaign.
This is not the only potential interpretation of Issue 2, but it is hardly an unreasonable one either. So, while some privacy-based complaints are overstated, there is a reasonable basis for concern -- and reason enough, in my mind, why someone who would like to increase the minimum wage might still have misgivings about a constitutional amendment like Issue 2.
Related Posts (on one page):
- When "The Weight of Empirical Evidence" Is Only "Anecdotal or Theoretical":
- Worker Privacy and Ohio's Issue 2:
In any event, if the information is sought in a meritorious action to further a legitimate litigation strategy, I simply don't see the problem with it. On the other hand, if I seek someone's employment records to assist a third party in a union organizing campaign, I better be prepared to get disbarred over it.
And, because it's a constitutional amendment, it automatically overrides any privacy laws. Disgusting.
I'm sure as hell voting against it : I like living here.
Issue 2 does not appear to materially alter this process. Before employment records would be given over to a "person acting on behalf of an employee upon request," in a class action situation, a court would have to certify the class. So, there really seems like little material difference, from a privacy point of view, between Issue 2 and FLSA on this point.
The only difference is that Issue 2 would allow non-employees who actually represent people, to request records. You may disagree with the policy because you don't like unions, but it does not implicate the release of a person's payroll records without their consent.
If you don't like minimum wage laws, vote against Issue 2, but there really does not appear to be any real privacy concern.
Says the "Dog"
According to the text, [i]any one[/i] "interested party may file a complaint with the state for a violation of any provision of this section". Do you believe such an individual would not be considered acting on the behalf on an employee?
I also can't find part of the FSLA that requires individual records to be released without a court of law being involved to some degree.
This is a statement for or against the merits of the proposal, just a statement that referenda and state constitutions don't seem a very good vehicle for the obscure details of record keeping requirements.
Let me second you on that point and add to the general idiocy of having lay people decide complex economic issues they have neither the time nor expertise to understand. I mean can you imagine having a referenda on whether a tokamak design for the ITER is the best choice or some other shape is preferred? So why do we think people can suddenly do this on economic issues.
Admittedly economic issues are more problematic since there is a greater history of economics being twisted for political ends but it still doesn't change the underlying complexity.
At best a minimum wage constitutes an (inefficient) wealth transfer from one group of society (consumers in general) to low wage workers. So how come when this same transfer is framed in terms of taxes does people's opinion seem to change?
As I said above frustrates me about all this is that we could accomplish the same goals with less risk of economic inefficiency with the right sort of taxes/reverse income tax (we could adjust it so there is always a significant marginal return on pay raises).
The only provision of this that I like (not that I'm voting for it, the minimum wage is already a stupid idea) is the provision about employees having a right to access their own data. A number of my former employers (Disney, The Ohio State University...) are outsourcing their employment verification and payroll data systems to third parties like The Work Number. And The Work Number says:
"I’m sorry, but for security reasons, we are not able to fax your information to you. We will, however, be happy to provide it to verifier who has requested it."
So they basically hold all this data, about me, hostage. I can't get it, but if you want to hire me, you can buy it from them for something like $10 (there's a sliding scale based on your request volume.) It's really, really annoying.
This is the first I've heard that it has a snowball's chance.
As for the economic arguments, ask yourself this: Why are opponents of the Amendment trying to trump up bogus privacy concerns? Answer: Because they can't win on the economic arguments.
As to the economics, although that's getting away from the original point of the post, it's worth noting the study here: http://www.epi.org/content.cfm/minwagestmt2006
Summary: Over 650 economists, including 5 Nobel prize winners and 6 past presidents of the American Economic Association, believe that increasing federal and state minimum wages, with annual cost-of-living adjustments for inflation, “can significantly improve the lives of low-income workers and their families, without the adverse effects that critics have claimed.”
Finally, if one believes in a minimum wage at all -- and I understand some hard-core libertarians don't, but that argument has been lost in pretty much all industrialized democracies -- isn't it rationale to peg the minimum wage to something, and index it to the rate of inflation, CPI, or something like that? Otherwise, the minimum wage decreases in value every year after it's set (assuming some inflation) until it's raised again. The U.S. is practically unique in the world by not basing its minimum wage rates on anything in particular, and I don't see how that's a good thing.
Plug your formula into Excel and you'll get a circular reference error.
Is that what happens when other countries do it?
Smith is interviewing for a job at Company A and currently works at Company B.
Smith is trying to hold out for more money and either implies or out right lies that his current salary is $100,000 (it is really $80,000).
I know the company I work for does not disclose salary info. On reference checks they will only confirm employment dates and job title. Smith can feel pretty sure that his deception will not be discovered.
Under the law now, Company A can ask Smith to sign a document authorizing Company B to disclose the salary information. In fact I would expect to see this language incorporated into all job applications in Ohio should the amendment pass.
What's the matter with "The legislature shall have the power to enforce the provisions of this amendment with appropriate legislation."?
It's a bit paranoid, but there's another way unions benefit from an increased minimum wage even though they represent no minimum wage employees. Almost everyone starts at a minimum wage job, then moves up to better jobs. One big reason for this is that employers generally have only two ways to find out if you'll show up for work on time, follow instructions, and otherwise behave yourself in the workplace: they can risk hiring you and find out for themselves, or they can look for a satisfactory history in previous jobs. Naturally, the ones most inclined to take the risk of hiring someone with no job history are the ones hiring for unimportant jobs where a bad worker cannot do too much damage, and these jobs are either minimum wage or minimum wage plus a few cents. When a minimum wage increase make hiring for such jobs more costly, employers will consider eliminating the jobs, or else raising their expectations in hiring and assigning more difficult or important work to get their money's worth. One other alternative would be to depend more on personal recommendations from their trusted employees for the entry-level jobs.
So, raising the minimum wage restricts the number of young people who manage to enter the work force, and down the road it will reduce the number of workers with a good history competing for the good union jobs, especially the blue-collar jobs. It also increases the percentage of remaining entry-level jobs that are awarded based on recommendations from existing employees, and hence gets more people from union families into these jobs.
Obviously. Math is math the world over. Whether they choose to acknowledge it or ignore it is another story.
This doesn't make sense to me. An employer can always require you to substantiate your current salary level, if they choose to. They generally don't, because it's considered nonstandard in most industries. But the new law doesn't change the norms. Is it really this commentor's impression that the only reason your new job doesn't ask you to provide written proof of your salary at your old job is because you'd say "sorry, my former employer refuses to release that information to me"?