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Minimum wage to increase Jan. 1

Sarah Foster

The Ohio minimum wage will increase this January due to state amendment passed in November 2006, which required the rate to be adjusted yearly for inflation.

The minimum wage will increase to $7 from its current hourly rate of $6.85. This rate is applied to all non-tipped employees.

Tipped employees will see their minimum wage increase from $3.43 an hour to $3.50 an hour, according to Dennis Ginty, media relations contact for the Ohio Department of Commerce.

"Ohio citizens voted to make this law go into effect, so the minimum wage will be increasing each January by the current inflation rate," Ginty said.

The increase is set to take affect Jan. 1, 2008, according to the Ohio Department of Commerce.

The inflation adjustment for Ohio's minimum wage is based on the Consumer Price Index. This year, 2007, the CPI rose 2 percent in the 12-month period starting Oct. 1, 2006 and ending Sept. 30, 2007, according to the Ohio Dept. of Commerce press Web site.

Josh Seidel, manager of Kona Bistro, said that the minimum wage increase would not change or impact any of the restaurant's current business practices. He said that this is because Kona is a smaller business with less than 50 employees and the increased labor costs will not be substantial enough.

He said that the last minimum wage increase did impact areas such as employee scheduling, hours and menu pricing.

"We definitely had to monitor our wait staff budget a little more and had to start thinking about how to offset the labor cost increase," Siedel said.

He said that as a result of the increased minimum wage, menu prices also increased slightly.

Cathy Pierce; senior director of administration and human services for Miami University's Housing, Dining and Guest Services; said that the office is monitoring the costs very carefully in order to prepare for the next increase in the minimum wage.

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"We are keeping an eye on our labor and costs," Pierce said. "We really have to be careful how we support our costs."

She said the office does not have any plans to cut positions because of the wage increase.

The previous minimum wage increase, which went into effect January 2007, upped pay from $6.15 to $6.85, and helped recruit more students to work for housing and dining, Pierce said.

Pierce said that last fall the number of student workers employed by housing and dining was very low compared to past years. The minimum wage increase helped bump student employee numbers up.

She stressed how important students are to the department.

"We rely on students to help staff all of our operations," Pierce said.

She said that housing and dining has around 1,200 students and 800 staff workers this year so far.

"We're continuing to watch the impact of the previous minimum wage increase and make appropriate considerations for the next one," Pierce said. "We generate income from our own operations, and a big part of this is our housing and meal plans. We have to continue to be very responsible fiscally. Labor is an important part of our budget. We have to monitor it carefully and budget adequately for it."

Ohio's minimum wage applies to Ohio workers, except for 14 and 15 year olds and employees who work for employers who currently gross less than $250,000 per year, said Ginty.

Businesses who gross under $250,000 in annual sales after Jan. 1, 2008 will not be affected by the wage increase. The federal minimum wage, $5.85 an hour, applies for these employees,

Ginty said.