[caption id=”attachment_147148″ align=”aligncenter” width=”1024″] Republican presidential candidate Gov. John Kasich, R-Ohio, speaks during a campaign stop at New England College Wednesday, Sept. 2, 2015, in Henniker, N.H. The nation’s earliest presidential primary in new Hampshire is less then six months away. (AP Photo/Jim Cole)
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Ohio Governor John Kasich has sent mixed messages concerning the minimum wage, but at a town hall in New Hampshire, he warned that unwisely increasing the minimum wage could “create morale problems.”
In Michigan on Tuesday, Kasich said he was open to a “reasonable” federal minimum wage hike, according to the Huffington Post.
However, in New Hampshire on Wednesday, Kasich said he preferred minimum-wage changes on the state level to lessen unintended consequences, according to the Washington Post.
Kasich is walking a difficult line on the minimum wage, advocating changes when “it make[s] sense between management and labor.” Given the murky results of studies on the minimum wage and whether it harms employment, a compromise between management and labor could be difficult.
The cost of living varies by state, and increases on the state level instead of the federal level would allow more flexibility to account for local and regional differences.
The morale problems Kasich referenced were seen at Gravity Payments, where CEO Dan Price increased the minimum salary to $70,000 over three years. Some employees left because they felt the non-merit raises were unfair.
Those effects have been small with minimum-wage increases so far, but most increases have been small and phased in over a number of years, so it’s harder to find any effect. Agitation for a $15 hourly minimum wage on the federal level would be a large increase that is mostly without precedent. Some preliminary evidence around Los Angeles does not bode well, however. The bigger the increases over a shorter period of time might support Kasich’s concerns about worker morale.
