Stand Up for Ohio is trying to boost the minimum wage to $12 dollars an hour in six years.
Ohio's minimum wage might increase nearly $4 by 2021, if a ballot initiative passes next year.
The initiative, which would be known as "The Ohio Fair Wage Amendment," was approved by the state's ballot board last month and would potentially increase the minimum wage to $10 in 2017, with a $0.50 increase each subsequent year until 2021.
The initiative was filed by the Stand Up for Ohio Ballot Issue PAC, an offshoot of Stand Up For Ohio, an advocacy group for job creation and community development.
"We’re in the very beginning stages of this process, so what we did here is file the signatures and the language to get that verified so then we can begin circulating petitions to get this on the ballot," Laurie Couch, spokeswoman for Stand Up for Ohio, said.
The current minimum wage is $8.10, which came into effect this year. If the ballot initiative passes, it would rise to $12 by 2021.
The group turned in 3,398 signatures to the ballot board in mid-October in order to get initial approval on the measure. The group will now have to collect 305,591 petition signatures in order to get the measure on the 2016 ballot.
Couch said after three rounds of internal polling, the group found that 63 percent of people polled would support the measure.
"We know that the appetite is there, and the need is clearly there," she said. "The number of Ohioans living in poverty has increased by 40 percent."
Arian Smedley, spokeswoman for Athens County Jobs and Family Services, said the county stands to gain from the proposal, but possibly not very much.
"Any increase in the minimum wage is always a good thing," she said. "But whether or not it's a good thing, it does not always mean there will be full-time jobs available. The impact on the individual would vary."
Smedley said an increase to a $12 minimum wage would put a family of three at about 25 percent above the federal poverty level.
"It's certainly better than not having any increase," she said.
According to data from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a living wage in Athens for a family of three is $18.59. Athens has the highest poverty level in the state at 31.7 percent.
"The goal here is to address poverty in Ohio," Couch said. "It's not right that people have to work more than before and are making less in some of the lowest paying jobs."
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She also said the measure would benefit college students, who tend to have lower-paying jobs.
Marshall Pfahler, a junior studying meteorology and an employee at Shively Dining Hall, makes $8.15 an hour, but said he doesn’t see much need for a wage increase.
“As much as we’re having to pay for college, it’s not quite sufficient. We need to find other sources of money,” he said. "But I feel like an employee’s wage should be determined by each individual employer.”
Jessica Roth, a sophomore studying sociology and global studies, said she would support the measure. She said she works at the Voinovich School on campus.
"I make $11 an hour, so it's definitely one of the better jobs on campus," she said.
Roth said the pay and the limited hours students are allowed to work make it difficult for students to keep themselves afloat.
"It's kind of ridiculous how the university expects us to pay, if you're an underclassman, $20,000 a year working for $7 an hour in terrible conditions," she said.
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