What you need to know: Proposition A (Minimum Wage Increase)

By Ben McCarthy

Proposition A asks voters to amend Missouri law to increase the minimum wage and require all employers to provide paid sick leave for workers.

Voting Yes

Missouri law would be amended to increase minimum wage on January 1, 2025 to $13.75 per hour, and increase $1.25 per hour each year until 2026 (when the minimum wage would be $15.00 per hour). It would continue to adjust minimum wage based on changes in the Consumer Price Index each January beginning in 2027.

It would also require all employers to provide one hour of paid sick leave for every 30 hours worked, and allow the Department of Labor and Industrial Relations to provide oversight and enforcement (exemptions to the law would include governmental entities, political subdivisions, school districts and education institutions).

The cost to local businesses is unknown, as are tax revenue implications, but state governmental entities estimate one-time costs ranging from $0 to $53,000, and ongoing costs ranging from $0 to at least $256,000 per year by 2027.

Missouri passed Proposition B in 2018 to raise the minimum wage. It was $7.85 then, and that vote brought it to $12 per hour by 2023. It now stands at $12.30 per hour. Currently, a minimum wage worker takes home $492 per week before taxes. According to MIT’s interactive Living Wage Calculator tool (favored by the local advocacy group, Empower Missouri), a living wage for one adult with zero children is now $20.93 in Jackson County.

The current federal minimum wage is $7.25 per hour. Passage of Proposition A would put Missouri’s minimum wage below only five states. Currently, Washington tops state minimum wages at $16.28 per hour. Kansas, at $7.25, sits near the bottom of state minimum wages (lower than only Georgia and Wyoming).

Marilyn McLeod, President of the League of Women Voters of Missouri, says the minimum wage increase is needed to combat the challenges many Missouri families are facing, as they live paycheck to paycheck. Nearly 40% of adults in the state live in households that have difficulty paying for usual household expenses, up from 25% in 2021.

Richard von Glahn, campaign manager for Missourians for Healthy Families and Fair Wages, has been working on the minimum wage issue in the state since 2006, and oversaw the campaign that resulted in the passage of Proposition B in 2018. He says Proposition A will put over $600 million back into workers’ paychecks and bring Missouri into minimum wage alignment with other nearby states, such as Nebraska.

If passed, Proposition A would result in a raise for about 1 in 5 Missouri workers (over 500,000), It would provide paid sick leave–a total of 5 to 7 days each year–to about a third of all workers who currently do not have access to it. That estimate is over 900,000 workers. Missouri would be joining 18 other states and Washington, D.C., in requiring paid sick leave. It would allow workers to take time off for mental or physical illness, care of family members, or circumstances relating to domestic violence.

Voting No

The minimum wage would remain at $12.30 per hour, which went into effect January 1st, 2024.

The Missouri Chamber of Commerce rejects both components of Proposition A, saying they are a one size fits all approach to complex issues that will negatively impact businesses. Interim President and CEO, Kara Corches, says the language in the provision regarding paid sick leave has the potential to create a myriad of new frivolous lawsuits against employers. Corches also disagrees with von Glahn’s assertion that the minimum wage increases are “reasonable.” She sees the increased labor costs as ultimately being passed down from small, struggling businesses to their consumers at a time of significant inflation. The Chamber, which generally opposes any government mandates on businesses, points to data that suggest almost half of all minimum wage earners are teenagers or young adults, and continued, artificial raises to the minimum wage will only push them out of the job market as employers reduce hirings.

Von Glahn disagrees with the Chamber’s claims, as well as any concerts of Proposition A’s potential to drive businesses into neighboring Kansas or push companies towards accelerated efforts of automating their workplace.

“We’re hearing a lot of the same objections that were made in 2018,” von Glahn said. “The youth unemployment hasn’t gone up, instead these low wage workers have had more money to spend. They tend not to put it in savings or the stock market.”