Missouri voters will get to decide in November whether the state’s minimum wage should be higher and whether all employers should offer paid sick leave.
Proposition A is one of three citizen-led initiatives that made it onto the General Election ballot. Richard von Glahn, campaign manager for Missourians for Healthy Families and Fair Wages, said Missouri’s current minimum wage of $12.30 an hour is not enough to live on.
“A full-time minimum wage worker would makes just $492 a week, which is just not enough,” von Glahn told Missourinet. “We have seen prices increase at a rate faster than the minimum wage. Missouri is home to some of the largest increases in housing prices and rent.”
If passed, Missouri’s minimum wage would increase to $13.75 an hour on January 1st, 2025, and then rise to $15 dollars an hour on January 1st, 2026. After that, it would increase each year based on the consumer price index, as the current minimum wage does.
Proposition A would also require employers to provide one hour of paid sick leave for every 30 hours worked. Alejandro Gallardo is a restaurant worker in central Missouri’s Columbia and a volunteer for the Prop A campaign.
“I have one coworker who was recently sick, and he had to come into work anyways, because, you know, he had bills to pay,” Gallardo said. “As he’s told me, his body was telling him he should stay home. His wallet was telling him he had to come into work.”
The Missouri Chamber of Commerce and Industry, which represents numerous small businesses across the state, has not yet taken a position on Prop A, but is expected to do so sometime in September.
Copyright © 2024 · Missourinet
