Missouri Labor Update
What Union Members need to know!
The Biggest Thing Going:
Senate Dems Protect Voter-Approved Earned Sick Leave
Senate Democrats stand together at a press conference Thursday, after they successfully filibustered for nearly 10 hours to protect paid sick leave for workers.
- Over the summer of 2023, Missourians collected over 210,000 signatures to put Proposition A on the ballot.
- In 2024, nearly 1.7 million Missourians voted for Prop A, helping it win by a commanding 15+% margin.
- In early 2025, House Republicans voted to overturn Prop A by passing HB 567 on a party-line 96-51 vote.
- Early this week, Senate Republicans attempted to give the bill final approval.
- Wednesday/Thursday, Senate Democrats stood up (literally) and stopped them.
Proposition A raised Missouri’s minimum wage to $13.75 this year, $15 next year, and then has a built-in CPI increase going forward. It also creates the first ever guarantee of earned paid sick leave for Missouri workers, scheduled to go into effect May 1st, of one hour of sick time for every 30 hours worked.
To say Proposition A is popular is an understatement.
- Prop A won by over 15% of the vote.
- It got more votes than US Senator Josh Hawley.
- It got a majority of the vote in 20 of 34 State Senate districts.
- It got a majority of the vote in 109 of 163 State House districts.
- It got a majority in 6 out of 8 congressional districts.
But powerful lobbyists for the Restaurant Association and the Grocers Association don’t like it, so naturally the Republican super-majority is hell bent on repealing it.
The repeal that the lobbyists pushed for included halting the minimum wage escalator, removing all enforcement against bad acting employers that don’t follow the rules, removing workers control of how they can take their time off, removing ALL benefits for workers that work in a business with less than 100 employees, and cutting the amount accrued for the remaining workers by a third.
Absolutely unacceptable.
The Senate Democrats’ response was to filibuster all of Wednesday and until the early morning hours of Thursday, until the Republican leadership got frustrated and laid the bill over. What happens next is unclear. There could be further negotiations to see if a compromise could be reached. A Republican leader has talked about using the PQ (Previous Questions), a rarely used Senate maneuver that would result in “blowing up the Senate,” to cut off Democrats’ ability to speak and force the bill through. Or cooler heads could prevail. The next 4 weeks will tell the tale.
