Dropping the Minimum Wage in St. Louis

Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you:

No adverts like this in the forums anymore.
Times and dates in your local timezone.
Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance.
Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely.
Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net.

If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

**Easy E**

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/thousands-in-st-louis-likely-to-see-wage-drop-with-new-law/2017/08/26/bc945246-8a7a-11e7-96a7-d178cf3524eb_story.html?utm_term=.8449605fadf6

ST. LOUIS — Thousands of workers in St. Louis will likely see smaller paychecks starting Monday, when a new Missouri law takes effect barring local government from enacting minimum wages different than the state minimum.

The law is drawing protests in St. Louis and in Kansas City, where a recent vote approving a higher minimum wage is essentially nullified without ever really taking effect.

The impact is direct in St. Louis, where the minimum wage had increased to $10 after the Missouri Supreme Court sided with the city in a two-year legal battle. Days after the Supreme Court ruling, Missouri’s Republican-led Legislature passed a statewide uniform minimum wage requirement. The state minimum wage is $7.70 per hour. Republican Gov. Eric Greitens declined to veto the bill, allowing it to become law.

An estimated 35,000 St. Louis workers saw pay raises after the court ruling, and the city’s plan had called for the minimum wage to increase to $11 per hour in 2018.

State Sen. Dan Hegeman, a Republican from rural northwest Missouri, said the higher minimum would force some employers to either cut jobs or move.

“You end up having fewer jobs and you do a disservice to the workers,” Hegeman said. “In my heart of hearts, I really think it hurts people in the long run.”

Supporters of the higher wage say it’s virtually impossible to live on $7.70 an hour. In St. Louis, a campaign was launched last month to pressure businesses to keep the $10 minimum wage.

Organizers said more than 100 businesses signed an online petition agreeing to do so. But many of those are small employers. Fast-food restaurants including McDonald’s Corp. and Taco Bell are among the companies where employees say they expect their wages to drop back to the statewide minimum.

“I was just getting caught up on my bills and was able to start getting things for my child,” said Gennise Mackey, 25, who earns minimum wage at a Taco Bell, and was among about 50 fast-food workers, union leaders and others who staged a protest Thursday at a McDonald’s in north St. Louis. “Now, it’s going to be a big setback. The cost of living is going up and they expect us to live on $7.70?”

Messages seeking comment from McDonald’s and Taco Bell were not returned.

In Kansas City, the City Council on Aug. 17 adopted a resolution encouraging employers to voluntarily comply with the wage adopted by voters on Aug. 8. Voters in Kansas City approved a measure that would increase the city’s minimum wage to $10 an hour, even with the knowledge it couldn’t be implemented because of the state law.

“A living wage is the foundation for strong families and strong communities,” councilman Jermaine Reed said at the time. “We are urging Kansas City businesses to show the rest of the country that the will of people should not be ignored and take this opportunity to pay their workers fairly.”

The Economic Policy Institute, a Washington-based research nonprofit, said in a report released Saturday that Republican-controlled state legislatures increasingly use pre-emption laws to supersede local law. The institute cited 33 labor and employment pre-emption laws passed by state governments since 2010.

Among them was a law passed in Alabama that nullified a 2015 Birmingham ordinance that would have raised the city minimum wage to $10.10 by July 2017. In Iowa, Republican Gov. Terry Branstad in March signed a pre-emption law, nullifying wage hikes in two counties and stopping implementation in a third county before it could take effect. The statewide minimum wage in Alabama and Iowa is $7.25 per hour, the U.S. minimum.

The effort toward a higher wage continues in Missouri. A group called Raise Up Missouri is gathering signatures to put a ballot initiative before voters in November 2018 to raise the minimum wage statewide to $8.60 per hour in 2019, with 85-cent raises each year after that until the wage gets to $12 an hour in 2023.

Twenty-nine states and the District of Columbia have minimum wage rates above the U.S. minimum, according to Economic Policy Institute data.

Copyright 2017 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

A similar law is going into effect in my state as well. The idea is that no municipality or county can raise the minimum wage above the state standard. In addition, most of these laws also limit the amount of local control on tax rates, regulations, etc.

**Prestor Jon**

Lowering the minimum wage doesn't require any of the businesses to cut their wages, it just removes any legal penalties for doing so. If franchisees of McDonalds and Taco Bell in St Louis think that slashing wages and making all of their employees disgruntled is a good way to run a service oriented business they'll be in for a rude awakening. Nobody wants people who are upset and angry with their employers to be the ones making their lunch. Restaurants can't shaft their employees and still expect them to put forth great effort into providing good service and when customers get bad service they'll take their business elsewhere.

I think this has less to do with evil politicians conspiring with Big Business to screw over workers because...reasons. And more to do with just how scarce jobs are right now. Wages, like real estate, are heavily dependent on location. Different places have different costs of living, different amounts of business, different distributions of population, education level, disposable income, etc. which means different areas can handle a higher minimum wage than others. If rural county A can't afford the same minimum wage as urban county B but is getting stuck with trying to pay for county/municipal resources while workers migrate to county B for better wages then county A is going to wither and die. There are more rural than urban counties and every one has representation in the state legislature and the Republican/Democrat divide is often reflected in the rural/urban divide. Intrastate battles for workers isn't something employers (both big and small) want to deal with so their state legislators are passing laws to even the playing field across the state. This is the downside of protectionism, protecting jobs in areas where its easier to live off the state minimum wage can adversely affect workers in areas that can afford to pay more, although market forces and competition should still create higher wages in those areas. Political parties put the Party first so screwing over people who tend to vote for the Other Party in order to help the people who vote for Your Party makes political sense even though it's horrible divisive policy for the populace on the whole. Technology, society and the economy are changing faster than our political system can keep up and the growing gap between what our politicians can accomplish versus the changes the need to be dealt with is becoming more severe and damaging.

**whembly**

With respect to St. Louis, some businesses were threatening to leave St. Louis city because of this ordinance. Going from 7.70 to 10.00 may have been a wee too much too fast. (although some businesses vowed to voluntarily keep it at 10/hr).

As for the law itself, it's a bit of double-edged sword. Living in the city tends more expensive than the 'burbs and 'boonies, so an argument could be made that this is necessary. However, time after time, it is shown that if you force business to a higher minimum wage (especially if it wasn't gradual), there's a chance that the businesses would cut hours, or simply take their business elsewhere. (it's not like you'd have to go far to leave the city

)

Besides, anyone who knows St. Louis realizes that the city really shouldn't make it hard for businesses to make money. The city hasn't been going in the right direction for quite sometime.

**daedalus**

This is great personal news for me. I've been trying to encourage myself to eat out less, and nothings going to scare me away from doing that quite like the knowledge that the employees potentially just got their wages slashed by 25%.

Sucks for well... basically everyone else though.

**Vaktathi**

Here in Oregon we have state preemption on almost everything over cities, be it minimum wage, guns, drugs, alcohol, etc, but the minimum wage is basically tied to where you live. If you live in the Portland metro, minimum wage is 11.25, set to hit 12 next year. If you live elsewhere, it is 10.25 and set to hit 10.75 next year. If you live in the boonies, a "nonurban" county, minimum wage is 10 and set to hit 10.50 next year. There is a publicly available schedule of yearly increases out to 2022, after which there increases will be tied to CPI inflation and Portland will get $1.25 above and beyond whatever that is while "nonurban" counties will get $1 less than whatever that is. Thus, the state basically coopts and does what the cities would do anyway, the backwoods rural areas continue to be able to pay as little as possible while the yuppie big town gets to require employers to pay more. If 2023 holds relatively steady in inflation, we're looking at about a $4/hr gap between PDX and the boonies in minimum wage, with the rest of the state about in the middle there.

**Peregrine**

Remember, republicans are the party of "local government knows best". Just think of this every time you hear that "states' rights" thing.

**whembly**

Peregrine wrote:
Remember, republicans are the party of "local government knows best". Just think of this every time you hear that "states' rights" thing.

States' rights is about the people of the state.

**oldravenman3025**

whembly wrote:
With respect to St. Louis, some businesses were threatening to leave St. Louis city because of this ordinance. Going from 7.70 to 10.00 may have been a wee too much too fast. (although some businesses vowed to voluntarily keep it at 10/hr).

As for the law itself, it's a bit of double-edged sword. Living in the city tends more expensive than the 'burbs and 'boonies, so an argument could be made that this is necessary. However, time after time, it is shown that if you force business to a higher minimum wage (especially if it wasn't gradual), there's a chance that the businesses would cut hours, or simply take their business elsewhere. (it's not like you'd have to go far to leave the city )

Besides, anyone who knows St. Louis realizes that the city really shouldn't make it hard for businesses to make money. The city hasn't been going in the right direction for quite sometime.

Good post. And I tend to agree.

**Alpharius**

This appears to be - or is starting to become - about US Politics.

As such...no.