By Gabrielle Gurley
American Prospect, May 22, 2025
Last November, Missouri voters passed a mandatory paid sick leave ballot initiative and joined 17 other states and the District of Columbia with similar statutes on the books. Eligible private-sector employees, about 730,000 people, began accruing one hour of sick leave for every 30 hours worked. The initiative also increased the minimum wage from $12.30 to $13.75 for all private businesses, and also authorized a $1.25 increase in 2026 that would bring the wage up to $15, with an annual Consumer Price Index adjustment taking effect beginning in 2027. ...
[The Missouri legislature] repealed the sick leave provisions and left the minimum-wage increase intact, except for one very significant component: the inflation adjustment, a tool that had been on the books since 2007 spanning three previous minimum-wage increases. ...
MIKE DRAPER OWNS RAYGUN, a $12 million Des Moines–based clothing company with ten stores in four states. ... His first out-of-state store opened in Kansas City in 2014, and today he’s considering expanding to other Missouri cities.
As Draper’s company grew, his employees unionized. But even before that move, the company provided sick leave benefits. An enthusiastic Proposition A supporter, he calls the repeal “infuriating” (the company started selling a “Democracy Dies in Missouri” T-shirt) and takes a dim view of the lawsuit’s assumptions about voters.
“It’s a really insulting way to view the people of your state, that these simpletons only voted for minimum wage and sick leave because they were tricked,” Draper told the Prospect. “The people went to great lengths, time, and money to get this ballot initiative on and to get it passed and to show elected officials what they wanted. And then to have elected officials use parliamentarian tactics to subvert the will of the people? It’s frustrating, it’s demoralizing, and it makes you lose hope in representative democracy a little bit.”
In his view, the push came from corporate giants with lobbyists working to keep those companies’ expenses as low as possible, often disadvantaging communities and smaller businesses in the process. Missouri business leaders worked to re-establish an uneven playing field where employers had full control over hours of work—illnesses and injuries be damned. ...