By Karen Craigo
Springfield Business Journal, May 10, 2024

Voters may be asked to approve increases to the state’s minimum wage and mandatory sick leave provisions on an upcoming ballot. ...

Business support
Andy Faucett, owner of Bambino’s Cafe LLC, representing Missouri Business for a Healthy Economy, said he is in support of the minimum wage hike and sick leave provision. ...

“We don’t start employees at minimum wage at Bambino’s, and we haven’t for a long time,” he said.

Before the 2018 ballot measure, Faucett said it was already clear Bambino’s would have to...

By Kelly Dereuck
Springfield News-Leader, May 8, 2024. Also Columbia Daily Tribune.

Missouri voters may have the opportunity to decide the fate of four initiative petitions this fall, if the signatures collected in support of each measure are verified. ... On May 2, Missourians for Healthy Families and Fair Wages submitted more than 210,000 signatures in support of their ballot initiative that would gradually raise the minimum wage to $15 per hour and allow workers to earn [paid sick days]  ...

Laurie Knowlton, owner of Pickwick Underground Framing in Springfield and a member of Missouri...

By Kacen Bayless
Kansas City Star, May 1, 2024. Also Yahoo News, AOL News, Hastings Tribune (NE), more

Organizers of a campaign to raise Missouri’s minimum wage and guarantee sick leave for workers dropped off signatures on Wednesday to force a statewide vote on the measure. ...

Joseph Chevalier, the owner of Yellow Dog Bookshop in Columbia, said in a statement on Wednesday that businesses should be able to plan ahead for the wage increases and paid sick time. “The minimum wage needs to be raised,” he said. “Small businesses like mine depend on...

By Jack Suntrup
St. Louis Post Dispatch, May 1, 2024

JEFFERSON CITY — Organizers for the campaign seeking a higher minimum wage and guaranteed paid sick time off submitted signatures Wednesday to put the question to voters later this year. Representatives for the campaign, Missourians for Healthy Families and Fair Wages, said canvassers turned in more than 200,000 signatures ...

At the same time, the group Missouri Business for a Healthy Economy, which said it includes more than 400 members, released a series of statements from business owners supportive of the effort.

“The minimum wage...

KFVS12 TV Heartland News (Cape Girardeau), May 1, 2024. Also KY3 TV (Springfield, MO), KMOV (St. Louis), KSNB (Hastings, NE), WIFR23 (Rockford, IL), WGEM (Quincy, IL)

Missouri voters will likely decide in November whether to raise the state's minimum wage and require employers to provide paid sick leave to workers ...

The minimum wage hike campaign is backed by hundreds of business owners as well.

[Anna Bolt from Missouri Business for a Healthy Economy] "Business owners in our growing coalition know that workers at one business are customers at many other businesses." ...

WATCH VIDEO

Also WIFR23

Emily Manley
Fox 2, KTVI-TV, Missouri State Capitol Bureau, May 1, 2024

Missouri voters could see a question on the ballot later this year. asking whether all workers should receive paid sick leave and if minimum wage should be increased. ...

Roughly 400 businesses across the state also support the petition, saying minimum wage increases circulate right back into the economy.

Anna Bolt, Springfield Business Owner: "When you take care of your employees, they stay longer and take good care of your customers. That's the key to sustaining a successful small business." ...

WATCH VIDEO

Connections with Evan Dawson
WXXI (NPR), Rochester, March 6, 2024

A new proposed bill in the New York State Legislature calls for a statewide minimum wage. If passed, the Upstate Parity and Minimum Wage Protection Act would establish a statewide minimum wage floor of $17 per hour by the year 2026.

Guests include Leon Miller-Out, owner of Singlebrook Technology in Ithaca ...

LISTEN and read more

Op-Ed By Tom Reed and Jorge Valdez, co-owners of Iguana Imports in Long Beach and by Gary Hytrek, professor of geography at California State University, Long Beach.
Signal Tribune, Feb 27, 2024

Long Beach’s tourism and hospitality industries came roaring back in 2023, delivering a nearly $1.8 billion economic impact citywide. While this was great news for those at the top, our city’s struggling small businesses and working families have been shut out of the windfall ... We have a chance to fix that. On March 5, Long Beach voters will have the opportunity to...

By Juan Lasso
LI Herald, Jan 26, 2024

The minimum hourly wage on Long Island has climbed from $15 to $16 starting this year thanks to a mandate, brokered by lawmakers in Albany and Gov. Kath Hochul in last year’s budget deal. ...

Phil Andrews, President of the Long Island African American Chamber of Commerce, argues the increase, all things considered, signifies good news for employers. He challenged the conventional business wisdom that higher wages would prompt owners to make job cuts and layoffs to absorb higher labor costs. 

“For businesses, when you pay your...

By John Reitmeyer
NJ Spotlight News, Jan 16, 2024

The minimum hourly wage is now over $15 for the first time in New Jersey, thanks to a $1 increase that took effect on Jan. 1, immediately lifting take-home pay for an estimated 350,000 hourly workers. ...

New Jersey was one of 22 states across the nation to see a minimum wage increase take effect on Jan. 1, according to Business for a Fair Minimum Wage, a national group that tracks and advocates for such increases.

Among the places that have gone well beyond the $15...

By Victor Ocasio
Newsday, Jan 8, 2024

As local businesses adjust to Long Island’s new $16 minimum wage, some employers said they are concerned about the impact increased labor costs are having on their ability to compete in an already high-priced business environment. ...

Some business groups, however, said the increases represent an opportunity to boost consumer spending at small businesses on the Island.

Luis Vazquez, president of the Long Island Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, said the increase to $16 is “a positive beginning to bridging the wage disparities that exist, and the higher wage would mean...

By Tashi McQueen
Afro News, Jan 7, 2024

Though many new laws from the 2023 session of the Maryland General Assembly took effect in July and October, some will not apply until 2024. Several new laws took effect on Jan. 1. ...

When it comes to earnings on the job, the Fair Wage Act of 2023 (SB555/HB549), a law that requires all Maryland employers to increase the minimum wage to $15, went into effect on Jan. 1. The minimum wage in Maryland was $13.25 for employers with 15 employees or more and $12.80 for employers...

By Robert Higgs
Cleveland Plain Dealer, Jan 4, 2024. Syndicated by Tribune Content Agency News Service.

Higher minimum wages that kicked into effect with the start of 2024 will boost minimum hourly pay in some states as high as $16, benefiting as many as 10 million workers. ... The federal minimum wage, meanwhile, remains at $7.25 an hour, unchanged since 2009. Twenty states, mostly in the South and Midwest, also have that baseline rate as their state minimum wage.

“While the federal minimum wage falls further and further behind the cost of living at...

By Kirstin Garriss, CMG Washington News Bureau
Cox Media Group, January 04, 2024. Ran nationally in multiple Cox TV and radio stations.

Starting this month, millions of workers will get a bump in their paychecks. That’s because more than 20 states are boosting minimum wages. ...

But some entrepreneurs believe higher pay is an investment.

“From my perspective, this is a cost that actually gets you something in terms of recruiting, in terms of retention, in terms of the quality of the work that you put out,” said Aaron Seyedian, owner of Well-Paid Maids. ...

Read more

By Andrew Bloomenthal
Investopedia, January 02, 2024

The federal minimum wage for nonexempt employees in the United States is $7.25 as of 2024. It's meant to be a living wage but this isn’t the case in practice. The hourly rate hasn’t kept up with the cost of living since 1970. ...

The minimum wage has been a political issue since its inception. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt said in 1933, five years before the first minimum wage became law, that “...by living wages, I mean more than a bare subsistence level—I mean the wages of a...