As MO gears up for a vote, KC businesses say raising minimum wage would boost economy

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While other business owners have complained about finding people who want to work, Mike Schroeder says he has not had that problem.

Schroeder co-owns Oddly Correct, a 20-employee coffee shop along Troost Avenue. He pays his employees $19 an hour or more — well above the state’s minimum wage of $12.30 an hour.

“If we think that every person actually has value, then we need to, at the very least, provide people who are working a full time job with the means to support themselves and their family without having to have multiple jobs,” he said.

Schroeder is now one of dozens of Kansas City area business owners lining up behind an effort to raise the state’s minimum wage and guarantee paid sick leave for workers even as some lawmakers criticize the proposal.

Missouri voters will decide on the measure, called Proposition A, on Nov. 5 after campaigners collected enough signatures across the state. It would gradually raise the minimum wage from $12.30 an hour to $15 an hour in 2026.

More than 450 small businesses across the state have backed the effort , including more than 100 from Kansas City, Raytown, Independence, Gladstone, Platte City, Liberty and Belton. Supporters say the measure would provide workers with livable wages and boost the area’s economy.

A national network of businesses called Business for a Fair Minimum Wage is supporting the campaign with signatures ranging from Kansas City-based clothing store Charlie Hustle to Schroeder’s Oddly Correct.

While there currently is no formal campaign opposing the measure, it is likely to face some resistance from Republican lawmakers who control the General Assembly. The proposal would change state law — not the state constitution — which means lawmakers could vote to repeal the measure if it passes.

“It would be terrible,” Sen. Rick Brattin, a Harrisonville Republican, said of the measure’s potential impact on Kansas City. Brattin, who chairs the Senate’s hard-right Freedom Caucus, said he doesn’t believe the state should be setting a minimum wage at all.

“You go and increase that minimum wage continually, like we’ve seen all across this nation, and it will completely decimate the capability for youth to get involved and get a job,” Brattin said.

Brattin and Sen. Denny Hoskins, a Warrensburg Republican, both argued that the proposal would harm Kansas City’s economy by putting stress on small businesses.

Hoskins, the GOP nominee for secretary of state, painted a disastrous picture if minimum wage is increased, claiming it would result in “more vacant storefronts across the state.”

Whether raising the minimum wage helps or hurts business has been a “vigorous economic debate,” said Peverill Squire, a political science professor at the University of Missouri-Columbia. He appeared to push back on the arguments from Brattin and Hoskins.

“The best conclusion is that raising the minimum wage doesn’t cause the economic pain that a lot of people initially thought it might,” he said. “In some cases, it may even provide people who are going to spend that money a little bit more money in their pockets to use, and so it goes back into the economy.”

Raising the minimum wage

The campaign, called Missourians for Healthy Families and Fair Wages, in May submitted more than 210,000 signatures from voters across the state to place the measure on the November ballot. Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft last week announced that the campaign had gathered enough signatures and certified it for the ballot .

The ballot measure would raise the minimum wage gradually. It would grow to $13.75 an hour on Jan. 1, 2025 and to $15 an hour in January 2026. The wage would then be adjusted annually based on inflation.

Governments, school districts and educational institutions would be exempt from the increases.

The ballot measure would also require employers with 15 or more workers to provide one hour of paid sick leave for every 30 hours worked. According to the proposal, the earned sick leave provision would not apply to government workers, retail or service employees who work for a business that makes less than $500,000 a year, people who are incarcerated, golf caddies, and babysitters, among others.

Missouri voters last approved a minimum wage increase in 2018, when they approved an increase to $12.

The proposal comes as the price of rent is rising faster in Missouri than the rest of the country .

From March 2023 to March 2024, the state’s median rent jumped by 9.7%, according to an April report from the rental site Rent.com. It was among the highest increases in the nation.

The state’s minimum wage is also not enough to cover housing , illustrated by a recent study from the National Low Income Housing Coalition, which researches housing policy across the nation. Using HUD and Bureau of Labor Statistics data from 2023 and adjusting for inflation, the nonprofit released its annual report on housing affordability in every state last month.

The Fair Market Rent — the 40th percentile for housing costs — for the Kansas City area in 2024 is $1,098 for one bedroom and $1,258 for a two bedroom.

Boosting the economy?

Sisters Arvelisha Woods and India Pernell are co-founders of Mattie’s Foods, a vegan restaurant in Brookside that also operates a food truck. They support the measure and said they pay their nine employees more than minimum wage.

“I think people need to have livable wage,” said Woods, saying that raising the minimum wage helps people take care of themselves.

“When people are able to take care of themselves, that cuts down on violence. When people are able to take care of themselves, it just makes the community overall just better,” she said.

Brandon Calloway is the CEO and co-founder of Kansas City GIFT (Generating Income for Tomorrow), a nonprofit that supports Black-owned businesses and seeks to close the racial wealth gap.

Calloway said in an interview that he could not speak directly about the ballot measure, but that paying employees a livable wage was integral to “creating actual equity for all people.”

“The increase of the minimum wage will potentially impact small businesses in a way that is challenging for them to do business,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean that it shouldn’t happen.”

Kansas City and local governments should work to help small businesses, such as lowering the amount of red tape required for owners to generate revenue so they can pay their employees, he said.

For Schroeder, with Oddly Correct, stability for workers means stability for businesses. Instead of blaming young people for not wanting to work, he said there needs to be an environment for people to actually invest themselves into.

“When employees have more purchasing power, they’re going to be spending it, you know, locally within their own communities and bolstering that local economy even more,” he said.