Saint Louis, Mo. — Leaders in the City of Saint Louis will have a new minimum wage proposal to weigh at their meeting today after a larger measure was stopped in its tracks a few weeks ago.
Originally, Mayor Francis Slay and Alderman Shane Cohn were backing a proposal for an immediate increase to a $10 per hour minimum wage that would gradually increase to $15 an hour by 2020. But yesterday Slay announced a more modest proposal that would increase the wage gradually to an $11 an hour rate by 2020.
If approved as written by the city’s Board of Alderman, minimum wage in St. Louis would immediately jump to $7.95 an hour, with gradual increases every year until 2020.
“When I started this campaign, I promised that we would listen to all sides, we would do our homework, and we would come up with a proposal that was fair to workers without putting their jobs or our economy in jeopardy,” Slay said in a statement. “We think this new proposal accomplishes that.”
Slay’s new proposal comes after he and Cohn faced what has become the typical pushback against proposed minimum wage increases: business community opposition. Slay said the new proposal represented only a 0.1 percent increase in overall city payroll.
“We want people to work hard and not be dependent on government assistance. So, we should reward hard work,” Slay said. “It is ridiculous and it just isn’t right that a parent working full time for the minimum wage has to raise his or her children in poverty. Ideally, the federal government and state government would have addressed this issue by now. But, they haven’t. So, we’re forced to do so. I do hope that business leaders who were legitimately concerned about us doing this by ourselves will strongly support a statewide increase in the minimum wage. I know I will be.”
Supporters of the increase will now scramble to get the proposal out of committee and on the path to a full vote before the end of August. Earlier this year, the Missouri legislature approved a bill — that Gov. Jay Nixon has yet to sign or veto — that would prohibit any municipality from raising their minimum wage standard above state levels after August 28, 2015.
“The proposal I’ll introduce to the Board of Aldermen tomorrow is based upon dozens of meetings with business owners and the people I represent as well as the public hearings we held,” Cohn said in a statement. “We recognize an increase in the minimum wage as a way to build an economy that works for everyone.”
Here’s the proposal’s implementation as currently written:
- $7.95 immediately upon the mayor’s signature
- $8.25 on January 1, 2016
- $8.75 on January 1, 2017
- $9.25 on January 1, 2018
- $10 on January 1, 2019
- $11 on January 1, 2020
Collin Reischman was the Managing Editor for The Missouri Times, and a graduate of Webster University with a Bachelor of Arts in Journalism.
