What Missouri looks like 10 or 20 years from now will be decided within the next year.
Think I’m exaggerating? Missouri’s leaders and Missouri voters have three big choices to make in the months ahead that will decide the future of our state. We don’t have any time to waste.
First, Governor Eric Greitens must choose whether to stand with the workers and families of St. Louis, or to do the bidding of big corporations and campaign donors who want to roll back our minimum wage increase. We fought for and won St. Louis’ higher minimum wage – even passing our law before the deadline set by the state legislature. But then politicians in Jefferson City decided that they didn’t want parents like me earning higher wages, and sent the governor a bill to take away the bigger paychecks I’m receiving right now.Â
Will Missouri be a state that supports working parents trying to make ends meet for their kids? Or will Missouri’s governor put his campaign donors before his people, literally taking money out of the paychecks of the people he was elected to represent? That’s one big fork in the road for Missouri’s economy, and we’ll know where Governor Greitens stands very soon.
A second big decision that we will get to decide for ourselves as voters is whether Missouri will join the ranks of so-called “right to work” states that have lower wages, fewer health insurance benefits, and more workplace accidents.
You may have encountered workers in your neighborhood collecting signatures to veto the law passed by Jefferson City politicians to weaken labor unions and lower wages. See, the politicians in Jefferson City who have been pushing for this law have been really misleading with their smoke and mirrored talking points.
So-called “right to work” laws were originally developed to keep workers segregated, prevent African Americans from getting access to union jobs. These laws aren’t a partisan issue – they will impact everyone, not just workers who choose to join unions. When CEOs and their allied politicians are successful in weakening unions, wages are driven down for everyone.
Will folks be duped into passing a misleading law demanded by big campaign donors, or will we reject these attacks to keep our paychecks from getting even smaller? I sure hope it’s the latter.
This is a huge choice for our state, but we have an amazing chance to stand up for working families and strong middle class. So the next time you have a chance to sign the petition to repeal the so-called “right to work” law, I strongly encourage you to do so, the future of worker rights depends on it.
The third big choice is whether hardworking families will get the wage raises we’ve long-fought for and deserve. Right now, a minimum wage worker earning $7.70 an hour only takes home about $300 per week – that’s if he or she can get full-time hours. We all know that isn’t enough to live on. But by coming together to put a raise on the ballot, we can help hundreds of thousands of families take a big step towards livable wages, and jumpstart our local economies in the process.
So what’s it going to be Missouri? Do we want an economy that just works for the CEOs and small group of people who keep getting richer as the rest of us fall behind? Or do we want an economy that works for everyone, where moms and dads take home good wages for a good day’s work?
This year, it’s actually up to us. Join me in the fight for a stronger Missouri.
Alexis Straughter is a 26-year old nursing home worker at Royal Oaks in St. Louis, who just starting earning $10 per hour with St. Louis’s new minimum wage law. She has been a nursing home worker for almost five years and is the mother of two daughters.
