{"id":15472,"date":"2025-08-13T10:44:28","date_gmt":"2025-08-13T10:44:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/?p=15472"},"modified":"2025-08-13T10:44:28","modified_gmt":"2025-08-13T10:44:28","slug":"a-literal-gut-punch-missouri-workers-devastated-by-republican-repeal-of-paid-sick-leave-missouri","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/?p=15472","title":{"rendered":"\u2018A literal gut punch\u2019: Missouri workers devastated by Republican repeal of paid sick leave | Missouri"},"content":{"rendered":"

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<\/span>Bill Thompson, fast food worker in Missouri.<\/span> Photograph: Courtesy of Missouri Workers Center<\/p>\n

Being sick is a costly business for Bill Thompson, who worked in the fast-food industry in Independence, Missouri, for more than 30 years, and recently worked at Guitar Center until early July, when he was laid off.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs an older worker, I have health issues from working on my feet and with my hands for many years with no breaks for eight to 10 hours a day. I have done it for 38 years now, living paycheck to paycheck,\u201d 54-year-old Thompson said, noting in Missouri workers are not mandated breaks of any kind during work.<\/p>\n

So when Republicans in Missouri repealed a paid sick leave mandate that the state\u2019s voters approved by 58% after an aggressive lobbying campaign by the Missouri chamber of commerce and industry and other business industry groups, he said, \u201cIt was a literal gut punch.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you\u2019re not paid for missed days, it literally means food off your table, bills unpaid, rent unpaid, then that can lead towards homelessness. Some of the people I know in the movement are currently homeless but still are fighting back against this,\u201d said Thompson. \u201cI was very disappointed and disgusted that hard-working taxpayers this would have helped matter so little to them.\u201d Thompson helped gather signatures for the paid-sick-leave and minimum-wage-increase ballot initiative because of his experiences of working through illnesses and losing income when he had to take time off to care for his ailing mother.<\/p>\n

Workers and labor groups in Missouri strongly criticized the repeal, arguing elected officials chose to side with \u201cgreed\u201d over workers, as efforts to re-enact the law and prevent legislators from overturning voter ballot initiatives in Missouri are under way.<\/p>\n

The state\u2019s house and senate passed HB567, signed into law on 10 July by the governor, Mike Kehoe, which repealed the paid sick leave mandate and annual minimum wage increases tied to the consumer price index beyond the increase to $15 an hour in 2016 that voters also approved.<\/p>\n

Voters in Nebraska, by more than 74.5%, and Alaska, with nearly 57% approval, also passed paid sick leave mandates in November 2024. As of December 2024, 18 states and Washington DC had enacted paid sick leave laws covering private employers.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey chose to side with greed over the health of Missouri workers,\u201d said Richard Eiker, a McDonald\u2019s worker in the Kansas City, Missouri, area for more than 20 years who supported the paid sick leave mandate. \u201cBut we\u2019re not going anywhere, we\u2019re going to stay in this and keep fighting until we win better treatment for Missouri workers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Eiker said the issue of paid sick leave was a public health issue, especially for food service workers, and that he has often had to go into work sick or injured because he couldn\u2019t afford to take the unpaid time off from work.<\/p>\n

<\/span>Richard Eiker, McDonald\u2019s worker in Missouri.<\/span> Photograph: Courtesy of Missouri Workers Center<\/p>\n

\u201cWhether it\u2019s been an injury I\u2019ve sustained at work or been an illness I\u2019ve had, I\u2019ve often found myself having to go into work regardless of whether I recovered fully or not, simply because I can\u2019t afford to take the time off of work in order to take care of my bills and everything,\u201d Eiker said.<\/p>\n

For 10 years, Eiker was the primary caregiver for his mother and he recounted that on a day that she wasn\u2019t feeling well, he had to go to work. He came home to find her unconscious and unresponsive after she suffered a stroke.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt the time I was caring for her, her expenses, my expenses, and we were trying to keep the apartment we were in, all these pressures on me, if I had paid sick time off and I had been able to stay with her that day, I wonder if things could have been different,\u201d Eiker added.<\/p>\n

Though voters all approved paid sick leave in states where Republicans have dominated in statewide elections, only Republicans in Missouri have pushed to entirely repeal paid sick leave approved by voters.<\/p>\n

The repeal law in Missouri goes into effect on 28 August, just weeks after the paid sick leave mandate took effect in May 2025.<\/p>\n

Proponents of paid sick leave criticized the repeal given the strong support for it and that negotiations were under way to reach a compromise.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think we were 95% of the way on a negotiated agreement, one that I wouldn\u2019t have been happy with, because it would have been different than what the voters had passed. But at the end of the day, elected officials, I think, weren\u2019t so much concerned with paid sick days. I think they were more concerned with the idea that working people have power over our lives,\u201d said Richard von Glahn, policy director at Missouri Jobs With Justice, a worker advocacy group based in St Louis that worked on the paid sick leave ballot initiative.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that was the more important issue for the chamber of commerce and elected officials to try to push back on, because I think they\u2019re really terrified that working people have a sense of our own agency in a state like this.\u201d<\/p>\n

He argued the paid sick leave campaign to gather signatures and speak with voters \u201cwere easy because paid sick days are such common sense to most people\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven on a day where Missourians sort of overwhelmingly voted for Donald Trump, Josh Hawley and Governor Kehoe, they also overwhelmingly voted for an increase in paid sick days,\u201d Von Glahn said. \u201cAny notion that there\u2019s really a Republican party, that is a party of workers, Missouri shows just how much of a stranglehold corporate interests still have on the Republican establishment. I think that\u2019s a cautionary tale for working-class people.\u201d<\/p>\n

Groups in Missouri are weighing a new ballot initiative to enshrine the law in the state\u2019s constitution, and a 2026 ballot initiative has been filed to require at least 80% of the state legislature to repeal all or parts of a voter-approved measure.<\/p>\n

The paid sick leave mandate was repealed as the Missouri chamber of commerce and industry called the bill to do so its \u201ctop priority\u201d during the 2025 legislative session, though repealing the law through the legislature was initially seen as challenging given the strong public support for it.<\/p>\n

\u201cSome legislators may look at this and go, we don\u2019t want to goof with it at all because the percentage was so high in support of it,\u201d Ray McCarty, CEO of Associated Industries of Missouri, said in an interview with the Missouri Independent in November 2024.<\/p>\n

Opponents of the paid sick leave bill claimed it was \u201ca job killer\u201d, a common refrain in opposition to paid sick leave policies for years, though data and research have shown paid sick leave improves workforce participation and lowers employee turnover, especially of women, in addition to adding health benefits.<\/p>\n

The authors of the bill to repeal the paid sick leave mandate in the state house and senate did not respond to multiple requests for comment.<\/p>\n

<\/span>Mike Kehoe after being sworn in as the state\u2019s 58th governor on 13 January 2025.<\/span> Photograph: Emily Curiel\/The Kansas City Star\/Tribune News Service\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

In an email, a spokesperson for Kehoe claimed \u201cout of state special interests\u201d played a significant role in passing the voter-approved Proposition A, though they did not name who they believe those were.<\/p>\n

\u201cHB567 protects families, job creators, and small businesses by rolling back government overreach, cutting red tape, and eliminating costly mandates,\u201d the spokesperson added. \u201cThis law promotes freedom for workers to find jobs that fit their needs and for businesses to offer the benefits that work best for them \u2013 ensuring Missouri\u2019s future is driven by its own people and economy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Thompson could not disagree more. In 2020, when he worked at Burger King, he said, he had to take eight weeks off work, all unpaid, because his mother\u2019s cancer had reached an inoperable stage and she was put on palliative care through hospice.<\/p>\n

\u201cI moved in with her and cared for her, cooked meals, made sure she took her meds,\u201d explained Thompson. \u201cI had to go to food pantries and rely on the charity of family and neighbors to feed us. She was in hospice care for eight weeks and passed away. I wasn\u2019t paid for that time away from work. No one should go through this working in the richest country in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bill Thompson, fast food worker in Missouri. Photograph: Courtesy of Missouri Workers Center Being sick is a costly business for Bill Thompson, who worked in the fast-food industry in Independence, Missouri, for more than 30 years, and recently worked at Guitar Center until early July, when he was laid off. \u201cAs an older worker, I<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15473,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[1231,2761,2957,9036,9037,3716,7232,3404,959,2292,1438],"class_list":{"0":"post-15472","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-devastated","9":"tag-gut","10":"tag-leave","11":"tag-literal","12":"tag-missouri","13":"tag-paid","14":"tag-punch","15":"tag-repeal","16":"tag-republican","17":"tag-sick","18":"tag-workers"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15472","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15472"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15472\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/15473"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15472"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15472"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15472"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}