The minimum wage in St. Louis was offficially rolled back from $10 an hour to $7.70, the statewide minimum on Monday. The law that did that, passed in May, is part of a broader trend of GOP state lawmakers pushing legislation that pre-empts local governments from setting their labor law regulations.
Since the start of 2016, 15 states have passed 27 laws pre-empting local labor standards, according a study released Monday by the liberal Economic Policy Institute.
That is thanks to the GOP’s strong advantage in statehouses across the country. Currently, the GOP controls 33 governorships and 67 of the 98 partisan legislative chambers. In 24 states, Republicans control the governor’s office and both state legislative chambers.
“[C]onservative state legislatures are now using pre-emption to eliminate the authority of a lower level of government to regulate a certain issue. In practice, these laws are being used to strip authority from local governments who seek to increase protections for workers; the laws do so by prohibiting these local governments from increasing their labor/employment standards above the state floor,” said Marni von Wilpert, EPI’s associate labor counsel.
Missouri follows Arkansas, Iowa, Ohio, North Carolina, Kentucky, Idaho, and Alabama in passing laws in the last two years that prohibited minimum wages about the state floor. Other states have passed laws prohibiting local government from enacting different rules for mandating paid leave or regulating work schedules.
Republicans and business groups have argued that, while states should be free to experiment with different laws, those laws should also be uniform within the state itself. Nevertheless, rolling back minimum wage to a lower level is still a tricky issue for lawmakers. Missouri Republican Gov. Eric Greitens didn’t sign the law that nullified St. Louis’ minimum wage ordinance, but he didn’t oppose it either.
“[W]e have different wages across the state. It’s created uncertainty for small businesses. And it all could have been avoided if the politicians had done their job on time. I disapprove of the way politicians handled this. That’s why I won’t be signing my name to their bill,” Greitens said in a July statement.
