When Fran Marion’s son once got sick with a bad stomach bug, she couldn’t stay home to care for him because she didn’t have the time off. Marion, who now works at a Kansas City Wendy’s, has been a fast food worker for more than 20 years. During most of that time, she has not had paid sick leave.
“You feel like a failure when you can't stay with your sick child,” Marion said. “He was too young to understand and, of course, he thought, ‘Mama is choosing work over me’ — but I was choosing work because of him. If I didn't make that choice, we would not have been able to keep a roof over our heads.”
Last November, Missourians passed Proposition A, which raises the state’s minimum wage to $15 and gives workers an hour of paid sick leave for every 30 hours worked. Marion is now a leader with Stand Up KC and the Missouri Workers Center, worker advocacy groups that advocated for the measure.
The paid sick leave provisions are set to go into effect May 1, and employers must give their workers written notice of their earned sick leave rights Tuesday.
But business groups and Republican lawmakers are trying to undo the paid sick leave provisions voters approved.
A bill to entirely remove sick leave has passed through the state House and is now in the Senate. And the Missouri Supreme Court is currently considering whether to uphold the vote on Proposition A altogether.
Kara Corches is the CEO of the Missouri Chamber of Commerce and Industry, one of the groups in favor of the bill to end paid sick leave before it begins. She said the chamber encourages businesses to provide competitive pay and benefits, but Proposition A has too many “burdensome requirements” for business owners to comply with the sick leave provisions.
“We are always opposed to governmental mandates on businesses and how they set their policies,” Corches said. “Businesses are not all the same. We believe that there should not be a one-size-fits-all approach to paid sick leave because every business is different and their needs and their employees are different. And those conversations should be left between an employer and an employee.”
The Missouri chamber was also one of the business groups that filed litigation against Proposition A in the state Supreme Court. Corches said she thinks the policy will drive businesses out of Missouri.
But not all businesses agree. Mike Schroeder is the owner of Oddly Correct Coffee in Kansas City. He began offering his employees a livable wage and paid sick time in 2019. He said since then Oddly Correct has had a 20% increase in revenue.
“People knew that they didn't have to sacrifice their livelihood just to stay home and get better,” Schroeder said. “We didn't have COVID spreading around our staff to everybody, and we didn't have any large outbreaks of COVID on our staff. So we stayed open, and we kept our business running, and we're able to not only survive but thrive through that.
Oddly Correct is one of more than 500 businesses in the Missouri Business for a Healthy Economy Coalition, which supports Proposition A. Schroeder and four other business owners in the state filed an amicus brief against the Missouri chamber and other groups who seek to take away sick time.
About 50 people rallied outside Oddly Correct last week to support the state’s mandatory paid sick leave policy. They were joined by others around the state and canvassed local businesses to inform workers of the new sick leave law that they hope will go into effect next month as scheduled.
Corches said the Missouri chamber and other business groups opposed to Proposition A hope the state Legislature or Supreme Court ends the sick leave measure before it goes into effect.
“Once we start mandating paid sick leave, what's next?” Corches said. “Employers put blood, sweat, and tears into their businesses, and they should be allowed to set their policies, and employees and employers can have those conversations and set policies to meet their workforce needs, but this blanket approach is not upholding our system of free enterprise.”
Schroeder said he understands that many business owners aren’t necessarily opposed to their workers taking sick leave but are still scared that giving them that benefit will put them out of business. He said business owners should “have a little bit of faith” and that they’ll get better employees and more customer support in return for offering sick leave.
“When people know that they don't have to sacrifice themselves for their work, they feel better about their work,” Schroeder said. “They're not coming in getting other people sick or are here miserable, providing poor service. It's just better, but you have to believe that the investment you're making initially is worth it.”
Marion’s children are grown now. One of her children has a child of their own who had open heart surgery. She said the state’s new paid sick leave rules give her hope that they can stay home and take care of their children in a way that she wasn’t able to when they were young. But she worries about what will happen if that benefit gets taken away.
“We have fought time and time again for workers' rights only to win and have those rights taken away from us,” Marion said at last week’s rally. “From the state capital to the courts, we are seeing people who don't hesitate to take time off to care for themselves or their loved ones have the audacity to come after our hard-won right to do so … This is not what we voted for in November.”
