St. Louis, Missouri's minimum wage will drop from $10 an hour to the state minimum of $7.70 after state legislators stepped in to reverse a city law passed two years ago meant to boost the minimum wage to $11 by January 2018, reported the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
A new state bill bans local municipalities from raising their minimum wage above the state's minimum wage. While Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens has declined to sign the bill, he also will not veto it, allowing it to become law Aug. 28.
"Politicians in the legislature could've come up with a timely solution to this problem. Instead, they dragged their feet for months," Greitens said in a statement, explaining why he is not signing the bill, despite supporting the efforts to lower the minimum wage.
"Now, because of their failures, we 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."
Democratic State Sen. Jamilah Nasheed, from St. Louis, called Greitens' decision not to sign the bill "a cowardly move," per the Post-Dispatch.
"Signing it would have shown the fact that he is heartless and that he really doesn't care about the working poor," Nasheed told the newspaper. "So what he didn't want to do is sign a bill to take money out of the pockets of those who already have an increase, but still do so."
St. Louis's minimum wage increase had been tied up in the courts after it was passed locally in 2015, according to the Huffington Post. Local business groups sued to prevent it from taking place, but the Missouri Supreme Court ruled in February that the local ordinance did not conflict with state law, allowing it to go into effect, stated the website.
The federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour has not been changed since 2009. Public pressure has led to cities and states around the country to establish their own minimum wage increases.
Seattle was one of the first cities to pass a $15 minimum wage, but that has come under fire after a paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research said that hours worked for minimum wage employees were reduced by nine percent when the latest step hike to $13 was introduced last year. The study suggested that those employees could eventually lose on average $125 per month because of the reduced hours.
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.