'Gut punch': Missouri workers blast GOP paid sick leave repeal

13 August

A Walmart employee folds clothes in the men's apparel section at a Walmart Supercenter in North Bergen, New Jersey. U.S. April 3, 2025. REUTERS/Siddharth Cavale/File Photo

The Guardian reports hourly workers are suffering after Missouri Republicans repealed a paid sick leave mandate that voters approved by 58 percent. The repeal will take effect on August 28.

“It was a literal gut punch,” ex-fast-food worker Bill Thompson told the Guardian. “… As 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.”

Thompson, 54, added that the state of Missouri does not mandate breaks during work.

Missouri Gov. Mike Kehoe signed the repeal, which also links minimum-wage adjustments to inflation, eight months after voters approved it, reports the Guardian. The repeal marked a major victory for the state’s largest business group and a frustrating defeat for workers’ rights advocates, who had spent years and millions of dollars building support for the successful ballot measure, the Guardian reports.

“I 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’re really terrified that working people have a sense of our own agency in a state like this,” said Missouri Jobs With Justice Policy Director Von Glahn, who sponsored the worker benefit ballot initiative.

The Gurdian reports House and Senate authors of the bill to repeal the paid sick leave mandate did not respond to multiple requests for comment, but Gov. Kehoe’s office claimed in an email that the voter-approved Proposition A initiative was the work of “out of state special interests.”

Kansas City McDonald’s worker Richard Eiker disagrees. He told the Guardian the issue of paid sick leave is a public health issue, particularly for food service workers. He added that he has often had to go into work sick or injured because he couldn’t afford to take the unpaid time off from work.

“Whether it’s been an injury I’ve sustained at work or been an illness I’ve had, I’ve often found myself having to go into work regardless of whether I recovered fully or not, simply because I can’t afford to take the time off of work in order to take care of my bills and everything,” said Eiker, who was the primary caregiver for his mother before he came home to find her unresponsive after a stroke.

“At 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,” Eiker told the Guardian.

Read the full Guardian report at this link.

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