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Here's how minimum wage and paid sick leave measures fared in the election

Published

3 hours ago

November 6, 2024

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Here's how minimum wage and paid sick leave measures fared in the election

Minimum wage hikes and paid sick leave were on the ballots in several states in the November 2024 election.

Robyn Beck/AFP via Getty Images

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Robyn Beck/AFP via Getty Images

Voters in two red states, Alaska and Missouri, approved ballot measures to raise the minimum wage and require employers to provide paid sick time to their workers.

In Alaska, the minimum wage will gradually rise to $15 per hour by July 1, 2027, up from $11.73 currently, the lowest on the West Coast. After that, the minimum wage will be adjusted to keep pace with inflation.

Voters in Travis County, Texas, St. Paul, Minn., and Sonoma County, Calif., considered whether to approve tax hikes to help fund child care.

In Missouri, the minimum wage will gradually rise to $15 an hour by January 1, 2026, up from $12.30 currently. Starting in 2027, an annual inflation adjustment will also be applied.

According to MIT’s Living Wage Calculator, $15 an hour still falls below what individuals would need to earn to support just themselves in most places in the country — including Missouri and Alaska — not to mention their families.

A California ballot measure which would have raised the minimum wage across that state from $16 to $18 an hour by 2025 remained too close to call Wednesday morning. With many ballots still to be counted, 52% of voters had rejected the plan.

A protester participates in a “wage strike

The federal minimum wage has been stuck at $7.25 since 2009. In the final weeks of his campaign, former President Donald Trump dodged a question on whether he’d seek to raise it.

In 2023, Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont introduced legislation to raise the federal minimum wage to $17 by 2028, but that effort went nowhere.

Missouri, Alaska and Nebraska say “yes” to paid sick leave

In both Missouri and Alaska, employers will now be required to give workers one hour of sick leave for every 30 hours worked. Missouri provides some exceptions for small businesses.

Nebraska voters also approved a ballot measure giving workers the right to earn paid sick leave. But Nebraska’s measure does not specify the rate of accrual.

With less access to paid leave, rural workers face hard choices about health, family

Fifteen other states and the District of Columbia have paid sick time laws, according to the Center for American Progress. While the vast majority of private employers offer their employees paid leave, an estimated 22% of American workers do not have paid sick time.

Notably, Alaska’s ballot measure also includes a ban on so-called captive audience meetings, or meetings in which employees are required to listen to their employer’s religious or political views, including their opinions on labor unions. Labor advocates say such meetings hurt workers’ ability to form unions.

News

How Ballot Measures Will Change Abortion Access

Published

55 mins ago

November 6, 2024

Press Room

How Ballot Measures Will Change Abortion Access

How abortion rights measures fared

Abortion rights found support at the ballot box in seven states on Tuesday, expanding access in already legal states and lifting bans in two others.

But support for abortion rights fell short in three contests. Proposed rights measures failed in Florida, Nebraska and South Dakota — and in Nebraska, an opposing measure to restrict abortion won — meaning bans and restrictions will remain in place.

Abortion will become broadly legal again in Arizona and Missouri, and existing protections will be strengthened in at least four other states.

How abortion laws will change

*Note: In Nevada, a winning measure to protect abortion until viability must pass again in the next general election before it can be added to the state’s Constitution.

In Florida, more than 57 percent of voters supported a measure to enshrine abortion rights in the state’s Constitution, but it failed because the state requires a supermajority of 60 percent for ballot measures to pass. Florida had been a critical access point for abortion patients across the South before a six-week ban took effect in May.

Nebraska voters faced dueling abortion ballot measures, and misleading ad campaigns may have caused confusion. A measure that will amend the state’s Constitution to restrict abortions after the first trimester, enshrining current law, won a majority of votes, while a measure to protect abortion rights fell just short at 49 percent.

South Dakota will continue to have one of the strictest bans in the country.

Before the election, 21 states banned abortion or placed gestational limits on the procedure. The winning rights measure in Missouri is the first to undo a full ban — one of the strictest in the nation and one of the first enacted after the United States Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022.

Arizona’s 15-week ban will also become void in the coming weeks.

Where ballot measures will lift abortion bans

Five states with bans had abortion on the ballot. Two flipped to legalize the procedure.

In Arizona, Missouri and Montana, the winning measures will recreate the standard set by Roe v. Wade, which protected abortion until “viability” — the point at which a fetus could survive outside the uterus, or around 24 weeks of pregnancy.

New constitutional amendments will expand protections for abortion in Colorado, Maryland and New York, where the procedure was already broadly legal. Colorado’s measure also repealed an earlier law prohibiting the use of public funds to pay for abortions.

In Nevada, a winning measure to protect abortion until viability must pass again in the next general election before it can be added to the state’s Constitution.