St. Louis Gave Workers a Wage Hike. Missouri Republicans Are Taking it Away.

[workinclasszero]

St. Louis Gave Workers a Wage Hike. Missouri Republicans Are Taking it Away.
By Henry Grabar

On Aug. 28, St. Louis may become the first city in the United States to see its minimum wage fall, from $10 an hour to $7.70 an hour, as the Missouri statehouse enables a pay cut for some 35,000 workers.

That’s the date when a new state pre-emption law, drafted specifically to target St. Louis, is scheduled to take effect.

The Missouri measure will override the city’s own minimum wage increase, which was implemented in May after a two-year court battle, and end a three-month period during which fast food, retail, and other workers in the city were required to be paid hundreds of dollars in additional income.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2017/07/07/st_louis_gave_workers_a_wage_hike_missouri_republicans_are_taking_it_away.html

[frazzled]

1. The NYT had a whole article the other day about this phenomenon of blocking cities

The urban-rural divide is playing out in red states, where Republican state legislatures (and most of them are Republican) are passing laws that prevent the enactment of local laws or reverse local ordinances already enacted in their states' larger cities, such as this St. Louis minimum wage increase. It's across the board too: everything from local wage laws and civil rights issues to environmental laws that ban plastic bags, etc.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/06/upshot/blue-cities-want-to-make-their-own-rules-red-states-wont-let-them.html?_r=0

In the last few years, Republican-controlled state legislatures have intensified the use of what are known as pre-emption laws, to block towns and cities from adopting measures favored by the left. The states aren’t merely overruling local laws; they’ve walled off whole new realms where local governments aren’t allowed to govern at all.

The pattern has worsened a different kind of partisan war beyond Washington, where the political divide cuts not just across the aisle, but across different levels of government. As standoffs between red states and blue cities grow more rancorous, the tactics of pre-emption laws have become personal and punitive: Several states are now threatening to withhold resources from communities that defy them and to hold their elected officials legally and financially liable.

...

States have banned local ordinances on minimum wage increases, paid sick days and lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights. They’ve banned “sanctuary cities.” They’ve even banned a number of bans (it’s now illegal for Michigan cities to ban plastic bags, for Texas towns to ban fracking).

A law passed in Arizona last year threatens to withhold shared state revenue from local governments that adopt ordinances in conflict with state policy. Texas’ new sanctuary city law imposes civil fines as high as $25,500 a day on local governments and officials who block cooperation with federal immigration requests. And it threatens officials who flout the law with removal from office and misdemeanor charges.