CURRENT SIGNERS include • Goodrich Quality Theaters • Farm to Market Bread • Pizza House • Urban Chestnut Brewing • Eileen Fisher • Moonrise Hotel • Steve's Hot Dogs • Made in KC • Charlie Hustle Clothing • The Rieger • Pat Connolly Tavern • O'Reilly Development • Bambino's Café • Green Dirt Farm • American Vacuum Company • Spectator's Sports Bar & Grill • Vecino Group • Raygun clothing • Mud House Coffee • SqWires Restaurant • Bambino's Café • Sucrose Bakery• The Bauer • Local Harvest Grocery • Gabriel's • Fretboard Coffee • Jeff Furman, Chair, Ben & Jerry's • U.S. Women's Chamber of Commerce • and See More than 700 Signers Here • Statement sponsored by Missouri Business for a Fair Minimum Wage.

As business owners and executives, we support gradually raising Missouri’s minimum wage because it’s good for business, customers and our local economy. Today’s minimum wage, about $16,000 a year for Missourians working full time, is inadequate. It has less buying power than the minimum wage in the 1960s.

Workers are also customers. Raising the minimum wage will boost sales as Missouri workers have more money to spend at local businesses. And nothing drives job creation more than consumer demand.

Raising Missouri’s minimum wage makes good business sense. Low pay typically means high turnover. Raising the minimum wage pays off in lower employee turnover, reduced hiring and training costs, lower error and accident rates, increased productivity and better customer service. Employees often make the difference between repeat customers or lost customers.

Raising the minimum wage will strengthen Missouri’s economy. It will reduce the strain on the safety net caused by inadequate wages that are too low to live on and will help level the playing field for businesses.

We support the initiative to gradually increase Missouri’s minimum wage from $7.85 an hour in 2018 to $8.60 in 2019 and then by 85 cents a year until it reaches $12 in 2023, followed by annual adjustments to keep pace with the cost of living.