Missouri voters approved a statewide ballot initiative to raise the state’s minimum wage to $15 an hour and require private employers to provide paid sick leave .

Proposition A had about 58 percent of the vote, as of 1:18 a.m., according to an Associated Press race call. Supporters of the measure declared victory Tuesday evening.

This is the third time Missouri voters have raised the minimum wage – following increases in 2006 and 2018.

Below Proposal AMissouri’s minimum wage will increase in January 2025, from $12.30 an hour to $13.75. It will reach $15 per hour in January 2026 and will then be adjusted annually for inflation.

Fran Marion has worked in fast food for over 20 years. At a Prop A watch party in downtown Kansas City, she said the initiative’s passage represents a decade of “Fight for 15″ movement.

“$15 is just the floor,” Marion said. “It will help us get to a point where we can survive a little more.” With paid sick leave, we don’t have to choose between going to work sick or canceling. I am a person before I am a worker and I need to be treated as such.

Missouri Didn’t Previously Require Employers to Provide Sick Leave – Now Joins It 18 other states and Washington DC in doing so.

Paid sick leave will be available to existing workers starting May 1, 2025. Employers must provide one hour of paid sick leave for every 30 hours worked.

Workers at companies with fewer than 15 employees can earn up to five days a year while those at companies with more than 15 employees could earn up to seven days a year.

Government entities, school districts and educational institutions are exempt from the new minimum wage. The sick leave law also does not apply to government workers, retail or service employees who work at a business earning less than $500,000 a year, babysitters and others.

Proposal A was listed on the Missouri ballot through the initiative petition process and supported by the group Missourians for Healthy Families and Fair Wages.

Terrence Wise organized with Standing KCa coalition of low-wage workers, for more than a decade to raise wages. He says the initiative petition process saved the $15 minimum wage, after Missouri lawmakers anticipated a similar salary increase in 2018.

“We showed the rest of the world, the rest of the country, that no matter what happens outside of our state, we are capable of coming together and winning,” Wise said. “We felt we had the power as ordinary Missourians to come together and improve our lives.”

Opponents of the measure, such as Missouri Chamber of Commerce and Industryargued that Proposal A would make it harder to meet payroll and keep employees on board.

Supporters of the ballot measure said raising the minimum wage and sick leave would benefit thousands of low-wage workers across the state and help lift them out of poverty.

Genie Kastrup, president of Service Employees International Union Local 1, said the victory will change the lives of thousands of union workers in Missouri.

“No worker should have to choose between their health and their pay,” Kastrup said at the watch party in Kansas City. “This should have been done a long time ago, but I am so proud of those who never stopped fighting.”

A full-time employee earning Missouri’s old minimum wage of $12.30 would take home $492 per week before taxes. Once Proposition A takes effect and reaches $15 per hour in 2026, that same employee will earn $600 per week before taxes.