ST. LOUIS—Choosing Trump did not necessarily mean people opposed workers rights, abortion rights, or other key progressive policies. Voter preference for many such policies was shown on the local and state levels even as on the national level Trump carried the day. Voters showed that when given the chance to make direct policy choices, if unencumbered by corporate money and propaganda, they come down on the progressive side. The ex-president, of course, dared not emphasize his opposition to the kinds of progressive measures that voters enacted in towns and states across the country.
The Economic Policy Institute sent out an email this week that noted “these ballot measure outcomes reflect a clear ongoing trend of strong voter support for policies that prioritize worker, racial, and gender justice—and illustrate how state and local governments can continue to play important roles in enacting such policies.”
Five states voted on wage-related measures in 2024. The federal minimum wage has not been raised since 2009. In the absence of action at the national level, 30 states and 63 localities have raised their own minimum wages beyond the federal minimum of $7.25.
Voters this time approved minimum wage hikes to $15 an hour in some states like Alaska and Missouri and in those two states and also Nebraska they significantly expanded entitlement to earn sick pay. The right to an abortion was put into the constitutions of seven states including Arizona, Colorado, Maryland, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, and New York.
Voters also expressed determination to protect public education. They rejected school vouchers in at least three states including Colorado, Kentucky, and Nevada.
Perhaps among the most pro-labor victories were ones in the area of protecting the ability of workers to unionize without company interference. In Alaska, they chose to ban anti-union captive audience meetings. In Oregon, they voted to protect the right of cannabis workers to unionize.
Also, a growing number of states and localities have expanded workers’ ability to earn paid sick leave to care for themselves and their families. This year, voters passed ballot measures to further that expansion in three states.
The winning initiative in Alaska included a provision requiring employers to allow workers to accrue paid sick leave (up to 40 hours per year at businesses with fewer than 15 employees and up to 56 hours per year for larger employers).
A provision in Missouri was approved requiring employers to allow workers to accrue paid sick leave at a rate of one hour of leave for every 30 hours worked.
In Nebraska, a winning measure requires businesses to offer earned paid sick leave to employees. Small businesses with fewer than 20 employees will be required to allow employees to accrue up to five paid sick days a year, while employees of larger businesses will be entitled to up to seven days.
Voters also backed the strengthening of collective bargaining rights. In Colorado, Question 2U won in a landslide. It grants collective bargaining rights to 7,000 municipal workers not covered by the state’s current laws.
In New Orleans, voters passed a “Workers Bill of Rights” amendment to the city charter that includes access to fair wages, paid leave and health care, and the right to unionize. The measure, it is hoped, will pressure employers to improve job quality but does not set mandates to raise wages or improve working conditions since local governments in Louisiana are blocked from enacting such policies under right-wing state pre-emption laws. Expect Republican-controlled states that don’t currently have such laws to institute them as soon as they can, setting up another arena for workers struggling for their rights.
Many state constitutions retain similar language to the U.S. Constitution’s 13th Amendment, which prohibits slavery and involuntary servitude except as punishment for a crime. Meaning slave labor is OK, for example, in jails and elsewhere for people who break the law.
The Abolish Slavery National Network and other rights advocates have said that extremely low-paid (or, in some cases, unpaid) forced work in U.S. prisons amounts to modern slavery. Incarcerated workers are not only exempt from minimum wage laws but are also denied overtime protection, workplace safety guarantees, and the right to unionize. Closing these loopholes is a first step toward establishing basic rights for the incarcerated workforce.
Both California and Nevada passed ballot measures to remove language in their state constitutions permitting slavery or involuntary servitude as punishment for a crime. Voters in Nevada passed Question 4, joining eight other states that have passed ballot measures to abolish slavery in prisons in recent years.
In Missouri, voters defied their GOP-gerrymandered legislature to enshrine abortion rights into their constitution and raise their minimum wage which won with 60 percent of the vote.
Among the Missouri voters who delivered progressive victories on ballot initiatives, as in other states, were many who had voted for Trump. They selected him over Harris because they saw him as a vessel to express anger about a system that has left working people behind for decades.
The contradiction is obvious because Trump has bragged about having selected the very Supreme Court justices who led the charge to take away from the nation’s women the constitutional right to an abortion, resulting in women dying because they cannot get health care when they need it to survive.
When Trump staged a show by preparing French fries at a McDonald’s restaurant recently he refused to tell reporters that he would support even the tiniest raise in the nation’s minimum wage of $7.50 an hour.
The Missouri results mimic an interesting pattern in the last several election cycles: In referenda, even in “red” states such as Missouri, Kentucky, Arkansas, and Kansas, almost all “issue” votes go progressive, including measures for abortion rights, against school vouchers that take money away from public schools and funnel it into private ones and raising the minimum wage.
But those same voters often reject Democratic Party candidates who support those stands. One part of the reason may be that, due to the Electoral College setup in America, the Democratic Party focuses so much on the so-called “swing” states that it ignores building infrastructure and door-to-door ground game for its candidates in states such as these which are considered “red.” The “red” states received few, if any, visits from Democratic Party candidate Kamala Harris, for example. States designated as either “red” or “blue,” which are the great majority, receive far less attention from Democrats. Republicans, however, went into the blue states in 2022 and secured some key House victories that way.
While it is true then that there was no “red wave” in battleground states that year, there was one in “blue” New York and California. At press time, counting in congressional races in California was still incomplete. If the GOP retains control of the House by holding seats in districts that should be “blue” it will be due partially to the Democratic Party having not built an infrastructure for door-to-door campaigning in those states. The Electoral College then is clearly a contributing factor to GOP candidate victories in states long held by Democrats. It at least partially explains the gap between victories for progressive ballot measures in states won by MAGA Republican candidates, including Trump.
The one variable that can thwart progressive victories on ballot initiatives is when the corporate class spends heavily on disinformation campaigns. That’s what happened in California two years ago when Uber and Lyft spent $222 million to exempt their drivers from state labor laws.
That’s what happened in Massachusetts this election after the National Restaurant Association, the prime foe of raising any worker’s wages, outspent tipped wage supporters there two-to-one.
The EPI notes that the right to an abortion is a matter of economic security, independence, and mobility for millions of women across the country. “People who are denied abortion access are more likely to live in poverty, be unemployed, and face other adverse economic outcomes.”
Abortion rights were once again the big issue and the big winner in the referendums, getting majorities in eight states where it was on the ballot. The win in Florida, by a 57%-42% margin for a constitutional amendment, fell victim to the gerrymandered GOP-heavy legislature’s mandate that all citizen-sponsored referenda must win three-fifths of the vote.
Abortion rights referenda wins were in Missouri, Florida, Colorado, New York, Maryland, Arizona, Montana, and Nevada. Nevada and Arizona are swing states, Missouri and Florida are reddish, Montana is deep red, Colorado is getting bluer and New York and Maryland are deep blue.
Abortion rights losses were in Nebraska and South Dakota. Nebraskans approved one measure banning abortions after the first trimester while voting down enshrining abortion in the state Constitution. Abortion supporters outspent abortion foes there by a million dollars, $13 million-$12 million. Dakotans also rejected a pro-abortion constitutional amendment, with foes winning the money race.
“Abortion rights are powerful and popular,” Planned Parenthood Action Fund President Alexis McGill Johnson said. “The American people do not want politicians making their health care decisions. In poll after poll, voters said abortion mattered to them—mattered in their lives and mattered in the voting booth.
“The majority of voters were clear and unequivocal: People are dying. People are suffering. Fix this.
“Donald Trump ran from his record and said he would not ban abortion nationwide. Planned Parenthood Action Fund is going to hold him to that every day for the next four years. This is not over. We have never backed down from a fight—and we won’t, ever. We are going to win our rights back —state by state, ballot by ballot.”
The same type of fight was waged to raise the minimum wages in Missouri and Alaska to $15/hour. Missouri’s referendum also included paid sick leave. Alaskans approved the raise alone, starting next year. Nebraskans approved just sick leave. The minimum wage wasn’t on the Cornhusker State’s ballots.
“Workers, whether they belong to a union or not, won with passage of Proposition A,” the wage hike, Missouri AFL-CIO President Jake Hummel told the St. Louis Labor Tribune. “Raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour changes the trajectory for lives across the state. It lifts people up from poverty wages, and begins to build a base from which people can live a not have to choose between paying for their child’s backpack or paying for their healthcare.”
Missouri’s minimum wage will become $13.75 hourly on January 1 and $15 per hour a year after that. After the second hike, it will rise based on the prior year’s Consumer Price Index. Employers with at least 15 workers must provide one hour of paid sick leave for every 30 hours worked. But the wage hike would not cover state and local governments, school districts, and “education institutions.”
SEIU Healthcare Missouri Director Lenny Jones recalled that the fight for a higher minimum wage and paid sick leave in Missouri goes back more than a decade to when the Fight For $15 in Missouri started with fast food workers demanding a higher wage. Jones called it “a major step forward for the working people of Missouri.
“Frontline workers across industries in our state–fast-food cooks and cashiers, janitors, healthcare workers and more–have demanded fair pay and fundamental protections like paid sick leave for years, speaking out in rallies, lifting their voices in op-eds and getting out the vote for worker champions. This is a victory by and for working people.”
“No worker should have to choose between their health and earning a paycheck. This is long overdue …This initiative was won by the workers, for the workers, and will change the lives of thousands,” said Genie Kastrup, president of Chicago-based SEIU Local 1, which also covers Missouri.
“This victory shows what happens when workers come together to create change,” said Gabriella Love, a nursing home worker in St. Louis. “Before today’s vote many nursing home workers like me didn’t have a single minute of paid sick time off. Going forward, Missouri workers will be able to earn paid sick time off to take care of their families when they need them the most.
“Many workers in my profession also don’t make $15/hour,” Love continued. “That leads to workforce shortages in our nursing home facilities–where many of our loved ones receive care. That simply is not right and will no longer be our reality.”
Alejandro Gallardo, who works in food services in Columbia, said: “In my experience as a restaurant worker, I’ve seen my fellow workers come to work sick. When your wages are too low to begin with, taking a sick day feels out of reach … Missourians understand the status quo does not work for everyone, and better days are ahead.”
Fran Marion, a Kansas City-based fast food worker, and longtime leader in the Fight For 15, said: “This victory wouldn’t have been possible without over a decade of low-wage worker organizing for $15 and a union…We showed up in full force—Black, white and brown, urban and rural—to give ourselves a raise and the paid sick days that we’ve more than earned. This win shows that the people united can defeat corporate greed.”
While the federal minimum wage has been frozen at $7.25, the federal “tipped minimum” wage remains $2.13 per hour. “As a result,” EPI notes, “employers of tipped workers can rely on customers to pay the bulk of wages for tipped staff. Even as most states have now enacted minimum wages above the federal $7.25 per hour, many still maintain exceptionally low tipped minimum wages. “
The national tipped wage minimum is only $ 2.13 an hour. Legally, employers are supposed to make up the difference between that and state or local minimum wage if tips to servers, bellhops, taxi drivers, and other workers who depend on tips fall short of minimum wages. In practice, many don’t and wage theft from tipped workers is rampant.
Taxpayer-paid vouchers for parents of private school kids lost in Colorado and in deep-red Kentucky. “Vouchers defund public schools. They defund sports in public schools. They defund clubs in public schools. They increase school size and they increase class size,” said Teachers President Randi Weingarten, a New York City high school civics teacher and president of the American Federation of Teachers, during a Kentucky stop on the union’s coast-to-coast elections bus.
“They defund career education and they defund technical education,” both important in a state near the bottom of national rankings in income, teacher pay, and public school spending per student. In a subject dear to her heart, vouchers to private school parents “defund social studies” in public schools.
“And who uses the vouchers?” Weingarten asked. Her answer: Parents of rich kids who can already afford private school tuition.
The Economic Policy Institute contributed to this story.
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