Free Republic

COLUMBIA, Mo. (AP) — Missouri business groups announced Monday that they have filed a lawsuit to try to stop a voter-approved law that will raise the state’s minimum wage and require employers to give workers paid sick leave. The powerful Missouri Chamber of Commerce and Industry, restaurant and grocers associations say the law violates a state constitutional requirement that ballot measures only address one issue because it included the minimum wage increase and paid sick leave. The law will increase the state’s minimum wage from the current $12.30 an hour to $13.75 in January and $15 in 2026. It gives...

Mid Continent Nail Corporation says it could shutter its Poplar Bluff plant, which employs about 335 workers, as early as this month without an exemption to tariffs, the site’s operations general manager, Chris Pratt, told reporters in early September. The company previously had said that it might not survive through Labor Day but stayed open. After Trump imposed a 25 percent tariff on imported steel, the company in June cut 60 of 500 positions at the plant in rural Butler County, where the unemployment rate is above the national average and the company is the area’s second-largest employer. Pratt said...