For years, Kansas City workers and organizers have fought to increase the city’s minimum wage to $15 an hour. The demand was front and center recently when workers at the Taco Bell fast-food restaurant on Wornall Road in Kansas City’s Waldo neighborhood held a walkout over claims of poor working conditions and low wages.
“We have to drive cars that are constantly on the verge of breaking down or take the bus or Ubers while we are making other people enough to drive Ferraris and Porsches,” said Fran Marion, one of the workers who spoke at a rally in front of the restaurant.
“Some of the workers up here are even working two jobs just to be able to make ends meet,” said Marion, who is affiliated with the group Stand Up KC, which advocates for higher wages and workers’ right to unionize.
The current minimum wage in Missouri is $11.15 an hour. However, the living wage — the income a single worker requires to meet basic needs for a family of up to three children — is $17.19 in Jackson County, according to a living wage calculator from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Local elections have shown that majorities of voters in Kansas City and Missouri support increasing the minimum wage. But state lawmakers have balked at doing so, contending the increases would burden businesses. Republican legislators have rolled back minimum-wage increases in St. Louis and Kansas City and threatened to overturn the will of voters at the state level.
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