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During the pandemic, Americans realized the value of the service sector. We learned to better appreciate those in pejoratively called “low-level” jobs like grocery clerks and delivery people. This likely contributed to 20 states passing laws doubling the minimum wage to approach a so-called livable wage.
This, and the resulting ripple effect, will help working-class folks in those states and likely keep many from having to transport their life’s belongings in a grocery cart while barely subsisting in a homeless encampment. Nebraska, Montana, Ohio and even Missouri raised their minimum wage, but not Oklahoma. State legislators and our governor, once again, failed to act in the best interests of everyday Oklahomans in the same way they have regarding public education and universal health care.
A statewide citizen petition to put a mandated minimum wage increase on the November ballot was blocked by the governor, who managed to delay it. Hopefully working-class Oklahomans will eventually prevail on this issue. To do so, they will have to overcome the opposition of the governor and legislators they’ve elected to represent them.
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What their advocates are hearing Will Howard's title part of KSU outdueling OU decision-making | Berry Tramel's ScissorTales This is the absurd paradox of Oklahoma politics keeping us at the bottom of categories by which quality of life is measured. Voters continually elect leaders promising to make Oklahoma a top-tier state only to have those same leaders implement policies and make decisions that achieve the exact opposite. Making salaried workers in Oklahoma attempt to live on $7.
25 an hour in this day and age is cruel and an immoral disgrace. Editor’s Note: State Question 832 is set for a statewide vote during a special election on June 16, 2026. If approved, most employers would have to pay employees at least $12 per hour beginning in January 2027.
It would increase to $13.50 per hour in 2028 and to $15 beginning in 2029. Further increases would be linked to the cost of living as measured by the U.
S. Department of Labor’s Consumer Price Index. Letters to the editor are encouraged.
Send letters to go.tulsaworld.com/submitletter .
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