ST. LOUIS, Missouri — When Jim Van Iseghem opened his first storefront small business in 1989, the minimum wage in Missouri was $3.35 an hour.
Over the years that followed, he expanded Van's Hallmark stores and opened another four retail locations where he sold greeting cards, mementos, holiday ornaments, and other small household items to help families preserve their most cherished memories.
He closed one of the five locations in recent years due to rising rent costs. Now he's bracing for another increase in his bottom line: labor costs.
"It's just getting more and more difficult," he said, in between carrying loads of new freight from the back of his 2016 Ford Expedition into the back office of his store in Crestwood.
Van Iseghem says his staff includes four full-time managers, who he says are paid well above minimum wage, and another 15 to 20 part-time workers who pick up a few hours here and there. He says many of the part-timers are retirees who take the job as a way to stay active.
Prop A will ask voters to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour and grant most full-time workers a week of paid sick leave every year.
"For small business like mine, I mean, that's a lot of money," Van Iseghem said, adding that his company's labor costs have doubled over the last eight years. He predicts he'd have to raise prices, cut back on part-time jobs, and take a hit out of his own payroll to cover the higher labor costs.
He hopes lawmakers consider some sort of carve out for small business that rely on a lot of seasonal or part-time labor.
More than a million Missouri workers would get a raise if voters approve the pay hike.
"They tend to be in front line positions, construction workers, retail workers, childcare, nursing home workers, people that really drive our economy," Richard von Glahn said. "And they often don't have access to paid sick leave."
Von Glahn, who runs the group Missouri Jobs with Justice, is pushing for the wage hike and benefits increase. The campaign boasts 475 endorsements from small business owners, in part, due to the extra spending money workers would have to use to buy their products.
"Currently the minimum wage for Missouri workers for someone working full time, 40 hours a week amounts to just $492 a week," von Glahn said. "That is not enough to survive on anywhere in the economy. And we know that really what drives economic growth in the state are workers when workers are fairly compensated, we turn around and we spend that money right back in our economy."
"We've spent the last couple of years calling them essential," von Glahn said. "We think they are essential. We think their family members are essential too. And it's important that they have the same benefits that -- often times executives and CEOs have."
"I got a little three-bedroom house," Van Iseghem said. "You know, it's a very simple house in O'Fallon, Missouri. I don't have a yacht, you know?"
With polls showing momentum behind the push to raise the minimum wage, he sees costly changes on the horizon.
"I can't imagine my life any other way; but it's just getting harder and harder to do it and still stay in business."