by Mike Hall, Jul 27, 2006

A months-long living wage mobilization by Chicago area unions and community groups paid off yesterday. The Chicago City Council approved an ordinance that requires “Big Box” stories like Wal-Mart and Home Depot to pay their workers at least $10 an hour with benefits.

Dennis Gannon, president of the Chicago Federation of Labor and Industrial Union Council, calls the action “historic” and says:

Passage of this ordinance is a victory for all the communities and working men and women in Chicago who deserve to earn a living wage and benefits in exchange for their hard work. It sets a national standard for making sure individuals earn a living wage with benefits in exchange for day’s work.

At the heart of this ordinance is equality and fairness. Today’s vote sends a message that our elected officials and community members alike are not interested in the creation of low paying jobs that fail to provide a living wage or adequate health care benefits for working families. The choice between no job and a low-paying job is a choice between bad and worse.

The new living wage law applies to retailers with stores larger than 90,000 square feet that are part of companies with at least $1 billion in sales annually. Under the bill, minimum hourly wages in those stores would jump to $9.25 in 2007 and to $10 in 2010 and will be indexed to inflation in the years after. Firms also must pay $1.50 an hour in benefits—such as health care—starting in 2007 and $3 an hour in 2010.

Alderman Joseph A. Moore, the bill’s chief sponsor, calls the bill’s passage “a great day for the working men and women of Chicago.”

Wal-Mart and other retailers and business groups mounted a massive lobbying campaign and media blitz to defeat the wage bill. But unions and community groups such as the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (Acorn) went directly to the grassroots and the neighborhoods.

Chicago working families flooded city council offices with tens of thousands of e-mails, letters and phone calls. They packed council chambers during hearings and yesterday’s vote. Gannon says:

We have witnessed overwhelming dedication from grassroots community organizations, religious groups, the labor community, elected officials and a majority of Chicagoans who want to raise the standard of living in our communities through the creation of good jobs.

Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, who opposed the bill, has not said if he would veto it. But the 34–15 vote is veto-proof and Daley would need to convince two council members to switch their votes.

Adrianne Shropshire, a long-time community organizer and executive director of New York Jobs with Justice, puts it this way on DMI Blog:

The vote is important not just for workers in Chicago but has real and potentially huge implications for communities across the county. We could see a landmark policy decision today that expands the scope of living wage laws beyond city employees and contractors and transforms it into one that can be used to create standards in industries, like retail, that continue to drag down the economic reality of working people.

During the debate, opponents of the bill claimed it would cost jobs and force retailers to locate outside of the city.

Annette Bernhardt of the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law, who helped write the law, says several other cities have passed living wage laws, including San Francisco and Santa Fe, N.M., with wage levels similar to the Chicago ordinance, without driving retailers away:

We’re very confident that retailers want and need to be in Chicago, and the question for the city is what kinds of jobs they will bring.

Says council member Moore:

There is a buck to be made, a lot of bucks. If they are to continue to remain profitable, they must expand. I welcome these stores to our communities. But let’s make sure when these big stores open up in our neighborhoods, they help our people.

In a related development, this week Wal-Mart hired a politically savvy, “inside the Beltway” public relations expert to spin its message and counter critics, especially those in the blog world who are keeping the heat on Wal-Mart’s treatment of workers, its poor wages and health care policies.

Along with the Chicago living wage victory, the AFL-CIO’s America Needs a Raise campaign to boost the federal minimum wage from the 10-year-old $5.15 an hour level to $7.25 an hour and to raise states’ wage floors continues to roll.

Click here and here to read abut the latest efforts. For more on living wage campaigns, check out Let Justice Roll.

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