God knows I’ve wanted to scribe on Carless in the past few days. Especially with juicy tidbits floating around, like Crain’s (and Chicagoist’s) call for the CTA to dump Frank Kruesi, Daley finally wanting to sell off Grant Park’s debt-ridden downtown garages, and Allstate Insurance tossing a car off of Marina City’s west tower in a commercial reshoot of the classic parking-ramp plunge from The Hunter.

But I’ve been preoccupied. Last week I wrote that I was helping to produce a national video blog kicking off on October 23, 7 Days @ Minimum Wage (as in, seven days at minimum wage), highlighting the hardships people go through when they’re stuck–through no fault of their own–at the bottom of the wage ladder. I thought I would just be doing Internet outreach coordination, the occasional pitch call, standard media stuff.

I never thought I’d be called on to interview anyone. But this past week was crunch time and I had a video camera. So I mobilized my friends and colleagues and set out to find a few folks who wanted to tell America their stories of living at a wage that, though legal, is in most cases incapable of allowing anyone to pay rent. Or in the case of one woman I interviewed over the weekend, to buy food for both her and her four children.

When someone not much different than you, about your age, sitting five feet away, begins to cry uncontrollably because she tells you–and maybe you’re the first person she’s ever admitted it to–that she can’t figure out anymore how to feed her family on a consistent basis and doesn’t feel like she has a future, it’s hard not to put down the camera you’ve got pointed in her face and reach out to hug her. Pretty much all you can do is cry with her too, trying to keep the picture from shaking around too badly or your own sobbing from being picked up on the mic.

This was my experience more than once in the past few days. In Chicago. In Hammond. Different people with different backgrounds, all united by the burning desire to get the hell out of poverty. And all uttering the words, through unexpected, bitter tears, “I hate it.”

I didn’t know what I was bargaining for when I came on board with 7 Days. The press releases say Roseanne Barr is our celebrity host. Barbara Ehrenreich (of Nickel and Dimed fame) may host a chat. Those aren’t bad things. They’ll help get the word out.

But, funny thing. When you say you’re going to tell people’s life stories, then you get to hear people’s life stories. Real people. Just like you and me. Except at the end of their rope–for reasons that could just as easily put you and me there. Chance. Accident. Bad choices. Bad luck.

I knew the people we’d interview wouldn’t be happy. I knew talking about their situations would be difficult for them. I knew they would be in pain.

I just never thought I’d feel it, too.

This summer, when I jumped head-first into Chicago’s big-box wage debate, I repeatedly said that the best way to promote a wage increase was at the state level. Little did I suspect that, three months later, I would be selected for the national publicity team of a weeklong, ACORN/AFL-CIO sponsored Internet campaign to raise the minimum wage in six states.

But, amazingly enough, I was. (I kid you not.) And 7 Days @ Minimum Wage is set to be one incredibly awesome web event.

In November, voters in six states (Arizona, Colorado, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, and Ohio) will go to the polls to decide whether $5.15 an hour is enough for their fellow citizens to live on.

It’s not.

That’s been the combined message of ACORN and the AFL-CIO for a long time (and certainly was the gist of Chicago’s recent big-box wage controversy). To drive that message home for the modern masses, the two organizations have teamed up to host a weeklong YouTube-based video blog to let America’s most hardworking wage earners speak for themselves.

Beginning Monday, October 23, and for the next seven days, the website, 7 Days @ Minimum Wage (that’s sevendaysatminimumwage.org), will offer seven video diaries from seven hardworking people, struggling against all odds–and failing–to make ends meet on $5.15 an hour. Each day a different person will tell their story, perhaps a neighbor, friend, or coworker of someone reading these words right now.

The diaries will be hosted by TV personality Roseanne Barr–as it turns out, a big fan of ACORN and a steadfast supporter of community activism. (You did know she started a foundation to help rebuild the post-Katrina Gulf Coast, didn’t you?)

But celebrity aside, the point is simple. Dead simple:

$5.15 an hour x 40 hours = poverty

Kind of hard to argue with that. Or try this: how many of you out there, sometime in the past nine years, toiled away at $5.15 an hour? Do you remember how far it went? More importantly, do you remember what year it was?

The $5.15 federal minimum wage hit the scene in 1997. It’s 2006 now, how can it not be time for a change? (And anyway, if approved the minimum wages in the six states would only rise to between $6.15 and $6.85 an hour–not far different from the current $6.50 minimum in Illinois–so it’s not like these everyday breadwinners are asking for the moon.)

Thanks to my friend and former colleague, Washington D.C.-based progressive communications consultant Sarah Massey, for helping to bring me on board. This is one team effort I’m proud to be a part of.

To learn more…

Visit sevendaysatminimumwage.org the week of October 23 and witness for yourself why the time for change is now. As the kickoff date draws closer, more and more interactive content will be added to the site.

Download the blogger press release (in PDF format).

Browse lots of background information about the national minimum-wage fight at the AFL-CIO site America Needs a Raise, and at ACORN’s Raise Wages webpage.

And read continually updated Net coverage here…

Ecorazzi: Roseanne to Host 7 Days @ Min. Wage
BlogHer: Seven Days at Minimum Wage
ACORN News Blog
AFL-CIO: AZ Blog

…and you thought I was on Wal-Mart’s side, didn’t you?

(Credit: Jef poskanzer.)

Today, an end of sorts finally came to Chicago’s months-long big-box wage debate when, as expected, the City Council did not have enough votes to override the mayoral veto applied to the controversial new $10 wage ordinance earlier this week. The law, championed strongly by far-north-side alderman Joe Moore–of dubious foie gras ban fame–would have required all large retailers in the city to offer workers a $10 wage and $3 in benefits for every hour worked beginning in 2010. (Find background coverage in my Chicago Big-Box Wage Debate archive and del.icio.us newspaper article archive).

On Monday, Chicago mayor Richard M. Daley exercised his veto power for the first time in his 17 years as head Windy City honcho to kill the wage ordinance–a veto that endured after City Hall was able to convince several aldermen to join the mayor in opposing the controversial law. As reported in the Sun-Times, Mayor Daley “played the race card” when explaining his opposition to the law Tuesday at a rally held on the lot of a planned Target store placed on hold by the big-box retailer in response to the city’s new wage requirements. According to hizzoner, Joe Moore and other north and southwest side politicians didn’t bat an eye when Target built big-box stores in those sections of the city. Said Daley, “It was all right for the north and southwest sides to get big boxes before this. No one said anything. All the sudden, when we talk about economic development in the black community, there’s something wrong.”

In reality, the racial angle is less supportable. Some Aldermen and religious leaders from depressed, black neighborhoods on the south and west sides of Chicago where Target and Walmart want to locate new stores themselves came out vociferously in favor of the $10 wage law. But it’s true that many others opposed it, leading community organizing group ACORN to resort to bussing in protesters from other parts of the state. One ordinance-opposing Alderman in particular, Carrie Ausin (34th Ward), took insult to the non-resident protesters, referring to them in the Sun-Times as forces of “satan”.

Not that Tuesday was the first time outside interlopers chimed into the city’s minimum wage debate. In August, city officials from San Francisco and Santa Fe spoke in favor of the wage law before Chicago’s city council, leading Mayor Daley to retort, “Manage your own city. We manage here.”

He had a good point. The poster-child towns in which so-called “living-wage” laws have been passed or are pending, including Washington, D.C., and the above two cities, are far smaller than Chicago, with, consequently, far smaller employment and community-development problems. Given that you could fit all three of those cities comfortably into the land area of Chicago and still have room to throw in Milwaukee, it’s apparent that Hogtown’s problems are of a higher order. We have huge swaths of city where the urban fabric sits woefully unraveled, where you can travel for a mile or more without finding a restaurant, or a convenience store, or, frankly, a local, legal means of employment. When the nearest option is no option at all, it’s Chicago’s poorest residents who suffer, not Walmart, when high-minded politicians decide to push away big-box retailers.

My D.C. colleague, labor-rights communicator Sarah Massey, points out on her Own the Press blog that big boxes always demand financial and tax incentives from municipalities, a reason why the economic justice community “took this fight to City Hall”. That’s true, but it’s not the only reason. As I commented in July, the big-box retailers play their game of economic tag on a national playing field, not a local one. Because the labor-rights movement has found it unfortunately and astoundingly difficult in the current political climate to afford any change in wage laws at the national level, the debate is now at the door of municipal city halls. But that doesn’t mean labor will be any more successful there. When faced with a restrictive wage law out in the provinces, all Target or Walmart need do is pack up and go find a less-restrictive province–exactly what they both threatened to do after Chicago’s $10 wage law passed in July.

Either way, final closure on the big-box wage saga will not come today. Several aldermen and religious leaders who supported the law are already calling for a non-binding (as in, no force of law whatsoever) citywide wage referendum to go before voters on next February’s ballot, and union leaders are threatening to run opposition candidates in the wards of aldermen who opposed the law. So while Target and Walmart can now feel free to do business on the south and west sides of Hogtown, residents across the city will still be mired in this contentious–and now futile–dialogue for months to come.

Perhaps only with the eventual opening of new big-box stores in Chicago’s most challenged neighborhoods, with the new jobs and new commerce that the retailers will generate on the ground, will suporters of the defunct law finally be able to see the coming of the big boxes in Chicago as a uniquely good thing. Not appropriate for every city or even every Chicago neighborhood. But the best–and only–game in town for Chicago ‘hoods in greatest need of a commercial revival.

And then maybe Joe Moore will finally get his nose out of the south side and the west side and attend to the needs of his own constituents. After a year of City Council foibles, that would truly make a change: aldermen working for the Chicagoans who actually voted them in, not for those who inhabit other wards.

Or those that inhabit barnyards, for that matter.

To my mind, the ability of stores like Walmart to dictate employee wages and supplier prices is a national one, needing a national solution. As long as there are political jurisdictions out there where the big-box retailers can pay their employees low wages at a nice profit, big boxes will continue to be built in them, while economically activist cities like Chicago face the loss of jobs and retail options.

The vote having passed, let’s now see how long it takes for that outcome to happen. Politically correct rhetoric has clouded the debate around the big-box wage bill for weeks. But that rhetoric will fade with time. Let’s see how proud all the wage bill’s supporters will be a year from now if, say, the Roosevelt Road Target hangs out a “This Store Closing” sign and Walmart is still nowhere to be found on the south and west sides. If that happens, yesterday’s bill supporters will probably lay blame on a lot of people — but I bet not on themselves.

Chicago, not to mention any local municipality, cannot make the national juggernaut that is Walmart change its ways. Chicagoans want change, and, really, in this debate that has meant Chicago union organizers want change. Given the size and reach of big boxes like Walmart, wouldn’t it be useful to call on our Congressmen and Senators in Washington? When did that happen? Perhaps I missed that rallying cry.

No matter what Chicago Aldermen would like to believe, the big-box retailers play their game of economic tag on a national playing field. Because of that, local laws out here in the provinces can’t hold much sway. Frankly, this entire debate seems to me to have been nothing more than a city full of liberals (and mind you, I’m one myself) feeling so powerless to effect change at the national level that they gave up even trying, hoping instead to make a stand at the local level where the only people they can hurt is Chicagoans, not Walmart.

Most of all, I would like to know where in this entire debate has been the backup plan for what this city and its Aldermen intend to do if the worst really does come to pass because of this ordinance. What do we do as a city if we lose the big boxes we’ve got, lose shopping choice, lose jobs, lose a big chunk of the sales tax base? In case you haven’t noticed, none of the ordinance’s supporters has ever said one word about that.

I wonder why that is. Perhaps because all the fears expressed by community leaders, the mayor, 14 Aldermen, and the Chicago Tribune are baseless? Or maybe just because of age-old Chicago political hubris…and myopia.

# # #

[Browse my original coverage of Chicago's big-box wage controversy here, and a summary of comments and regularly updated news articles surrounding the debate here.]

(Photo: I said ALWAYS low prices, dammit! Credit: AlterNet.)

Several good points were made in the comments thread of Thursday’s post regarding Chicago’s proposed $10 big-box retailer wage that deserve a fuller airing. The Chicago city council will decide on Wednesday, July 26, 2006 whether to require businesses with locations of more than 90,000 square feet in size to implement a $10-an-hour minimum wage within the city limits. Voices have been passionate on both sides of this issue, with the Chicago controversy being but a part of a truly national debate. However, the main opposing points are singular enough to summarize:

“Walmart is negatively affecting the national economy and bringing everyone’s earning power down. We can’t make headway on a national wage bill, but at least we can spur change at the local level. We have to make a stand somewhere.”

Versus

“The big box retailers will leave town and take their jobs and sales tax receipts with them. Without a national wage law, the big-box retailers will always have another jurisdiction to escape to. Lower-income Chicagoans will have even worse access to jobs and shopping opportunities. And why shouldn’t all local retailers be required to pay a living wage, anyway?”

Commenter Jacob was clearly in favor of the proposed Chicago legislation, decrying Walmart’s titanic power to dictate to the market:

“Wal-Mart, as a recent article in Harper’s brilliantly elucidates, is an example of a monopsony, a consumer version of a monopoly. Neoliberal economics has poisoned the conversation around what is a monopoly, leading us all to believe that if you can shop someplace else or buy someone else’s product it’s not a monopoly. Wal-Mart, by virtue of its extreme market power is able to dictate the behavior of suppliers, even large ones like Proctor and Gamble. The question then is how much negative externalities Wal-Mart injects into the market. The article in Harper’s indicates there a quite a few. In other words, Wal-Mart especially, does not occupy a “niche” in the retail market. It is a monopsony that is skewing the natural functioning of many productive sectors of the consumer product market.”

Sarah Massey, formerly of the AFL-CIO and the National Employment Law Project, agreed, adding:

“Another negative aspect of the Wal-Mart trend is what Big Boxes do to suppliers. They force suppliers to lower, lower price at all costs, forcing manufactures to flee the country to find workers without wage and hour protection – in CHINA. In IL, we’ve seen Maytag close as a result of this. I’m sure there are a ton of examples. So, IL workers lose their jobs at decent wage rates (union), because Wal-Mart pushed the manufacturer to lower prices, then Wal-Mart land grabs with incentives from local govt. promising low prices and “choice” to the community (see Jacob’s post) and puts everyone to work at low wages. This literally happened in Ohio with Huffy Bikes. Remember Huffy? That’s what the folks in Chicago and D.C. are fighting.”

Commenter Larry took a more libertarian view:

“I understand the psychology behind Jacob and Sarah’s demonizing of Wal-Mart and Target. I definitely don’t share it. Whether or not these retailers provide a ‘living wage’ or not shouldn’t be part of the issue. These big box retailers are in business to make money. The more laws/taxes/restrictions the city and for that matter the state put on them the lower their profitabilty. At some point it is no longer profitable to run a local store…Regarding the business plan of a Target or Wal-Mart, you can argue about whether it’s wrong/immoral. The fact is, once it becomes unprofitable to operate a store/business in an area, that business will just leave. And that is why Indiana is landing new manufacturing jobs (Honda) and Illinois is losing (Maytag).”

While I’m definitely on the side of Jacob and Sarah, we disagreed on the correct theater where the war for the lliving-wage law should be fought. I responded:

“I totally agree with you: it is fully within the bounds of legislators to regulate big-box retailers. But as I’ve repeated, local laws in local jurisdictions simply make matters worse — locally — while not fixing the problem globally. We need national, or at least statewide, movement on this issue. City-by-city strategies just push the sales tax receipts and jobs that big-box retailers generate into other, more welcoming municipalities. As long as there are cities that wouldn’t require Target or Walmart to pay a living wage, why would they stay in a city that tried to force them to do so? Just because national movement on this issue is impossible right now doesn’t mean that local movement is a wise alternative.”

Just where this debate will take our city, and our nation for that matter, remains to be seen. For now, I’ll keep adding the URLs of related articles and posts to my linkblog tagged for “Chicago politics wages”. URLs with that tag will be automatically updated below.

This is a debate Chicagoans should pay attention to. If Target, especially, leaves town, there’s not a lot to replace its particular stylishly discounted shopping experience. Really, friends. Kmart is not an option.

(from my del.icio.us)

(Photo: Just can’t help themselves or not just their fault?)

Everyone has a right to a living wage. But just what that wage should be — or who should have to pay it — is a debate that has been raging through Chicago’s city council this summer, possibly with disastrous consequences. On July 26, the council will vote on a bill, sponsored by Alderman Joe Moore (49th Ward), to require big-box retailers doing business within the City of Chicago — but not the smaller local stores that employ the bulk of Chicago retail workers — to pay their employees a minimum wage of $10 an hour with benefits, eventually rising to $13 an hour. On the face of it a beneficial idea for workers, if it can be put into practice without workers losing their jobs.

Unfortunately, Chicago’s most popular big-box chain, Target Corp., has threatened to cancel several planned new stores in the city, and even to consider closing its existing Chicago stores, with Walmart following with similar threats, triggering an avalanche of criticism aimed at retailer and city council alike (see Chicago Tribune coverage of the controversy here and here, and Crain’s Chicago Business coverage here).

Quoted in the Tribune, Ald. Freddrenna Lyle (6th Ward) called the threat “disingenous and disrespectful of city residents,” and said that, with $1 billion in untapped purchasing power in underserved Chicago neighborhoods, big-box retailers will remain in Chicago because “the money is here.” However, some South Side community members quoted in the same article are not so sure. Said Dr. Leon Finney of the Metropolitan Apostolic Community Church, “I’m more interested in having a job than a living wage.” More pointed criticism is to be had from Bishop Arthur Brazier of the Apostolic Church of God, also on the South Side: “This is going to be very harmful to the city of Chicago, to the African-American people who want jobs and Wal-Marts.”

Opinions on the proposed legislation are no less conflicted on the national level. As noted on Washington communications consultant Sarah Massey’s progressive blog, Own the Press, even the liberal Economic Policy Institute (EPI) was pushing for less of an increase during this summer’s failed attempt to raise the federal minimum wage. EPI sought a more modulated increase from $5.15 to $7.25 by 2009, to be applied equally to all employers. However, an Op-Ed piece appearing on the EPI website actually supports Chicago’s proposed $10 wage, essentially saying that Walmart is big enough to afford the higher pay scale, while sidestepping entirely the proposal’s discriminatory impact.

I wouldn’t be caught dead in a Walmart ( I emerged from the one visit I ever made to the downmarket, messy-shelved retailer in far-west suburban Wisconsin feeling positively dirty), but I don’t see how much economic harm their presence could do in a hypothetical depressed far South Side Chicago community where many other local businesses pulled out years ago. I also can’t imagine not being able to hop on a downtown ‘L’ and head to my beloved South Loop Target on Roosevelt and Clark for…well for just about anything really. Whether for employment, convenience, or price, in the right locations both of these retailers have their place in Hogtown. I wouldn’t want them everywhere in town, but I definitely recognize the benefit of their presence.

What I don’t understand is why the Chicago city council has set its sights squarely and singly on big-box retailers, instead of on all city retailers. Just because the city council thinks Target and Walmart can better afford to pay a higher wage than can a smaller local retailer doesn’t make the proposed legislation any less unfair. If Chicago Aldermen think a wage below $10 is unlivable for a Target employee, why do they think it’s acceptable for a mom-and-pop corner grocer or local fast-food outlet to pay their employees — the overwhelming majority of Chicago retail employees — $5.15 an hour? And since the $10 living wage won’t be seen by the majority of Chicago retail workers, how exactly does it fix the problem?

Moreover, why would Target or Walmart want to retain a presence in a city whose legislative body sought to levy upon them what would essentially be an extra tax to do business in the city that local retailers were exempted from? That sounds a lot like a protected market to me, and the point of a protected market is to keep outside business interests out. If I were on the city council, I wouldn’t be taking the threatened pullout of the big-boxes too lightly. A July 18 editorial in the Chicago Tribune cautioned the city council in a similar vein.

Though if anything will give pause to the city council, it will more likely be the decision handed down today in Maryland. That state sought to require Walmart to provide higher benefits for Maryland workers than the retailer provided to workers in other states. U.S. District Judge J. Frederick Motz put the reins to that state’s proposal, saying that the law would have improperly required the retailer to track employee benefits in differing manners based on location, a requirement contravened by the federal Employee Retirement Income Security Act. The echo of the Maryland judgment on the Chicago proposal remains to be seen.

No matter what, it’s undisputable that retail workers in Chicago and across the country deserve better wages, but they also deserve a political strategy that will actually achieve those wages instead of potentially losing jobs. Flipping the economic bird to a few specific retailers who’ve done nothing wrong other than to follow the pack is not that strategy. Setting rules for the entire pack to follow would be a better approach, and certainly a more just one.

Besides, if Target goes, where in the world will downtown Chicago residents shop for cheap computer desks, floor lamps, and balcony furniture? I know, at that shiny new downtown Ikea courted in a similarly backhanded fashion by the City of Chicago that recently opened.

In suburban Bolingbrook.