Negotiations are under way with at least two major chains to build a string of stores in economically depressed Chicago neighborhoods–on the condition that a “big box” minimum wage ordinance is not passed by the City Council, Daley administration sources said Monday.
The disclosure came as lobbying intensified on both sides of the controversial wage measure, two days before an expected council vote.
Saying, “There is always time for compromise,” Mayor Daley called for a revamped ordinance that would allow aldermen whose wards are starved for development to opt out of its provisions.
In his most forceful comments yet on the issue, Daley asserted that passage of the measure in its present form would prevent economic growth and jobs in the low-income African-American neighborhoods that need them the most.
“There are good reasons to defeat this ordinance,” he said. “I agree people should get a fair wage, [but] the question is why should we raise the wages of some people and not others, making it dependent on the size of the store they work in?”
The measure now on the table would apply to stores with at least 90,000 square feet that are operated by companies with $1 billion or more per year in sales. The minimum compensation requirement would be $9.25 per hour in wages and $1.50 in benefits beginning next July 1, increasing to $10 per hour and $3 in benefits by July of 2010. Increases after that would be tied to the rate of inflation.
The ability of aldermen to opt out of the ordinance for their wards makes sense, Daley asserted.
“Why not?” he asked. Aldermen who don’t want a big store that doesn’t meet the minimum wage standard “shouldn’t have it,” he said. “If [Ald.] Joe Moore believes he does not want a big box, fine, I understand that. They don’t have to have them in their wards.”
But aldermen who are desperate for development and jobs for their constituents should be able to pursue them, he said.
Moore, alderman of the North Side’s 49th Ward, is the primary sponsor of the minimum wage ordinance. He saw no compromise in Daley’s proposal.
An opt-out provision “would completely undermine the purpose and effect of the ordinance,” Moore declared. “I don’t think whether a Chicago worker gets a living wage should depend on the whim and caprice of the individual alderman.”
Daley appeared at a City Hall news conference with four African-American ministers who insisted that most people in predominantly black wards oppose the big box measure by overwhelming margins because of its negative impact on potential development.
“I see this as a moral issue,” Bishop Arthur Brazier said of the battle over the big box measure. “I think it is immoral to pass laws that would rob people of jobs. I think there is something wrong with that.”
Rev. Leon Finney said a recent poll showed that as many as 83 percent of respondents in predominantly African-American wards oppose the measure.
Another poll, funded by backers of the measure, found overwhelming support in black communities.
“This ordinance in my eyes is about equality,” said Dennis Gannon, president of the Chicago Federation of Labor.
