Mayor Richard Daley vetoed the idiotic “living wage” bill handed to him by the Chicago City Council.
Mayor Richard Daley vetoed an ordinance Monday that would have required mega-retailers to pay their workers more than other employers after some of the nation’s largest stores including Wal-Mart Stores Inc. warned the measure would keep them from opening their doors within the city’s limits.
Supporters said the measure would guarantee employees a “living wage,” but in a letter to City Council members released Monday, Daley said the ordinance would drive businesses from the city.
“I understand and share a desire to ensure that everyone who works in the city of Chicago earns a decent wage,” Daley wrote. “But I do not believe that this ordinance, well intentioned as it may be, would achieve that end.”
The ordinance was approved by the council in late July and requires so-called “big box” stores to pay workers at least $10 an hour plus $3 in fringe benefits by mid-2010. The rules would only apply to companies with more than $1 billion in annual sales and stores of at least 90,000 square feet.
The minimum wage in Illinois is $6.50 an hour and the federal minimum is $5.15.
First off, Illinois already has a minimum wage significantly higher than the Federal rate. Second, the “living wage” bill is unfair because it is meant to specifically target Walmart, and other businesses would be exempt from the bill. Third, it would succeed in driving out jobs from the City of Chicago which Chicago can’t afford to lose. And fourth, there are people who just don’t deserve to get paid $10 per hour because they just aren’t worth that level of compensation, and it’s just plain wrong to mandate that a business pay those people more than they’re worth. Other than all of that, the “living wage” bill makes perfect sense!
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Roger Knight said,
The problem with the economists is that when they rail against minimum wage laws, that is exactly what they are arguing should be allowed.
One problem with cheap labor is that we get cheap tools, cheap maintenance, cheap lighting, cheap working conditions, because an employer paying cheap wages has less incentive to improve PRODUCTIVITY by making sure his labor force has decent tooling and decently maintained equipment, and decent working conditions.
Modern offices have heating and air conditioning designed to maximize the comfort of employees who are working, with copying machines and computers kept up and reasonably new, because if an employer is having to pay its employees high enough wages, it has the incentive to maximize their productivity. Say what you will about the big bad unions, Boeing, Airbus, and the American and European automakers have the most modern manufacturing equipment due to the need to get production sufficient to pay the wages and benefits.
Nothing wrong with that.
The Fair Labor Standards Act, our federal minimum wage and overtime law, was originally passed in 1938, during the Great Depression. The PRACTICAL reason, as opposed to any political or philisophical reason, for enacting a minimum wage law during a depression, is that whatever money gets into the hands of the desperately poor, it will get spent on the things they need!
Which benefits factories that make such things.
So Congress and the Roosevelt administration required the factories to pay their employees at least 25 cents and hour.
Such was the attempt to solve the problem of the Great Depression before the War solved it.
To understand this in the context of 2006, please consider this:
If Chinese workers earned enough money to afford toothbrushes and toothpaste, Chinese factories making these things would prosper without relying on the export market. The reason Chinese factories rely on the export market is that they are not required to pay wages sufficient to allow Chinese people to purchase their production.
Such a requirement elsewhere is precisely what allowed United States, Japan, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and all of Europe to prosper since the end of World War II. Allowing employers in these nations to avoid paying decent wages by letting them move their production to China is destroying the working people and the economies of ALL of these nations.
Where there is a higher minimum wage, there is more money to spend on the things people need, that is why Wal*Mart prospers in states that have a high minimum wage.
The thing that was WRONG with the Chicago law vetoed by Mayor Daley was that it singled out Wal*Mart and exempted other employers.
The Rule of Law works only if everyone has to play by the same rules. If McDonald’s has to pay a minimum wage, then so does Wendy’s and Jack in the Box.
Capitalism is the engine of society, it is the provider of wealth. But for it to work there has to be fairly and consistently enforced rules: Uniform Commercial Code. English common law rules of contract adopted by all of the courts in all of the English speaking nations and many non-English speaking nations. Minimum Wage and overtime laws. Labor relations laws. Anti-discrimination laws to prevent racial and gender discrimination in employement. Environmental laws to prevent excessive pollution with poisonous stuff. Anti-trust laws to prevent monopolies blocking competition. Theft and Embezzlement Laws against corporate raiders of the Ken Lay variety. Insider trading laws.
These laws, when reasonable, and when fairly and consistently enforced, make American Capitalism work. When not enforced or selectively enforced, when jobs are allowed to be shipped overseas for cheap labor, and half of Mexico is allowed in to compete for what jobs are left, when divorce laws destroy the breadwinning husbands, when Milo Minderbinders get in charge of our corporations and through both parties, our government, that is when we see the destruction of our society that we are seeing.
For dead accurate commentary on these unfortunate phenomena, I suggest a visit to http://www.dispair.com
September 11, 2006 at 8:24 pm
Roger Knight said,
September 11, 2006 at 8:29 pm
Eye Doc said,
The biggest problem with minimum wage laws is that there are always going to be people who aren’t worth that level of compensation, and the law forces businesses to pay people more than they’re worth. And, ten dollars an hour is a pretty extreme minimum wage when I know educated people who are making that at jobs that are far more complex than stocking the shelves with baked beans.
September 12, 2006 at 6:02 am
BG said,
During the Regan freeze on minimum wage increases that happened to a fast food operator, Carl Karcher of Carl’s Jr fame. In the end he lost control of his company because of it yet I doubt he ever realized what happened. The majority customers of fast food are minimum wage earners. By holding down their wages fast fooders priced themselves out of the market because the price of the food went up while the wages of their customers stayed the same.
Wages are important for the economy as a whole. Workers must earn enough to buy what they produce ot the employers go under. It’s a balacning act that is probably too delicate for politicians to handle. Henry Ford was the first industrialist to realize the importance of his workers earning enough to buy his cars. Before that time autos were rich man’s toys.
September 12, 2006 at 7:49 am
Roger Knight said,
Tough shit!
Next time some moron tells me that stocking shelves isn’t worth $6.50 per hour I suggest they ought to do it for a day! Eye Doc, guys like you are the ones causing our federal government to let in half of Mexico and to allow our jobs be shipped to China, not because the labor isn’t worth the American rates, but because you just don’t want to pay for it!
Personally, I don’t think gasoline is worth $3.00 per gallon. But if that is the lowest price I can find, then that is the price I must pay if I want to drive a car.
Same thing with the minimum wage. Regardless of what you think the labor is worth, you gotta to pay the minimum wage or you don’t get to hire the labor. What makes it work is that if every other employer must pay it, then your competition does not undercut you.
Which is the problem with outsourcing jobs to dirt poor nations for cheap labor and insourcing the desperate from Mexico.
If you are in the retail biz, yes, you might not like having to pay your hired help a decent wage, but the fact that everyone else must pay that wage provides the money people have to come into your store to buy the stuff they need.
That also benefits the manufacturers of the merchandise you sell.
I don’t see Wal*Mart avoiding states with high minimum wages, they seem to have more sales in such states.
The Great Depression was not caused by minimum wage and overtime laws! It was caused by a LACK OF SALES. With the layoffs and falling wage rates, FURTHER LACK OF SALES.
If the people who make the stuff cannot buy the stuff, then to whom do you sell the stuff? And if you cannot sell the stuff, then why make the stuff? You cannot afford to make stuff you cannot sell, regardless of how cheap your labor is.
That was the problem the Roosevelt Administration was trying to solve in 1938 with the Fair Labor Standards Act.
September 12, 2006 at 3:23 pm
Squiggy said,
P.S. The depression was caused by idiotic government policies, not lack of sales. The FLSA was window dressing, and didn’t help at all. Neither did any of the “projects” he instituted. They did put people to work (for a short while), but they didn’t change anything. If it weren’t for WWII, Roosevelt would have looked very much like Jimmy Carter. Okay, maybe not that bad.
September 13, 2006 at 4:16 am