The “Big Box” ordinance

Our economically illiterate City Council is in the process of raising the minimum wage paid by large retailers to an effective $10.75:

Saying that “there is always time for compromise,” Mayor Richard Daley on Monday called for a revamped minimum wage ordinance for “big box” retailers that would allow aldermen whose wards are starved for development to opt out.

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 minority neighborhoods that need them the most. “Let’s first have a debate on the issue,” Daley said.

Four African-American ministers who appeared with him at a City Hall news conference insisted that most people in predominantly black wards oppose the big box measure by overwhelming margins.

The ordinance would apply to stores with at least 90,000 square feet that are operated by companies with $1 billion or more a year in sales. The minimum compensation requirement would be $9.25 an hour in wages and $1.50 in benefits beginning next July 1, rising to $10 an hour and $3 in benefits by July of 2010.

Ald. Joe Moore (49th), a lead sponsor of the measure, asserted that an opt-out provision “would completely undermine the purpose and effect of the ordinance.”

“We have put forth what we believe is a very fair and reasonable ordinance,” Moore said.

Moore, who contended that most Chicagoans favor the measure, said that support for it in the 50-member City Council is “hanging pretty solid at somewhere between 30 and 32 votes.”

A council vote is scheduled for Wednesday.

In the short term this may raise wages for a very small number of workers. In the longer term as leases expire this ordinance will:

• drive retailers out of the city into the adjacent suburban areas where the minimum wage doesn’t apply
• reduce the city’s sales tax revenue
• force people working for these retailers to commute longer distances, costing more and taking time away from their families and other things they’d rather be doing
• force people who live in the city to travel longer distances to shop, costing more and taking time away from their families and other things they’d rather be doing
• increase air pollution
• reduce the CTA’s revenues
• subsidize more expensive stores at the expense of the big retailers and consumers
• discriminate unduly against large retailers by making them bear costs that nobody else if forced to bear

and it may actually reduce the number of Chicagoans employed in retail overall.

I really, sincerely believe in helping people. This ordinance doesn’t do it. Enough with the posturing.