City of Chicago orders WalMart to pay $10 min wage

After months of fevered lobbying and bitter debate, the Chicago City Council passed a groundbreaking ordinance yesterday requiring “big box� stores, like Wal-Mart and Home Depot, to pay a minimum wage of $10 an hour by 2010, along with at least $3 an hour worth of benefits.

The ordinance, imposing the requirement on stores that occupy more than 90,000 square feet and are part of companies grossing more than $1 billion annually, would be the first in the country to single out large retailers for wage rules.

WITH unemployment as low as 4.6%, America’s labour market might be expected to be painfully tight. In fact there seems to be some slack in it. Labour force participation is relatively low, by the standard of recent years. Real hourly earnings have barely budged since 2001. Perhaps that is why many Americans tell pollsters that they are not happy with the state of the economy.

Naturally, Democrats hope to profit from this in November’s congressional elections. This week Republicans in Congress fought Democratic efforts—led by Edward Kennedy—to put through a hefty hike in the Federal minimum wage to $7.25, up from $5.15 where it was fixed in 1997. The measure was defeated in the Senate on procedural grounds, even though 52 senators voted for it (including eight Republicans). The House has it locked up in committee. An alternative bill that paired a more moderate increase to $6.25 with some changes in work regulations also died after drawing Democratic opposition.

Mr Kennedy and other Democrats are not ready to give up. Although they have little chance of getting a bill passed this year, and despite the fact that some 20 states have increased their own minimum wages in the past few years, Democrats are hoping to make the issue prominent before the November poll. The goal is to attract disgruntled voters who feel they have missed out in the current economic boom.

HOW much does it cost to buy an election? Supporters of the Democratic Party have a new answer to that question: between $1 and $1.70 an hour. That is how much minimum wages will go up in several states if voters in those places approve ballot initiatives this November.

The minimum wage is an ideal issue for boosting left-wing turnout. For a start, progressive voters are fired with the idea. They are tired of watching Republicans win elections by appealing to voters' “values�, and are convinced that “fairness� (which they believe minimum wages promote) is the most persuasive value they can offer. In addition, raising a state's minimum wage does not require tax increases, since the exchange is between employers and low-wage workers. Small-business owners, who would bear much of the cost, tend to be Republicans anyway.

So people who have the misfortune of working in a smaller store will continue to live below the poverty line? Is working in a large store, like Wal-Mart, so much more unbearable than working at McDonalds that it requires a larger salary? Can McDonalds not afford to pay their staff more?

just a pre-election stunt

raising the minimum wage also ensures the people are making enough to live off of! As already stated many Wal-Mart employees are either older or already lower-income.

I never said I was opposed to raising the minimum wage. My question was why it only applied to people working in larger stores. The are plenty -- millions -- of older or low-income people working in smaller stores, fast food restaurants etc. Why would the wage increase not benefit them?

The problem is not that Wal-Mart drives out smaller retail stores, they also stop employing full-time workers. They hire all college or after high school aged employeees or elderly and have them on a part-time position. Therefore they are not required to pay for health insurance or retirement packages for their employees. So when a Wal-mart comes to a town, it may open 1000 new part-time jobs and due to the competitive pricing they cause 900 full time small business positions to disappear.

I guess they just have to hate somebody (besides Bush).

Wal-Mart will still open its nearly completed branch on Chicago’s West Side in September — the company’s first store in the city

It is the stupid tax policies of the Dems in Chicago that forces big stores out (taking any tax money that they would´ve paid to the city with them).

Is there a Wal-Mart in Joliet?

I also know that usually Wal-mart and Sam's wholesale club pay their employees more than minimum wage, due to the reduction in benefits they pay out. So raising the minimum wage won't effect them that much. I would rather see a society where they capped the maximum wage than raised the minimum wage, or at least raised the minimum educated.

I just don't believe that raising the minimum wage helps anybody. Look at it this way. If the least wage that someone was paid per year was one million dollars, and everybody was a millionaire what would happen to the value of those dollars? You have inflation.