Big Box Living Wage

In 1998, the Grassroots Collaborative organized with our allies to pass the original Living Wage ordinance to increase the minimum wage for contracted employees of the City of Chicago. We won a subsequent campaign to index increases to cost of living adjustment.

The Issue

The Big Box Living Wage (BBLW) campaign originated when community organizations first heard that Wal-Mart was planning to open stores in Chicago. Talks about the corporation's predatory employment practices led to local residents finding out that another store on Chicago's northwest side was able to provide a living wage with health benefits to its workers. If Costco was able to do it, why couldn't Wal-Mart? Community leaders realized that a living wage was economically feasible, but Wal-Mart was stubbornly glued to their race-to-the-bottom business model. Residents wanted new stores in their neighborhood - but stores that that paid their workers wages and benefits they could take care of their families on. Grassroots Collaborative and our allies quickly realized the opportunity to organize for living wage jobs in Black and Latino communities. With the off-shoring of most manufacturing jobs in Chicago that provided families with a good economic standing, retail/service jobs are increasingly the only source of employment for many workers. This phenomenon has devastated the quality of life for many families across the city of Chicago. Community organizations, labor unions, and their members all understood that if corporations wanted to create stores to access profits in the inner city, they should be held responsible to provide living wage jobs that in turn help revitalize those neighborhoods. Communities of color are particularly affected by job quality. A study from the UC Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education highlighted that in 2000, 63.4% of full-time Black retail workers in Chicago were Low-Wage. That means that 63.4% of Black retail workers were not able to pay food, housing, healthcare, and other basic living costs despite doing their fair share of hard work. Access to jobs alone does not resolve the crisis of poverty - we must transform the quality of jobs available.

The Ordinance

The Big Box Living Wage Ordinance sought to do this by requiring billion-dollar retailers with stores larger than 90,000 square feet to pay their workers a wage of $10/hour, with an additional $3/hour worth of benefits. The wages and benefits were to reach that mark in 2010, and thereafter increase by the cost of living. Big box stores affected by the Ordinance included retailers such as Wal-Mart, Target, Home Depot, and Lowe's. But despite a supermajority of residents supporting the ordinance and a majority of alderman voting to pass it in August 2006, Mayor Daley issued his first and only veto since taking office in 1989 against the living wage. Opponents of the BBLW argued that the Ordinance was really anti-business and halted development and job creation in African American communities. The fact that mega-retailers are now clamoring to get into urban America is gc.nikhiltrivedi.comvedi.comk and brown communities - it is because there is huge untapped buying power in the inner-city that they previously ignored because they could. The stores are coming now because they have no choice - Wal-Mart stock has been sluggish over the last two years because the company has not reached their targeted expansion in the U.S. Those who run the company, however, continue to make some of the highest salaries in the world - at stark contrast to their workers who struggle to make ends meet. The argument against a living wage basically rests on the fallacy that "any job is better than no job." It is a cheap excuse to take advantage of Chicago's low-income workers and African American communities where new stores were to be located. It is an argument that the vast majority of Chicagoans rejected in 2006, with over 80 percent voting in support of Grassroots Collaborative-sponsored referenda on the living wage in 300 precincts across the city.

The Impact

Despite Daley's veto, our organizing resulted in tremendous change, both statewide and in Chicago. The campaign to win a living wage for big box employees ignited the successful effort to increase the statewide minimum wage. Passed shortly after our veto, the minimum wage increase had huge economic impact for hundreds of thousands of low-wage workers in Illinois. In Chicago, our organizing sparked an electoral change in the City Council not seen in years, with nine new alderman taking office in 2007, many of whom had campaigned in support of the living wage against anti-living wage incumbents.

The Coalition: Chicago-Style Community-Labor Organizing

While the Grassroots Collaborative provided the staff and coordination of the Living Wage campaign, at the heart of the organizing was a strategy team that was a blend of Collaborative members and other organizations interested in playing a lead role in the effort. Members of the Grassroots Collaborative include Action Now, American Friends Service Committee, Brighton Park Neighborhood Council, Chicago Coalition for the Homeless, Illinois Hunger Coalition, Metro Seniors in Action, Metropolitan Alliance of Congregations, SEIU 73 and SEIU 880. In addition, the Collaborative brought a wide range of allies to the Living Wage campaign that made substantial contributions in their geographic areas or areas of expertise/influence:

• Community organizing groups including Blocks Together, Centro Juan Diego, Bickerdike Redevelopment Corporation, Lakeview Action Coalition, and the Jane Addams Senior Caucus.
• Labor Unions and allies including the Chicago Federation of Labor*, United Food and Commercial Workers*, Jobs With Justice*, Service Employees International Union* and UNITE-HERE*. 
• Academic institutions including New York University's Brennan Center, the University of Illinois at Chicago's Center for Urban and Economic Development* and the University of Chicago's Harris School of Public Policy Administration*.
• Faith-based organizations including Protestants for the Common Good, Chicago Interfaith Committee on Worker Issues*, and the Jewish Council on Urban Affairs, and individual Catholic and Protestant churches like Trinity United Church of Christ*, and St. Sabina and St. Clements Catholic Churches.