Progress Illinois

Amid reports about Wal-Mart's renewed effort to move back into Chicago, editorial boards and local media figures resorted to a familiar refrain: that people in low-income communities should simply be grateful for any new jobs.  Ald. Howard Brookins Jr. (21st Ward) has also pushed the argument that Wal-Mart's poverty wages are perfectly sufficient, despite the fact that he is one of several aldermen who refused to take unpaid furlough days from his $110,000 (part-time) job, claiming at the time: "I can't afford it." The hypocrisy is staggering.  But don't hold your breath waiting for the local media call him out on it.

Just as the debate resumes over whether to allow Wal-Mart to expand in the city, the Grassroots Collaborative has released an analysis (PDF) of newspaper coverage during the thick of the historic big box living wage fight back in 2006.  They found that the coverage largely excluded the perspective of  people directly impacted by a potential Wal-Mart expansion: politicians and business leaders made up 75 percent of the 380 quotes identified in the study, while community groups and residents had only a 6 percent say.  More from the report:

The most frequent frames to characterize the Living Wage debate focused on its potential negative effects. Other common frames discussed the ordinance as a political power-play between city and labor leaders. These frames would leave readers with the impression that the living wage was an idea manufactured and pushed exclusively by union leaders, unsupported by or unimportant to ordinary working people and met with unified predictions of economic doom from the business community and city officials.

As we've pointed out before, the living wage fight isn't is about families' financial security and good public policy.

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The Congress Hotel employees have been striking for over six years. In the coming days, a huge batch of their fellow Chicago hotel workers may join them.

At 8 p.m. last night, employees at five area hotels run by the Starwood Chain -- the Westin Michigan Avenue, the Sheraton Chicago Hotel and Towers, the W Lakeshore, the W, and the Tremont Hotel -- voted by an overwhelming majority to authorize a strike. The workers, represented by UNITE-HERE Local 1, are not walking out on the job just yet. But the vote gives union negotiators the green light to call a work stoppage or a boycott if contract negotiations don't progress, a major escalation in a campaign that's already featured a dramatic civil disobedience.

It's been eight weeks since UNITE-HERE's three-year contract covering workers at 30 downtown hotels expired and the two sides are still not close to reaching a compromise. Like their comrades at Hyatt -- one of the city's other big chains -- Starwood is claiming poverty, citing the recession as the reason they can't boost pay or benefits for its employees. Furthermore, in an attempt to cut costs, they are requesting that employees work 120 hours a month in order to qualify for health insurance, a move union officials say would disqualify almost half of their workers from coverage.

There's no doubt that the recession depressed tourism last year. But hotels seem to be on relatively sturdy financial ground;

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Yesterday marked a solemn milestone for the service workers at the Congress Hotel in downtown Chicago. For six years, four months, and 11 days, UNITE-HERE Local 1 members have walked their picket line in hopes of securing fair wages and benefits, marking the longest hotel strike in the nation's history. But apart from the Congress dispute, the specter of more work stoppages is hanging over the union and the 6,000 Chicago workers it represents across the city.

The three-year contract covering UNITE-HERE Local 1 workers at 30 downtown hotels expired on August 31. In the seven weeks since, despite intense pressure from the labor community and its advocates, union negotiators told the Tribune that little progress has been made. "Things have gotten really bad," said Annemarie Strassel, spokesperson for Local 1. "I think that employers see the bad economy as an opportunity to ram through proposals."

Yesterday afternoon, members of Local 1 marched up and down Michigan Avenue, stopping at the Congress, the Hilton, the Blackstone (where the local and the roughly 200 workers it represents have been negotiating a contract for months) to demand that the city's workers are treated fairly.

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Have we started to crawl out from the depths of the national recession? A few data points released over the last 24 hours offer some humble, but encouraging, news. The first comes from the Federal Reserve, which has found that the net worth of American households jumped between April and July, the first quarterly boost in almost two years. And in the Land of Lincoln, the state's unemployment rate actually fell in August, marking the first dip in 14 months. Here's our updated graph showing the national and Illinois rate since the beginning of 2007:

Of course, there are plenty of caveats. First, Illinois payroll declined by 19,200 jobs last month. Companies aren't expanding quite yet; they just aren't cutting as deeply. And while manufacturing gained 2,100 jobs, most were connected to the "Cash for Clunkers" program, which wrapped up in late August. In short, we still have a long row to hoe before unemployment drops from its highest levels in a quarter-century.

Congressional leaders realize this, which is why the House is expected to vote on an unemployment benefits extension bill (either H.R. 3404 or H.R. 3548) sometime next week.

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Yesterday, key Senate leaders -- including Sen. Dick Durbin -- endorsed bills working through Congress (H.R. 3404 and H.R. 3548 in the House and  S. 1647 in the Senate) that would extend unemployment benefits for folks struggling to find work. And Gov. Pat Quinn along with 21 other governors are urging Congress to enact that legislation quickly. The Tribune reports:

The Chicago Democrat is calling on lawmakers in Washington to extend unemployment for people whose benefits are about to run out.

Quinn and 21 other governors signed a letter sent to Congress. The letter says 400,000 people nationwide could exhaust their benefits by this month.

Amid the worst recession in decades, demand for unemployment insurance is sky-high. More troubling though, as this graph created by the Center for American Progress illustrates, is the staggering number of "long-term unemployed" Americans. Among them are an estimated five million people who have been searching for work for more than six months:

Demand is also draining the state's unemployment benefits fund.

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Responding to a new report from the Center for American Progress a few weeks back, One Story Up blogger Megan Cottrell emphasized the need to change the way the federal government measures poverty in America. Few would argue that the formula for determining how much income people need to survive in the 21st century economy is outdated. But public officials have plenty of self-serving reasons to keep the poverty count low.  After all, acknowledging the flawed formula would only expose the gaping holes in the nation's social safety net.

Researchers at the Social Impact Research Center (formerly the Heartland Alliance Mid-America Institute on Poverty) are tired of hiding the economically insecure. In a new report, "Getting By & Getting Ahead: The 2009 Illinois Self-Sufficiency Standard," the nonprofit examines the true cost of everyday expenses in the Land of Lincoln -- housing, food, child care, health care, transportation, taxes, and discretionary spending -- and then identifies the threshold for financial independence. According to their research, the average single parent with a pre-schooler and a school-age child in Illinois must earn $23.22 per hour ($15 more than the prevailing minimum wage) to reach self-sufficiency. In Chicago, the standard jumps to $24.80. And a review of their work only confirms the struggle faced by Illinois' working poor.

More than one million non-senior citizen households earn less than $49,030 a year, the baseline annual salary required to make ends meet without public assistance. Moreover, upwards of 650,000 households earn more than the current poverty level but less than the self-sufficiency standard.

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While widely lambasted by stimulus opponents as useless "social spending," it's pretty clear that boosting the length and size of unemployment benefits has had a positive effect on those struggling to find work during this recession. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) report (PDF) we flagged last week estimated that 700,000 adults and children nationwide stayed out of poverty thanks to multiple federally-funded extensions (which provides 53 extra weeks in Illinois) while 100,000 avoided financial ruin because of the $25 per week increase in the size of the benefits.

Unfortunately, unemployment is still extremely high and many companies have not yet started to expand their payrolls. So tomorrow the Senate Finance Committee will take some time off from debating health care legislation to hear testimony about the need for another round of benefit extensions. The National Employment Law Project's Beth Shulman, who will testify before the committee on Tuesday, echoed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in an interview with the Detroit News, calling the bill "absolutely imperative:"

Another 13 weeks of benefits for the unemployed in Michigan is "absolutely imperative," a workers' advocate will tell the Senate Finance Committee on Tuesday.

Beth Shulman will try to convince lawmakers that the government has "to ensure that people can support themselves and their families," especially those in states with at least 8.5 percent unemployment. Michigan's jobless rate is 15 percent -- the worst in the nation.

"We are in the worst economic downturn since the Depression," said Shulman, who chairs the board of the National Employment Law Project.

A bill  (H.R. 3403) already exists in the House that would distribute an additional 13 weeks of coverage in states  -- like Illinois -- that are experiencing unemployment rates of 9 percent or higher. With over 50,000 Illinoisans expected to exhaust (PDF) their final benefits by December, now would be a good time to act.

It's no secret that Wal-Mart has been making inroads at City Hall. But in those South Side neighborhoods targeted by the company for new stores, there's still of skepticism over the mega-retailer's intentions. Today, the newly-formed Good Jobs Chicago coalition -- made up of clergy and community organizations -- showed up at City Hall to let aldermen know that three years after Mayor Daley vetoed the big box living wage ordinance, they still want to see Wal-Mart raise its wages and benefits before elected officials support any expansion.

This time around, organizers are looking for a legally-binding community benefits agreement from city officials that requires Wal-Mart to pay fair wages, make health care affordable, extend workers the right to organize, and sell locally-grown food. "It's the role of government to ensure its citizens that you should not have to work a 40-hour week and still be living in poverty and then have to rely on the government for food stamps and Medicaid," St. Sabina's Rev. Michael Pfleger said. Watch:

Representatives of Southside Organizing for Unity and Liberation (SOUL) pointed out today that, while they agree with Ald. Howard Brookins Jr. (21st Ward) that jobs are sorely needed in their communities, they take issue with the notion that any jobs -- particularly those with poverty wages --  will suffice.

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For months, the good folks at the Chicago-based Interfaith Worker Justice and elected officials like Rep. Phil Hare have been leading the fight to protect low-wage workers from wage theft. Unfortunately, it's not the only type of abuse many low-income Americans face on the job. Based on a survey of 4,387 workers in New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago, a new study (PDF) released yesterday by 11 labor scholars and social scientists found that prevailing labor protections "are failing significant numbers of workers."

How many? Sixty-eight percent of the workers interviewed said they experienced at least one pay violation in the previous work week, ranging from unpaid overtime, to pay rates below the minimum wage, to being pressured not to file workers’ compensation claims. Out of a typical weekly salary of $339, surveyed laborers were cheated out of $51, equal to a substantial 15 percent pay deduction.

The authors recommend strengthening government enforcement of employment and labor laws -- something Labor Secretary Hilda Solis is attempting to do by bolstering the staggeringly gutted Wage and Hour Division -- and establishing equal status for immigrant workers. Most importantly, they urge lawmakers to "update legal standards for the 21st century workplace."

No force can better protect against exploitation than unions. The nation's labor laws should more easily allow workers the opportunity to organize if they so choose. Evidence suggests they would.

With the closure of Moline's Quad City Die Casting Plant just days away, the union representing the 100 laid-off workers is fighting the company's management and its main creditor, Wells Fargo, for refusing to pay out earned vacation pay and health insurance benefits to the staff. A spokesperson for Wells Fargo told the Quad City Times on Monday that the lender isn't responsible for the decision. "The issues raised today about pay and benefits, however, are between management, the union and the employees," wrote Angie Kaipust in an e-mailed statement. "Wells Fargo does not decide how a company should meet its obligations to its union members." Gov. Pat Quinn and U.S. Senate candidate Alexi Giannoulias disagree.

In statements today, both castigated Wells Fargo and the Quad City owners for failing to meet their legal obligations. Here's Quinn:

"The workers can easily be paid for all these benefits from only a portion of what Wells Fargo & Co. expects to collect upon disposing of Quad City Die Casting's assets.  I strongly support the workers of QCDC.  I urge the CEO and senior managers Wells Fargo & Co. to do what is right and pay these employees for their well-deserved benefits."

Giannoulias, who was involved in the Hartmarx labor struggle this spring, agreed with Quinn, adding that Wells Fargo needs to "make the equitable and right decision to pay these dedicated workers what they are owed."