cheers and jeers

hooray for approximately 70 percent of chicago's city council!

the city council brushed aside warnings from wal-mart stores inc. to approve an ordinance that makes chicago the biggest city in the nation to require big-box retailers to pay a "living wage."

the ordinance, which passed 35-14 wednesday after three hours of impassioned debate, requires mega-retailers to pay wages of at least $10 an hour plus $3 in fringe benefits by mid-2010. It would only apply to companies with more than $1 billion in annual sales and stores of at least 90,000 square feet.

"it's trying to get the largest companies in america to pay decent wages," alderman toni preckwinkle said.

the proposed wage is $3.50/hr more than the minimum wage in illinois and $4.85/hr more than the federal minimum wage, and is, in my opinion, absolutely just, considering wal-mart has an annual profit margin of over $10 billion and top executives earning close to $30 million a year. it's a very sneaky game that store is playing; by keeping its workers so painfully impoverished, it ensures their inability to afford to shop anywhere but wal-mart, thus increasing its profit margins, and so on and so forth in one of the most evil corporate circles in existence today. bad, bad folks, who, despite their sponsored-documentary efforts to convince the american public otherwise, are so far from being on the side of their workers they've more or less circled back up behind them, from which point they can more easily kick them in their benefit-deprived asses:

wal-mart spokesman john bisio said earlier that if the measure passed, "we'd redirect our focus on our suburban strategy and see how we could better serve our city of chicago residents from suburban chicagoland."

in english please, mr. bitchio?

"um, we ain't payin' you suckers shit."

well, that's just rude. and it's shameful that opponents to the wage mandate are probably right in saying it will hurt employment rates in the city rather than improve the lives of those already employed by the company, since wal-mart knows it can set up a ring of stores along the city's borders at which it can carry on in its current unscrupulous fashion, probably without losing a penny in revenue. but if all of illinois were to demand a wage increase from megastores, they'd have to cave, right? there's no way they'd lose an entire state's worth of sales. and once one state had done it, others would work up the courage to join in, until we were living in a coast-to-coast utopian mecca of minimum-wage fairness. don't back down, chicago! stand up and start that wave! i'll be right behind you waving my giant pom poms, which were not purchased from a chain store of any sort.


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