I don't shop at Wal-mart anymore...but I do hope they have to pay!


http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nati ... 6074.story

Stakes are high in 'big box' clash [Chicago Tribune]
Toni Foulkes tells customers there's a reason the cakes she sells at a South Side Jewel store cost more than cakes at Sam's Club. "They don't put love in 'em like I do," she says. "And their employees don't make what I make."

She's on the front lines of a fight to make Chicago the first major city to require retailers like Sam's Club owner Wal-Mart to pay a "living wage" of at least $10 per hour with $3 in benefits by 2010. For her, the struggle comes down to a simple equation: All workers are threatened unless communities hold big corporations accountable for paying better-than-poverty-level wages...

Chicago, with large densely populated neighborhoods barren of major retail outlets, is a promising frontier for the likes of Wal-Mart. Under pressure from Wall Street to expand sales, the nation's biggest employer is targeting urban areas...

"Retailers are never going to love this law," said economist Annette Bernhardt, deputy director of Brennan Center's poverty program. "The question is whether they can afford to live with it, and everything we know about the economics of the industry and Chicago says they can."


Bigger Salaries for Big Box Workers? [In These Times]
Like many people, Pecola Doggett, 56, spent her early working years adjusting to the burgeoning service-sector economy. Whether fielding calls about magazine subscriptions, completing administrative work at local churches or monitoring elections at Chicago City Hall, Doggett earned poverty-level wages and struggled to combat the rising cost of urban living...

Thousands of Chicago service workers may soon join Doggett in the ranks of the economically secure. As In These Times went to press, the Chicago City Council looked poised to pass an ordinance that would require big box retailers located within city limits to pay their employees a living wage...

A success in Chicago would set a precedent for living wage campaigns nationwide. "Chicago is not an anomaly to think that we can force businesses to pay fair wages to its workers," says Ken Snyder, the Grassroots Collaborative coordinator. "The sentiment exists in lots of places."