In the photo below, you see several people celebrating economic suicide. They are cheering the decision by the Chicago City Council to force Wal-Mart and Target to pay a significantly higher hourly wage to their employees than anybody else has to pay (Sears, Home Depot and Bloomingdale's will also be affected). So, Wal-Mart for sure, and maybe Target, also, will concentrate their stores in the "suburban" areas. You know, where all the rich folks live. The ordinance, if allowed to stand by Mayor Daley and the courts, may drive those retailers out of Chicago also.
That would mean that the poorer inner-city residents will have to pay the current 15 to 30 percent higher prices at Jewel and Dominick's. Wal-Mart's plan is to now ring the city with supercenters. The less affluent inner-city customers will have to spend more in $3.00 per gallon gasoline to travel to and from these supercenters if they wish to avoid these higher prices and will not have first pick of the thousands of new jobs that the stores and distribution centers will offer.
The council vote was 35-14. If Mayor Daley vetoes the ordinance, 34 votes are enough to override his veto. If that should happen, the retailers will then go to court to challenge the constitutionality of the ordinance. They've got some ammo on their side since, just last week, U.S. District Judge J. Frederick Motz put the kabosch on a similar state law in Maryland. The federal judge ruled that the Maryland Fair Share Health Care Act, more commonly known as the “Wal-Mart bill,” violated the federal Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974, which sets minimum health plan standards for private businesses.
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TAGS: Wal-Mart
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