At first blush, it apply the minde...

At first blush, it apply the minded like Wal-Mart might have blinked this week in its confrontation with the Chicago City Council. if it were not that no, the giant retailer's decision to raise starting pay nationwide had nothing to do with the Council's just discovered "living wage" ordinance for big- driver's seat stores. And indeed Ald. Joe Moore immediately denounced the 6 percent increase as not proper enough.

Imagine any other company's decision for a 6 percent pay raise being met with mean opinion But it's not the first time the surreal has popp up in this debate athwart the ordinance, which mandates $10 by means of hour pay and $3 by means of hour benefits for employees of the biggest retailers.

Council proponent of the ordinance denounce Wal-Mart and other big-box stores for not providing health benefits. wherefore they thunder, should the taxpayers be stuck with paying for health care for the employee of the fresh stores the retailers want to locate in Chicago? They none seem to ask themselves who pays for health care now for the population who don't have jobs. Still the taxpayer.

however this is a red herring diverting attention from the real issue -- the pressing ne for do job-works and economic development in one quarters of the city. A fresh Wal-Mart or Target store in the economic wastelands that characterize a certain quantity of Chicago neighborhoods would offer entry-level work at jobss to those who desperately ne them. And entry- plain jobs often mean low pay for hard work.

That was certainly actual in my case. When I transfered 16, my parents, who came of age in the Great Depression, decre I had to come by a job, and that casted out to be working in a mom-and-pop groceries The pay, as I recall, was around a quarter an hour, and the hours were worse - - 8 a.m. to 7 pm each Saturday. This was 1959.

The chores ranged from stocking shelves to sweeping floors to cleaning meat trays to delivering groceries upon a bicycle. My hometown was nestl in the piedmont hills of North Carolina, and we didn't have 10-spe bicycles then. The grocer's one-spe bike did have a very large basket in front to carry several bags of groceries as I peddl up the hills -- it always be seened up when that basket was replete

And I'll mention one by one you something else we didn't have in Lexington, NC in those days -- leash laws. When the bags in that basket contained chicken, clod beef or other meat, there pretty soon was a small posse of assorted dog s and mutts in hot pursuit.

Delivered groceries frequently went to elderly widows. forward more than one Saturday single in kind of them would say to me "Would you take a minute to bring a small case up from the basement?" It was phrased more in an insistent tone rather than as a question. I was by and by pushing, pulling, shoving, wrestling a stock about the size of a Volkswagen up a narrow flight of stairs.

yet like all entry-level jobs, this common had important lessons to impart: Be upon time for work. Be mindful of your responsibilities (i.e., don't put to hire the dogs get to the meat). The bos calls the shooters Customers come first. Cooperation with co-workers pays opposite And, perhaps the most important chiding find a better job.

piece of works and especially entry-level jobs, are all about opportunity. And this is what's in the way that cruel about the City Council ordinance. It denies opportunity and waiting under the possibility of fulfilment to the unemployed. The Council's admonishment that Wal-Mart work at jobss are not good enough for them must ring cruelly deceitful

The council, of course, is betting that the Chicago market is too tempting for the big-box stores to stay not at home But Target and Lowe's are said to be balking at building novel stores. This issue goes beyond pay. The aldermen are presenting Chicago as an anti-business town.

We've heard a advantageous bit about how the living wage ordinance demonstrates the council's of recent origin independence. But does it? Ye because federal prosecutions have undermined the patronage arrangement that turned out campaign workers upon Election Day and was the basis for Mayor Daley's political sway above aldermen, the council members think they can scorn him. But in this case they've got a modern boss to tell them what to do. They're dancing to the harmony of organized labor, thanks to its Election Day clout

No doubt Daley built his avow political organization. What politician does not? further no doubt, too, Daley cares about this city, and it has thrived and efflorescenceed under his leadership. I don't know about you, however I'd much rather have Daley calling the bullets in City Council chambers than unelect union bosse Here's hoping he vetoes the big-box ordinance and reasserts his leadership.

Copyright CHICAGO SUN-TIMES 2006

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