consider me in. I suffrage "ye...

consider me in.

I suffrage "yes" for the living wage ordinance sponsored by the agency of 49th Ward Ald. Joe Moore. It arrives up before the Chicago City Council this morning amid thundering dispute (This promises to be a terminate and noisy vote.)

And think me in on another matter before the council today. That's the aldermanic require to be paid [i]or[/i] undergone of living pay raise. Believe it or not, I voice "yes" again. But with united caveat I'll get into later. (This will not be a complete vote. Expect it to pass verrrrrrrrry quickly.)

Let's begin with the big-box issue.

As you know, there continues to be a furious fight athwart whether Moore's proposal to require giant retailers as it was as Wal-Mart, Home Depot, Target and other big-box retailers to pay a living wage through 2010. That living wage would be $10 an hour plus another $3 an hour for benefits like health care. It's the kind of pursuit package that only one big-box retailer, Costco has likewise far been progressive enough to provide.

Moore's ordinance would push hourly workers merely barely beyond the poverty start allowing them to make $20800 a year. Hardly a lotto jackpot.

antagonistics most notably the big-box retailers and Mayor Daley, argue that Moore's bill is a terrible idea because it will drive big business, like the soon-to-open West Side Wal-Mart, abroad of the city, leaving poor neighborhoods without passable places to shop and without desperately straited jobs and harming, not helping, the poor.

If you saw all the clan at the mayor's news meeting for consultation Monday, you might get the impression that practically the whole African- American community is united behind him. That's not pure Just ask 4th Ward Ald. Toni Preckwinkle. She is co-sponsoring the living wage ordinance and was in the midst of answering an avalanche of constituent calls onward this issue when we spoke

Preckwinkle is a critic of what she calls "cost shifting" by dint of big corporations. When companies don't pay a livable wage and don't provide benefits, some has to pick up the tab, she said. insert the taxpayers. It is we who underwrite the liberated clinics for the uninsured working poor. It is we who subsidize place of education lunch programs. It is we, not the big companies, who carry the price Our gift to Wal-Mart, with equal reason to speak. The University of Illinois did a thought of the economic effect of this ordinance and argues it will actually save Chicago taxpayers $41 million in social services. That's a haphazard of money.

Oh speaking of a hazard of money, let's pause to remember what the big-box bosse earn while wailing and gnashing their teeth about the high take away from of their hired help. The CEO of Wal-Mart, H lee-side Scott, earned $23 million in 2005 while fireside Depot's Robert Nardelli collected a staggering $200 million in compensation since 2000 according to published reports. I have near suggestions for these guys upon a few places to wound their bloated budgets.

The dire warnings and dark threats that if this ordinance passes, Chicago's inner city will be a barren retail wild is another fiction being peddl according to Ralph Martire, executive director of the Center for Tax and bag Accountability. That's because, says Martire, the big boxe have saturated suburbia and ne modern markets. "Most untapped capacity is in middle and lower- income neighborhoods," he said Tuesday, "$13 billion to $15 billion in untapped retail capacity. It's not the bleak picture that's being painted." Nor was it, says Martire, "in Maryland, San Francisco, Santa Monica, or Santa Fe where the big boxe threatened not to issue . . . they came anyway."

And the adverse economic import of a living wage did not materialize.

although you may strongly disagree, my have a title to view is that Chicago will be a far better city for taking a stand in support a living wage.

however how on Earth, you might ask, can I take the nearest leap? How can I possibly argue Chicago aldermen who already make $98125 ne a boost? Given the never-ending sagas of corruption and the long- lasting stereotype of a Chicago alderman, I know this is a hard barter

further that takes me back to Joe Moore and Toni Preckwinkle as just couple examples of how that stereotype is sometimes unfair. Many aldermen are at the public's beck and call a haphazard more than we think, working a destiny harder than we assume.

in this way I support the pay raise on the other hand with this caveat. Thirty-six of our aldermen, like Moore and Preckwinkle, do the piece of work full time. Fourteen, including the richer-than-God 14th Ward Ald. ed Burke, a private attorney, do not. I say give the pay raise to the full- timers and not the 14 others. At the extremely least, shame them into not taking it.

Whatever happens today onward these two wage proposals, all 50 aldermen are going to have a hard time attending to their be in possession of "cost of living" crisis, if they don't first and foremost, consider a fair and proper wage for their constituents.

e-mail: cmarin@suntimes.com

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