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posted by janrinok on Monday December 08 2014, @06:49PM   Printer-friendly
from the consumers-with-more-money-to-spend dept.

NPR (formerly National Public Radio) reports:

By a 44-5 vote, Chicago's City Council set a minimum-wage target of $13 an hour, to be reached by the middle of 2019. The move comes after Illinois passed a nonbinding advisory last month that calls for the state to raise its minimum pay level to $10 by the start of next year.

The current minimum wage in Chicago and the rest of Illinois is $8.25. Under the ordinance, the city's minimum wage will rise to $10 by next July and go up in increments each summer thereafter.

[...]The bill states that "rising inflation has outpaced the growth in the minimum wage, leaving the true value of lllinois' current minimum wage of $8.25 per hour 32 percent below the 1968 level of $10.71 per hour (in 2013 dollars)."

It also says nearly a third of Chicago's workers, or some 410,000 people, currently make $13 an hour or less.

[...][In the 2014] midterm elections, voters in Alaska, Arkansas, Nebraska, and South Dakota approved binding referendums that raise their states' wage floor above the federal minimum.

Media Matters for America notes that The Chicago Tribune's coverage tried to trot out the *job-killer* dead horse once again, to which the response was

According to a March 2014 report(PDF) prepared for the Seattle Income Inequality Advisory Committee titled "Local Minimum Wage laws: Impacts on Workers, Families, and Businesses", city-wide minimum wage increases in multiple locations--Albuquerque, NM; Santa Fe, NM; San Francisco, CA; and Washington, DC--produced "no discernible negative effects on employment" and no measurable job shift from metropolitan to suburban areas.

Related:

Seattle Approves $15 Minimum Wage

Mayor's Minimum Wage Veto Overridden by San Diego City Council

States That Raised Their Minimum Wages Are Experiencing Faster Job Growth

 
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 08 2014, @11:30PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 08 2014, @11:30PM (#123929)

    You know, I may live in a different country (New Zealand) but every single thing you list as "If you have a minimum wage this happens..." absolutely occurs with my employer.

    They pay us minimum wage, and steal a chunk of it back.

    We work at least 45 minutes for free every week, that's when my employer doesn't choose to steal my wages to cover his budget. Some of us have worked more than 10 hours a week unpaid overtime.

    They refuse to pay for public holidays, which we are entitled to be paid for, and won't pay for more than 40 hours a week regardless of how much work they give you.

    All of this is in violation of the law. There is a catch, though: approximately a third of our regular staff are unpaid (volunteer) staff.

    But one assumption that you're making is that if we had no minimum wage all would be well, and people would be paid what they're worth. This is wrong.

    I don't know what it's like in America, but in New Zealand if we're on unemployment we are contractually obligated to accept any job offered to us, no matter what the pay rate, no matter what the conditions.

    If we had no minimum wage, my employer - and the bulk of employers in my city, Dunedin - would offer just a couple of bucks an hour. I know this, because I've been (indirectly) privy to senior management meetings where they were plotting the best ways to rip off employees.

    Hell, they hired one of our current staff members because he's already independently wealthy so he wouldn't complain if they demanded overtime without pay.

    My previous employer demanded 50 hours a week, minimum, but only paid me for 40 (and it was above minimum wage).

    Minimum wage is a safety net to stop the sociopaths running businesses from paying less than it costs to live, transferring the remainder of the costs to the state unemployment benefit.

  • (Score: 2) by Immerman on Monday December 08 2014, @11:44PM

    by Immerman (3985) on Monday December 08 2014, @11:44PM (#123940)

    So, is there no place to drop an anonymous tip to get the place investigated for such illegal practices?

    Why even have a law on the books if it has no teeth?

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 09 2014, @12:09AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 09 2014, @12:09AM (#123953)

    Just sayin'...

    -- gewg_