It’s an urban/rural race to the top of the pay scale for minimum-wage workers

I was amused to learn that the City Council will likely be considering a measure that would boost the minimum wage for workers at Chicago-based companies.

Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed off on $15 by 2025; will we see demand for $15 by 2021?

The measure in question by 4^th Ward Alderman Sophia King wants to see the minimum wage – currently $13 an hour – rise up to $15 by the year 2021.

WHAT’S THE BIG deal? Illinois law already calls for increases in the minimum wage, with the General Assembly just this year passing a bill that boosts the minimum pay to that $15 hourly rate by the year 2025.

If the city does nothing, that $15 rate eventually will be achieved. It will apply to employees of Chicago-based companies just as much as those of companies based elsewhere in the state.

Yet King argues that the city needs to have a higher pay scale, so to speak, than other parts of Illinois, because the city has a higher cost of living than other parts of the state.

It’s important, King argues, that Chicago reach the $15 hourly rate for adults stuck working in menial jobs before everyone else in the state. Thereby making it a race to the top of the scale between those working in Chicago and those working elsewhere – which usually is more a matter of where one happens to live.

NOW I’LL ADMIT that in some aspects, urban life carries a higher price tag.

Although I also know of people who insist that suburban life is more expensive. Often these are the people who live their lives in parts of the city that those with more significant incomes can choose to avoid living in.

They say that a move to the suburbs would wind up being too costly.

More often than not, they’re likely to be the individuals who most likely are forced to eke out an existence on an income based on a minimum-wage job – often doing some sort of scut-work that those of us with opportunities can avoid having to do.

KING: Pushing for minimum wage raise for Chgo?

SO IS IT really the case that a Chicago worker needs a higher minimum-wage pay rate than someone elsewhere in Illinois? It doesn’t really matter how low a cost-of-living rate is in a community.

Truth be told, a minimum wage isn’t going to stretch that far. Even at a $15 hourly rate, one is not going to “live like a king” if they’re stuck laboring at a job that many people would associate with a teenager who’s never had a job before in their lives.

Who, by the way, would not be impacted by these increases in minimum-wage rates. Companies will still be able to pay those workers less -- $4.25 an hour, if under 20.

Which makes me wonder if an increase in the minimum wage rate (an issue that is popular amongst a certain type of person with activist mentality) will only result in more teenagers getting hired.

WE’LL GO BACK to walking into a fast-food franchise and seeing pimply-faced teens trying to earn spending money, rather than a middle-aged person whose job skills are such that they have few other options in life.

I do realize labor is labor. A job is a job – particularly since there have been points in my own work life that I did jobs whose only real purpose was to bring in a paycheck, no matter how minimal. There was nothing noble about the work – other than it brought in an honest income that enabled some bills to be paid.

Will minimum wage fight shift to City Hall?

But I wonder what happens come the mid-2020s when Illinois’ minimum wage rate reaches $15 – some four years after Chicago. Will city-based workers wind up demanding yet another raise in their rates?

Will we become too accustomed to city-based people in menial jobs having to be paid just a tad extra than those elsewhere doing identical work, leading to the urban-rural brawl of the future!

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Republicans ought to stifle their trash talk about overly partisan political acts

“Illinois House Democrats had a chance to govern differently and compromise, … but they failed. Like the Senate Democrats, they chose to ram through this costly and short-sighted piece of legislation just so they could make good on a vacuous campaign slogan.” Also, “Governor Pritzker has one last chance to show he really meant it when he said he wanted to compromise and take bipartisan action on major issues facing the state.

“We hope he follows through, but we aren’t holding our breath.”

  -0-

Will Pritzker or Trump (below) … 

That was part of the official partisan rhetoric, issued in the name of Illinois GOP spokesman Aaron DeGroot, in the moments after the General Assembly completed the vote Thursday on a measure that will gradually raise the minimum wage for Illinois to $15 an hour.

Republicans were p-o’ed, even they were in no position to halt the measure, which was a significant part of the Democratic Party rhetoric of what they’d do if they won election. With the veto-proof majority, they can ram it through, and there’s nothing that Republican partisans can do but whine.

SO I CAN’T help but feel nothing but contempt for such rhetoric considering that the same people who are demanding there be bipartisanship and that Republicans be included in the process most likely are the biggest supporters of President Donald Trump’s “national emergency” declaration on Friday.

One can argue that Democrats acted as heavy-handed as did Trump, but there is one major difference.

Illinois voters picked a heavy slant to the General Assembly that approved the minimum-wage measure, and a governor will sign off on the measure some time likely next week.

… wind up the bigger political victor?

Whereas Congress made it damned well clear they weren’t going to do a thing that would support any of Trump’s nonsense-talk about the need to erect barricades along the U.S./Mexico border – which now has an $8 billion price tag attached to it.

THIS MEASURE MEANT to result in erection of a border barricade so as to keep the foreign elements out of our society is the ultimate example of strong-arm political tactics meant to ignore the will of a majority of the people – who’d rather see this whole idea wither away.

As for doing something “solely to make good on a vacuous campaign slogan,” I’d have to argue that everything Donald Trump has tried doing has been nothing more than trying to fulfill his lame slogans.

Particularly when it comes to anything related to federal immigration policy or Latin America. Trump is determined to be the president of xenophobes, with the rest of our society having to just shut up and tolerate their ignorant view of what our world should be like.

So excuse me for thinking that the president’s live statement about a “national emergency” was just a whole lot of hooey. One that it wouldn’t shock me to learn upset many morning television viewers because its broadcast pre-empted “Let’s Make a Deal.”

NOW I’M SURE some are going to jump all over my minimum wage boost and the thought that Republicans can only whine about it, by trying to claim the Democratic opposition to Trump’s immigration thoughts are equally lame.

Which issue gets people riled up more: border barricades … 

But seeing that not even Republicans in Congress really wanted to be bothered with this particular issue (largely because they took the political hit for using it to shut down government operations last month), it’s obvious the only person who perceives a “national emergency” is The Donald himself.

In fact, I get my amusement these days from the pundits who say that the only “national emergency” our nation faces is the Trump presidency itself.

It will be interesting to see how quickly and thoroughly the courts ultimately interfere with any such border barricade from being build. And for those who have a problem with that happening, keep in mind that the judicial branch of government’s very purpose is to interfere every time government officials get stupid and try to over-step their bounds.

OF COURSE, IT also will be interesting to see how the raising of minimum wages progresses from state to state.

… or minimal pay for the impoverished?

Illinois will be far ahead of many other states in terms pay the minimum pay its workers can get. Many are like Indiana, our neighbor, which clings to the $7.25 per hour rate that is the federal standard.

Indiana’s Legislature has contemplated raises to the $15 per hour standard, but has always thwarted then in blatantly-political fashion. But is the gradual increase to $15 in Illinois by 2025 going to result in the Hoosier State and other like-minded states being forced to follow suit?

With the courts eventually trampling all over Trump’s narrow vision of our society, will the ultimate outcome of this Age of Trump be a whole lot of failed initiatives that withered away in their own pile of ignorance?

  -30-

EXTRA: Minimum wage continues to rise for fortunate few who work in Chi

I have known of teenagers who live in Indiana in the areas just along the state line with Illinois who always made a point of getting those summer jobs on our side of State Line Road. Illinois’ minimum wage is slightly higher – meaning more money in the paycheck.

The Wendy's and Popeye's fast food franchises located across the street pay better than this Indiana-based business

Now, the gap is going to become even larger. What with the city’s minimum wage continuing to rise so that anybody fortunate enough to get a job within the city limits will be able to claim significantly more money.

THE MEASURE THE City Council approved several years ago to boost the state-mandated minimum wage that must be paid to people working for Chicago-based companies took another rise on Sunday.

The first of July resulted in the Chicago minimum wage rising to $12 per hour – much higher than the $8.25 minimum wage called for by any company based elsewhere in Illinois.

Including those suburban places right up against the city limits. Or those places in Indiana that are right up against the East Side and Hegewisch neighborhoods of Chicago. Because the Indiana minimum wage remains the same as the federal level of $7.25 per hour.

Could it be that our very own businesses will be able to claim better-qualified workers because they’ll attract workers with their higher wage? And yes, I know that the Chicago minimum wage law is geared toward adult workers who are stuck in lower-paying jobs – teens can still be paid less.

Menial labor heads west TO Illinois

BUT I COULDN’T help but notice the study released Monday by the Illinois Economic Policy Institute and the Project for Middle Class Renewal. The University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign-based academics say the increased salaries haven’t caused the harm that some feared. The idea that having to pay workers more would cost businesses financially.

Not quite the labor force

“As minimum wages in Chicago have increased, private sector business growth has kept pace – and in some cases exceeded – that of suburbs where the minimum wage didn’t change,” the study says, also pointing out that unemployment in the city proper has dropped slightly more than in the suburbs.

It will be intriguing to see how this trend continues, since the same City Council ordinance continues to take effect on July 1, 2019 – when the minimum wage rises to $13 per hour. As for those people who argue higher minimum wages will result in more menial jobs being done by machines, I’d argue those employers will want to mechanize their labor forces even if the minimum wage was reduced.

Political people, meanwhile, continue to argue for and against the idea of a $15 per hour minimum wage as a standard across the nation. An idea that will cause much arguing amongst our politicos – while they make me wonder how much better things are now, since I still recall my own teenaged days of a $3.35 per hour minimum wage.

  -30-

No budget? No surprise! Election Day 2018 can’t arrive soon enough

The Illinois General Assembly managed to wrap up its springtime activity this week. Well, sort of.

At times it seems like the Illinois Legislature paid more attention and time to developing the Chicago White Sox' current ballpark, compared to their efforts the last two years to get a budget for state government

The Wednesday night adjournment date came and went without much of even a token effort to appear to be passing a budget for state government’s upcoming fiscal year.

THEORETICALLY, OUR GOVERNMENT officials could concoct something within the next month and a budget could be in place when the Illinois Fiscal Year 2018 begins on July 1. But it’s not likely. We’re going into Year Three without a balanced budget on the books for Illinois government operations.

It was fairly early in the day on Wednesday when Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan’s minions let it be known there would be no vote, and no last-minute efforts to try to concoct a deal. This wasn’t going to be like the end of 1988 when the potential loss of the Chicago White Sox to St. Petersburg, Fla., motivated our officials into approving a stadium deal that didn’t get enacted until the final seconds of the final day.

We learned there will be hearings throughout the month of June at locations across the state – beginning with Thursday at the Thompson Center state government building.

Gov. Bruce Rauner was quick to dismiss the idea of budget hearings as a sham, saying that if there was a real chance of getting a budget, such hearings would have been held throughout the spring.

RAUNER: Retaliatory vetoes on unrelated issues?

YOU KNOW, HE’S right.

I have no doubt that the Illinois House hearings to be held this month will turn into sessions where the name of Rauner is taken in vain. They won’t put us any closer to having a deal that details just how much money can be spent on the operations of various government programs.

But then again, I’m realistic enough to know that so long as Rauner is insisting on dragging various unrelated issues into the budget process for politically-partisan reasons, nothing is going to happen.

MADIGAN: Leading the Rauner bashing?

I suppose Madigan and House Democrats (who still have a solid majority and full control of that chamber) could have gone the Illinois Senate route and passed some measure that claimed to be a budget – even though they knew no one else was ready to sign off on it.

YEAH, DOING SUCH a thing could have placed full blame for the lack of a state budget on the governor. But then again, there already are enough reasons for people to blame Bruce Rauner for the chaos that has become of our state.

Looking for ways to add to the juvenile behavior doesn’t put us any closer to having a budget deal. And I doubt it really sways the public’s view of the situation.

The people willing to “Blame Madigan!!!” for the situation aren’t going to be swayed by fact. The scenario whose focus is the 2018 election cycle is set, and the real solution to our fiscal situation most likely is to wish that we could somehow hold that Election Day more quickly than the 17 months we’re going to have to wait.

So perhaps it was best that our legislators spent the final official days of their session tending to other issues – such as the TRUST Act meant to impose the immigration reform ideals of a “sanctuary city” on communities across Illinois and an increase to $15 per hour for a statewide minimum wage.

IT KEPT OUR legislators’ minds occupied with something that might have some positive benefits for the people of Illinois. Although I wonder if the hostility created by the lack of a budget is now going to be enough to start killing off other ideas.

Gloom and doom continues to linger over Illinois Statehouse

Including the popular-amongst-labor-groups idea of raising the minimum wage. Since when has Rauner cared about doing anything to benefit their interests?

And as for TRUST? I can easily see a beleaguered Rauner not wanting to even think about immigration policy.

So what are we likely to see Thursday when our legislators resume their government activity? Probably not much of anything; we’d probably be better off focusing our attention on the White Sox’ game that night against Tampa Bay.

  -30-

Illinois likely will have to set common standard for all for minimum wage

The Cook County Board a couple of months ago voted to gradually increase the minimum wage for suburban-based companies to pay their employees, hoping in part it could jolt the Illinois General Assembly into taking action.

Yet it seems that all that has been created is a certain level of uncertaintly – that and a sense that Cook County could become a checkerboard, of sorts, of having to keep track which municipalities require their businesses to pay better than others.

FOR WHILE THE county board imposed a standard that will gradually increase the minimum wage in Cook County to $13 per hour by 2020 (similar to the already-enacted Chicago City Council measure that boosts the minimum wage from the current $8.50 by 2019), it would seem there are places that just don’t want to go along.

Earlier this month, city officials in Oak Forest (a southwestern suburb near Orland Park and all those shopping malls) passed a measure opting out of the county-enacted minimum wage requirement.

Local officials weren’t eager to spew all kinds of hostile rhetoric against paying workers a decent wage (although the argument can be made that some types of work aren’t worth as much as others). But their votes to opt-out spoke loud enough.

Although it contrasts with the actions of Calumet City, a suburb that borders up both against Chicago proper and the Illinois/Indiana state line (it also happens to be the community I lived in while growing up).

THERE, CITY OFFICIALS voted to create a referendum question for the April 4 municipal election ballot.

Voters in Calumet City will not only pick a mayor and aldermen (most likely returning long-time officeholder Michelle Markiewicz Qualkinbush as mayor even though state Rep. Thaddeus Jones, D-Calumet City, is contemplating challenging her), they will decide “yes” or “no” on whether the minimum wage ought to go up to $15.

Which, by the way, is the dollar figure that activists across the country are calling for in their own efforts to try to make jobs at Burger King or Wal-mart into something that a person could earn a living at – instead of just taking in some extra money.

The Chicago-based Centro de Trabajadores Unidos issued a statement Tuesday praising the south suburb for taking their action, and even including provisions that the minimum wage would apply to all workers – including those in the restaurant industry.

CONSIDERING THAT I had a mother who, for the bulk of her life worked jobs either as a waitress or cashier (the best job she ever had was her last, as a supermarket cashier because it provided her a health insurance package along with her minimum wage salary), I’m fully aware of how restaurants don’t have to pay their help much.

The argument is made that the waitresses get money in their pockets in the form of tips, which is the reason why I always make sure to leave a respectable gratuity for the people who serve me. And look down on those people who try to claim they’re making a profound statement by not tipping – even though all it really means is they’re cheap!

Now I don’t know how the residents of my former home city will vote on this referendum (or if they’ll be like many other municipality voters and decide this election cycle isn’t worth their time). But I wonder how many people would express some support for this issue – if given the chance to comment.

Because I’m also sure that Oak Forest-expressed attitude, which was largely influenced by the city’s chamber of commerce, is coming from businesses that will view a higher salary as merely a blow to their financial bottom line.

SINCE I’M AWARE of other municipalities that have also considered an opt-out – Elk Grove Village, Barrington, Prospect Heights, Arlington Heights, Barrington Hills, Palatine, Wheeling and Rosemont all either have, or are considering, taking similar actions.

Hence, the checkerboard – as in people who have to rely on such work for anything resembling an income will have to keep track of “good” towns to work in and “bad” ones. While I’m sure some small businesses will insist on locating in the latter to bolster themselves financially without having to invest more in their interests.

Which sounds more like a case for confusion across Cook County – accounting for almost half of Illinois’ population when Chicago proper is included. It really is an issue our state Legislature will have to address.

Except that we have the partisan conditions that prevent our state from even approving itself a proper operating budget and a governor claiming his delay is in the name of economic “reform” – I can already hear his objections to the idea of paying the hired help so much as a dime more in salary and this issue being added to the list of grievances the state has.

  -30-

When it comes to $13 minimum wage; we won’t pay, some communities say!

I wasn’t the least bit surprised to stumble across a story published by the Daily Herald newspaper in the northwestern suburbs – one that says some communities are planning to resist the recent effort by the Cook County Board to impose a higher minimum wage for the suburbs.
 

PRECKWINKLE: Some don't want to honor wage boost

The Chicago City Council already has enacted a plan that will gradually boost the minimum wage for companies based in the city up to $13 an hour by the year 2019.

IT WOULD SEEM that county board commissioners didn’t like appearing to be cheapskates by comparison to aldermen in the city.

So last week, they approved their own measure that will impose annual increases in the minimum wage through 2020 – by which time it also will be $13 an hour.

Currently, the minimum wage is $8.50 – which already is above the $7.25 hourly rate that is required by the federal government.

Meaning that people who work crummy jobs in Illinois already get paid a little bit more than their counterparts in other states – particularly Indiana, where it is noticeable that someone working as a fry cook in Hammond gets less than someone doing the same job at a Burger King based in the Hegewisch neighborhood.

SOME SEE THIS as a good thing. Our workers are getting paid better. Others are more than willing to look at it as the ultimate of stupidity – our companies have to pay more for the same low-skilled labor, and it cuts into their bottom line.

After all, the basic rule of business is that anything that cuts into the profit margin is bad. Very, very bad!!!

That explains the Daily Herald report, which indicates that officials in Barrington, Elk Grove Village and Prospect Heights are seriously looking at ways they can legally exempt themselves from the spirit of the Cook County Board’s action.

Which is that minimum wage workers in those municipalities don’t have to receive the same pay as workers in other communities. For all I know, they may wish they could get out of paying the state minimum wage and try to comply with the federal pay rate.

NOW I’M NOT aware they’re going to try for that. Something like that is probably their ultimate fantasy that they can only wish for.

But it doesn’t surprise me to learn that some companies are fully capable of thinking of their labor as an entity that cuts into their profit margin – rather than being a necessary expense that enables them to make money.

That is, unless the company is poorly managed and the executives ought to be replaced. Then again, it’s probably easier for them to think it’s the workers’ fault – they’re making too much money.

What I expect these municipalities (and there may well be more in other parts of Cook County) to argue is that the county board merely governs the unincorporated parts of Cook County. Businesses located in areas that are not a part of any specific municipality would have to comply with the county’s rules.

THEN AGAIN, SUCH parts of the county usually are isolated and don’t have much in the way of business located within them. Which means that the county board clearly meant to impact suburban municipalities with its efforts.

But we’re going to hear a lot about “home rule” that gives local governments the authority to set their own policy on assorted issues. We may even get the General Assembly involved in trying to pass some convoluted measures that would give specific communities the right to get around this issue. My own experience of covering Cook County government is that there are those people who believe its authority to do anything is so very restricted – even though it potentially can impact people the most in their daily lives.

The fact is that people are going to have to decide just how much they care about the ability of someone whose lot in life sticks them with low-skilled jobs to be able to earn an income that they can actually live upon.

The simple fact is that the person ringing up the cash register when you order that salad at McDonald’s may be about the most invisible individual you encounter – unless you take into account the person who has to mop up the floor after you leave.

  -30-

Ooh, I feel sooooooo special!

I’m still chuckling from the sight of my mail on Friday.

In addition to something from AT&T, I got a letter from the Democratic National Committee, along with a survey I’m supposed to fill out that is supposed to aid President Barack Obama and party leaders in Congress to figure out what their policies should be through the end of 2016.

AT WHICH POINT, we’ll have a new president whom I’m sure could care less what Obama thinks about anything – regardless of what political party they’re from.

Do we really have political leaders who have no sense of self that they need to be told what to think? That doesn’t say much for their sense of self; particularly since I believe government officials ultimately ought to do what they believe is right.

If that action winds up costing them re-election in the future, then so be it. You can’t please everybody, and I don’t trust someone with no sense of what they believe.

But should I be honored that, according to a letter signed by Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., I am one of a “select group of party leaders from around the nation” whose opinion is being sought?

THEN AGAIN, LET’S be real. The survey with 15 questions and some space for comments has a conclusion that brings to view the real purpose of this survey – a solicitation for campaign contributions.

For as little as $25, I can become a member of the Democratic National Committee, although a little asterisk tells me that the preferred donation is $35 or more. Perhaps in excess of $100.

WASSERMAN SCHULTZ: My ideas, or my $

Does this mean that my opinion only counts if I’m willing to cough up my checkbook, or provide access to a Visa, MasterCard, American Express or Discover card?

Yes, I am inherently cheap. I reluctantly spend money. I’m still recovering from the several hundred dollars I shelled out this week to purchase a new laptop computer – my old one frizzled out after having its keyboard hit with one of the most devastating substances known to computer equipment.

COCA COLA!!! AS in the real thing, and not one of the non-caffeine, non-caloried alternatives.

OBAMA: Does he really want my thoughts?

So since I’m not willing to make out a check to the party (I may be politically interested, but that doesn’t extend to donating money to candidates. Which isn’t an act of political speech, no matter what the conservative ideologues think – although that’s a topic for another day), my guess is that the party won’t be terribly interested in having me fill out their survey.

Although to tell you the truth, anybody who has ever read this weblog would already know what I think of many of the issues they’re trying to bring up.

I’d say “yes” to whether I agree with Obama’s plan to use executive action on issues ignored by Republicans, such as immigration reform. It may be political hardball by the president, but the GOP is playing its own hardball. It’s nice to see Obama try to address an issue whose resolution really is long-overdue.

I’M ACTUALLY “UNDECICED” about increasing the federal minimum wage (because it’s likely Illinois will remain better than the national average) because I could see how someone forced to live at the minimum wage is going to be struggling, no matter how much they’re paid.

As for whether Republicans/Tea Party types will consider cooperating with Obama during the next two years, or continue with political obstruction, I’d have to mark the option saying the GOP will “escalate their obstruction efforts.” Then again, I can see how such a question is worded in a way that would make people think the Democrats aren’t exactly interested in bipartisan cooperation.

EMANUEL: Nation following our lead on higher ed?

Those are just a few of the points Dems want us to think about in their survey. Although I have to admit to finding some humor in the question about whether I support the Obama initiative encouraging community college education for all who are interested.

That’s so similar to what Mayor Rahm Emanuel has offered in Chicago (free tuition to any Chicago Public School graduate with a “B” average or better) that I wonder how long it will be before Rahm takes credit and accuses the president of ripping off his idea for the nation.

  -30-

What should minimum wage be, & would I take the job no matter what?

As much as I want to believe I support the concept of people who actually have to work for a living, I have to confess to feeling a little squeamish about the ongoing battle to bolster the minimum wage for fast food workers.

Yes, I can recall the time in my life (about three decades ago) when I worked such jobs – and I can recall an era when my take-home pay was based off a $3.30 hourly rate.

THAT WAS THE minimum wage back in the early-to-mid 1980s when I was in high school and college (usually trying to concoct a stash of cash so that when I went back to campus in the fall, I’d have some money to be able to subsist on.

Life is more than just classes and paying those fees for books. The fact that I had a memorable college experience was due to the trash work I did back then – literally handling the types of jobs at time that led me to smell like assorted cold cuts and be permanently repulsed by the sight and texture of head cheese.

I can recall working at a Subway sandwich franchise, then later in a delicatessen – learning how to achieve the perfectly-sliced piece of genoa salami – six or eight of which go with a nice slice of cheese to make a quickie sandwich that can tide over one’s appetite.

I did that for my $3.30 per hour, which could come to about $200 every couple of weeks. Which makes me fortunate that I didn’t have to rely on such a low income to actually cover all my life’s daily expenses.

SO WHEN I learn that the minimum wage in Illinois has reached levels of $8.25 (a dollar more than the federally-mandated level and also the minimum wage that scut work employees for Indiana-based companies get) and that there are people who want to raise it to between $10 and $13 per hour, I almost get envious.

It’s almost enough to make me wish I could have got that kind of money back when I had to resort to such work. Then I remember the kind of tedious, mind-numbing labor I had to do to get that money, and I feel fortunate that I’m not in a position where I have to do such labor.

These thoughts have popped into my head in recent days in learning that some employees of McDonalds (a company I never worked for, but I had one cousin who literally wore those polyester jump suit-like outfits they wore back in the day while asking, “Do you want fries with that?”) are getting $1 per hour raises.

I’m not going to begrudge anybody who can get a little more money, since even at the higher rate, nobody is going to get rich being a grill operator at McDonalds. Not unless you can pull off the Willie Wilson (remember him, the former mayoral candidate) saga of scraping together your pennies and buying a franchise of your own.

ACTUALLY, IT’S ONLY going to be the McDonald’s employees at the company-owned stores who get the higher pay rates. Those who work at franchises that are privately-owned (which are the bulk of them) will continue to get their current rate of pay.

But the idea that someone trying to make sure they don’t burn themselves from the oil of frying the French fries pulling in nearly $10 back when I would have been paid $3.30 for the same work seems a bit surreal.

Then again, I’m old enough to remember when picking up the two major newspapers meant plunking down two quarters – NOT the $2.50 it costs now for anyone who still feels compelled to pick them both up!

Somehow, it sounds like an overpay – even though like I already wrote, I wouldn’t trade places with those workers to get their higher rate of money.

IT MAKES ME feel good that the closest I come to such fast food fare is when I stop off at a Subway if I have to eat on the run because I have some sort of news-related assignment somewhere.

I developed my taste for the “spicy Italian” sandwich back when I learned to make them with 10 slices of genoa salami and 12 slices of pepperoni per foot-long sandwich while raking in the big bucks that went along with the free sandwich I was permitted to make myself each shift I worked.

  -30-

Is this the Dem rebuttal to Rauner minimum wage hike ‘proposal?’

Just one day after Gov. Bruce Rauner made known his vision for an increase in Illinois’ minimum wage, the state Senate gave him the political equivalent of a certain vulgar gesture involving the middle digit.

The Senate, with a Democratic supermajority large enough to override any future gubernatorial veto, gave its approval on Thursday to a bill by state Sen. Kimberly Lightford, D-Maywood, that provides for an increase in the $8.25 an hour minimum wage that now exists in Illinois.

UNDER THE LIGHTFORD proposal, the minimum wage would increase to $9 this year, then go up another 50 cents per year each year through 2019. By the end of Rauner’s current term as governor, Illinois would have a minimum wage of $11 per hour.

That differs from the minimum wage proposal offered up by Rauner this week when he made his State of the State address. His plan would call for increases of a quarter per year through 2022 and would top off at $10 per hour.

I’m sure he’s going to argue that his rate is still significantly higher than the $7.25 minimum wage rate currently set by the federal government and that applies in surrounding states such as Indiana where local officials have taken no independent action of their own.

But for those people who are arguing that Chicago ought to have a minimum wage rate of around $13 per hour (it was about $3.50 per hour back when I was in high school and worked those kind of jobs so I could have some extra cash), Rauner’s minimum wage talk sounds like an insult!

THAT IS WHY I’m sure Democrats running the Illinois Senate were eager to pass their own idea so quickly after Rauner offered up his idea (which was an improvement from his political talk back during last year’s primary election cycle where he was completely opposed to any increase).

Rauner, a Republican whose wife supposedly has a strong Democratic voting record, used his State of the State to make many proposals and statements that were meant to make Dems squirm.

Or at the very least put them in their place and let them know a full-fledged GOPer is now in control of the executive branch of Illinois government.

So in that context, the Democratic Party response from their people in the Illinois Senate makes total sense – Dems are reminding Rauner that the executive branch is merely one part of state government. They are the legislative branch, and will have to be listened to.

THAT ULTIMATELY IS what will determine just how ugly the next four years will be for state government officials.

If Rauner tempers his Republican rhetoric on issues like “right to work” or anything meant to single out organized labor to realize he has a legitimate opposition to negotiate with, he’s going to find that people like Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, D-Chicago, and Mayor Rahm Emanuel will be sympathetic.

They may even secretly find some of his ideas desirable (no one of sense mistakes Madigan or Emanuel for a liberal) and will appreciate Rauner’s willingness to be the “front man” for ideas that more liberal elements of the Democratic Party will abhor.

But if Rauner thinks he’s going to be the “CEO of Illinois government” who gets to bark orders at subordinates – who are then expected to blindly follow his lead and carry them out at risk of having their employment terminated – then he will find that Thursday’s state Senate action was merely the first of many.

HIS ADMINISTRATION MAY wind up setting records for the most measures it had overridden by the General Assembly!

One key to this particular issue is to keep Madigan and the Illinois House of Representatives in mind. House Democrats have not committed themselves to do anything with the minimum wage.

In fact, it was their opposition to do anything last year that prevented departing Gov. Pat Quinn from being able to claim a pay raise for minimum wage workers as his final government achievement. Thursday’s vote may be the end of public discussion on this issue until the two sides can actually reach agreement in the distant future.

Or it could turn out to be the first of many political obscene gestures the Legislature will direct at this governor if they think he’s getting “out of line” with the public’s desires.

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Bruce Rauner: A 'bad man,' or a 'protector' of Illinois interests?

We’re going to be able to quarrel for months to come over how badly Gov. Bruce Rauner hurt his public perception with his actions Friday afternoon.

What he did was rescinded eight executive orders that now-former Gov. Pat Quinn approved in his final hours in office Monday morning. It shouldn’t be a shock; Rauner has publicly said he’d like to rescind everything Quinn did in the final two months he was in office.

BUT THOSE ACTIONS by Quinn were described at the time of their approval as potential landmines for the new governor – if he were to refuse to let them remain in place, he’d be exposing himself to be a politically partisan hack in his own right.

Some believed Rauner might feel compelled to just let the acts remain in place to avoid public criticism. Then again, those are probably the same people who believe that every season is “the” season for the Chicago Cubs to succeed.

Which is to say that Rauner is refusing to go along. But how will he take the criticism that inevitably will fall upon him.

For the record, the actions that got rescinded included a provision that anyone working on a project that was a state contract would have to be paid a $10 per hour minimum wage – the rate that Quinn had hoped all workers in Illinois would receive as part of his final act in office.

ALSO, QUINN WANTED all governors to be required to disclose their income levels and other financial interests by publicly revealing their income tax refunds each year while in office.

It shouldn’t be a secret that Rauner would hate either idea.

He is the guy who during his gubernatorial campaign initially opposed any minimum wage increase, then said he might be willing to support something that increased the current $8.25 level IF there also were changes in the law meant to benefit business interests.

Which makes it seem that he’s more interested in measures that organized labor will hate than in trying to do anything to bolster the income level among people who work in this state.

AND AS FOR the tax disclosures, Rauner went through his whole campaign refusing to reveal such information about himself. He wasn’t about to have a turnaround now just because Quinn wanted to make Rauner look bad/foolish/corrupt in the future!

So Rauner showed us just how weak the power of an executive order truly is – it has no permanent standing and can be eliminated at the whim of a future governor.

Which is what all those people praising President Barack Obama’s use of executive orders to impose immigration reform measures ought to keep in mind – nothing is permanent, and ideologues can have their way in the future when (and it will happen eventually) they get their own elected to prominent government posts.

I’m sure Rauner is going to claim now and in the future when he continues to use his authority to repeal acts that have their origins in the Quinn years that he’s protecting the people of Illinois from irresponsible actions taken in the past.

I ALSO EXPECT there are those who are ideologically inclined to want to believe Rauner will be all too eager to claim that he’s just in his actions.

But I wonder how many more people will wind up seeing these repeals as the act of someone eager to use his newly-acquired political power to dominate the public will?

Rauner standing in the way of refusing to bolster the pay of even a few working people? Refusing to reveal his income (because it would show just exactly how out of touch his life is compared to the average working stiff)?

Rauner may wind up wondering if there’s enough Tylenol in all of Illinois to cope with the future headaches he may have provoked for himself.

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Things got done during Quinn administration despite General Assembly preference for inaction

I can already hear the trash talk that will be spewed about Pat Quinn – the governor whose term ends Monday at Noon was a failure who brought down Illinois and whose very existence must be eradicated (along with that of Barack Obama) from history.

They’re the people who literally will be praying that Quinn gets smacked on the behind by the door that closes behind him when he leaves!

NOW ANYBODY WITH sense realizes how over the top that kind of rhetoric is. Because if anything, Quinn was the governor who managed to get a few things done despite the General Assembly’s desire at times to do nothing.

That attitude was most blatant with what Quinn had hoped would be the farewell gesture of his six years as Illinois governor – a significant increase in the minimum wage required of companies that operate in this state.

Anybody who ever claims that Democrats run roughshod over the desires of the people is absurd, and the minimum wage issue is probably Exhibit A in that argument. The Quinn years were nothing like 1995-96 when Republicans dominated state government, and it took the state Supreme Court to strike down the most egregious measures.

There was that referendum question that showed two-thirds of Illinoisans would have supported an increase. Yet the Legislature felt compelled to do nothing. There wasn’t even a token effort made on the issue.

IT IS BECAUSE Democrats, by their nature, are capable of being an ornery lot who can’t get along with themselves. The idea of Quinn leading some plot to impose his own will with a sympathetic Legislature doing his bidding is ridiculous.

It seems some people have watched the City Council way too much. Quinn is not Mayor Rahm Emanuel by any means!

There are the two issues that many political observers are citing as the key parts of the Quinn gubernatorial legacy – abolishing the death penalty in Illinois and actually approving the concept of legitimate marriage for gay couples (rather than having a court strike down the existing laws that banned such marriages).

Yet let’s be honest. Who thinks that Quinn came up with those ideas and gave them to us?

ELIMINATING CAPITAL PUNISHMENT in Illinois was an idea that had lingered for more than a decade since the days of George Ryan. Gay marriage came to other states, including some in the Midwestern U.S., long before it came to the Land of Lincoln.

It was when the Legislature could no longer resist the national trends that they finally acted as they did – and I’m sure there are a few people who believe now that there’s a Republican as governor, it is the first step toward repealing gay marriage and bringing back lethal injection.

Let’s also consider the ample problems our state faces in funding the pension programs maintained for state workers and educators.

How many years was the Legislature willing to ignore all the talk about how severe the debt had grown? How many “drop dead” dates passed before the Legislature finally went along with a Quinn desire.

AND HOW MANY of the legislators are secretly hoping that resolution manages to get shot down by the Supreme Court of Illinois – leaving state government (let alone the city and Cook County government problems that the Legislature also has to address) in just as big a mess as ever.

My own view of Quinn’s “legacy” is that he carried on his mentality of being the gadfly of Illinois government – the pain-in-the-behind who constantly pointed out the problems.

Back in those days, he often was laughed at, if not outright ignored, by legislators – who kept that same mentality in place once he became the head of the state’s executive branch.

I remember one legislator (a Democrat and member in good standing with the black caucus) once telling me that Quinn’s temperament was so quirky that he couldn’t be trusted to stand up in support for them. So they felt no compulsion to support him in return!

SO THAT IS most likely the Quinn “legacy;” not fully appreciated until after he’s gone and we see how much worse things can become (You know they will!).

And that date back in January of 2009 when Quinn entered the state Senate chambers to cheers from legislators in the moments following the impeachment of Rod Blagojevich now feels like it was even more distant in time than the Chicago Cubs’ last World Series title.

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