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