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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We get a state budget; legislators get pay raises. Ideologues get a migraine

Bruce Rauner really is gone. We truly are in a new era of state government.

PRITZKER: Signed a budget a month early?

For Gov. J.B. Pritzker didn’t even wait a full week before giving approval to a budget for Illinois’ Fiscal Year 2020 – which begins July 1.

PRITZKER SIGNED OFF Wednesday on the spending plan that will allow Illinois government to operate fully. He didn’t hesitate. Although the fact that the budget plan approved by the General Assembly was compiled largely by political allies means he didn’t have reason to expect the legislators would slip something in that would embarrass him.

Which led to Illinois being able to have a budget in place when the fiscal year begins.

That shouldn’t be a big deal. It’s what has become sad about Illinois government that it is. We had that two-plus year period during the Rauner years when no budget was in place.

Which caused problems for the ability of state government to operate, and which is largely responsible for the billions of dollars of a backlog that Illinois faces because during the Rauner years, the governor’s office was more concerned with approving measures meant to undermine organized labor – rather than ensuring that government could provide the services that were expected of it.

THERE WAS ONE uncertainty about the budget approval.

For it seems that legal language was inserted into the budget bill that provides for legislators themselves to get pay raises – the first ones they’ve received since back during the Blagojevich era in 2008.

In theory, Pritzker could have used his amendatory veto powers to delete that language – thereby leaving the base of the budget intact while removing the pay hike.

SKILLICORN: More interested in ideology

But Pritzker doesn’t sense the need to mess with the General Assembly – so he’s permitting their pay hike to go into effect.

FOR WHAT IT’S worth, the Legislature pays a base salary of $67,836 per year, and that will increase by $1,600 this year. In short, just under $70,000, which I’m sure some people would argue means they’re grossly underpaid.

But it should be noted the only people who earn that lowly level are the freshmen legislators – and the ones who are so untrusted by leadership that they’re not entrusted to be in positions of authority such as committee chairmanships or ranking minority party members.

So they’re really not underpaid. But it could be argued that, not having had an increase of any sort for 11 years, it was time for the pay scale to be adjusted.

It didn’t stop those in the Republican minority from ranting and raging and DEMANDING that Pritzker use the amendatory veto to delete the pay hikes.

TAKE THE VIEWPOINT of state Rep. Allen Skillicorn, R-East Dundee, who said, “taxes are going up in Illinois to pay for the mismanagement of their money at the state level,” and added, “Legislators do not deserve a pay raise. Giving lawmakers a pay increase is a mistake that the governor can and should correct.”

He was amongst the legislators who either was delusional, or overly politically partisan, enough to say that Pritzker should use the amendatory veto. Even though Pritzker made it clear by Tuesday he fully intended to let the pay raises take effect when he signed off on a $40 billion state budget.

RAUNER: His era seems like centuries ago

With Pritzker saying it was “a highly negotiated budget” with both Democratic and Republican legislative support – implying it would be wrong for him to impose his will on the process.

Not that it should be surprising some people will want to complain. These are political people – after all. Perhaps being a partisan malcontent is just in their very nature. Although my guess is that their real objections is that their “side” didn’t do better back in the 2018 election cycle and their focus is more on 2020 than anything actually happening now.

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EXTRA: How baseball has changed

I dug out my copy of “Ball Four,” the diary that one-time major league pitcher Jim Bouton wrote of his 1969 season, and his recollections of the first contract he signed to play ball for the New York Yankees was noteworthy.

Major league minimum, and thankful for it

For the record, he got $6,000 (the then-major league minimum salary) to pitch in 1962. His contract was offered to him on Opening Day, just before the National Anthem was played for that game. He was told to “sign it!” because all rookie ballplayers were given $6,000.

BUT THAT WAS a half-century ago. Times truly have changed with baseball’s economics – and not just because the major league minimum now is $555,000 for a rookie ballplayer.

The Chicago White Sox have got their share of national attention for the contract they gave to outfielder Eloy Jimenez – one of the kid ballplayers whom the White Sox are banking on to become stars who revitalize the ballclub into champions.

Jimenez this week signed his first contract to play major league ball – he’ll likely be with the team when they have their April 4 Opening Day against the Seattle Mariners at Guaranteed Rate Field.

Yet Jimenez didn’t even have to think in terms of the major league “minimum” in terms of pay. He got a six-year deal, with two more seasons if the White Sox want them, with pay being $43 million (or more like $70 million-plus, if the White Sox add on those extra seasons).

Richest White Sox even before 1st game

IT ACTUALLY QUALIFIES for the most expensive, longest-term deal ever paid out by the White Sox to a single ballplayer. And he has yet to play in his first major league ballgame.

Yet this isn’t about spending money. It’s about saving it.

Because the White Sox are convinced that Jimenez will be such a big star that he’ll be capable of demanding even higher payouts in upcoming years. So by tossing out “big bucks” now, they’re hoping they can commit him to less than the “bigger bucks” they’d have to pay in the future.

Of course, Jimenez could wind up injuring himself, or finding some other glitch in his game that keeps him from becoming all he can be. In fact, the more cynical of White Sox fandom are convinced that’s exactly what will happen.

Strategy worked for Indians

BUT THE WHITE Sox are banking that this contract will be similar to many of the significant contracts the Cleveland Indians gave to their youthful talents of the 1990s – thereby enabling them to hold their team together for several years during that decade when they dominated the American League Central division with division titles won five straight seasons.

However, by the time 2001 came around, the contracts turned out to be less-than-market value. All those stars wound up ditching Cleveland for other ball clubs – including eventually Jim Thome doing a stint with the White Sox themselves.

So it will be intriguing to see just what becomes of the youthful talent of the White Sox. Are we bound to see baseball bargains the next few seasons that will make Sox fandom happy? Particularly since Jimenez was the one-time Chicago Cubs minor leaguer whom the Sox will be able to claim a steal!

Or is there going to be continued griping, with fans finding the most exciting aspect of going to the ballpark being the new popcorn laced with bacon to be served at concession stands this season?

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Federal government siding with the cheapskates of the world?

My mother – may her soul rest in peace – was a woman who worked the bulk of her adult life in jobs where tips were a reality of her financial compensation.

MADIGAN: Siding with waitresses of the world

She worked in various restaurants where she had to scurry about, was on her feet all day and would usually finish her shifts rather sore and tired. But she always said one of the perks of such work is that, because of tips, one could always count on having a few bucks in cash at the end of a shift.

THAT IS WHY I was pleased to read reports Wednesday saying that the Illinois attorney general’s office was among attorneys from 17 states challenging proposed federal government rules changes that would impact the ability of those people who serve you to keep any tips they’re able to scrounge up.

I’m sure there are some people who support this ideal – largely the ones who think they shouldn’t have to tip at all. After all, those waitresses get paid a salary, they want to believe.

That salary, however, is usually below the minimum wage, which is permitted under the law on the grounds that certain types of workers get tips to make up for the difference.

Maybe some people just arrogantly believe that these restaurant service people are serving them for the pure joy of the work – and that they shouldn’t be worried about ultimate compensation.

WHICH IS ABSURD.

So I appreciate the notion that the attorney general’s office under Lisa Madigan is working together with legal colleagues in other states, including Iowa – but not Indiana, Missouri or Wisconsin -- to challenge the proposal that would allow for employers to take the tips received by the hourly workers they employ.

Back in 2011, then-President Barack Obama imposed a rule for the federal Labor Department saying those workers should keep their tips.

TRUMP: Does he think people serve him for joy?

Maybe this is yet another example of President Donald J. Trump wanting to do away with anything that has the “mark of Obama” connected to it.

BUT NOW, THE Labor Department would permit certain employers like restaurants to collect the tips their servers receive and pool them into a fund to be shared with the kitchen staff.

Restauranteurs argue this ensures that all of the staff gets a share, and that cooks and dishwashers can use a little extra money just as much as the waitresses who are scouring about within sight of the paying customers. That is the reason the Illinois Restaurant Association, among others, supports the rule change.

Although I’d argue this ought to be a case of the restaurant owners having to provide more adequate pay for these minimum-wage workers, rather than counting on the generosity of their customers to cover this particular cost.

I’m not sympathetic to those who’d argue that adding to the restauranteur’s expense threatens their financial bottom line. All businesses have expenses to be met before one can start counting profits. That’s just business.

IT’S LIKE THE old cliché, “You have to spend money to make money.”

Besides, Madigan makes one point that undercuts the argument – she told the Chicago Tribune some 500,000 Illinois workers could lose tips, with employers taking the money and pocketing it. She says there’s no guarantee any tip pool would get distributed back to workers.

OBAMA: Another effort to erase his memory?

It sounds crass, but it seems like the federal rule change is truly meant to benefit an owner’s pockets – which some people may think is completely appropriate in this Age of Trump that we’re now in.

While also allowing those past customers who used to stiff my mother on tips to claim they’re expressing some great ideological concept instead of just stating simple fact – they’re cheapskates!

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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.

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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.

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A little late on payment delays, but is it better than never for Illinois?

Illinois Comptroller Leslie Munger made what I’m sure she wants us to believe is a radical decision, one that shows great political courage on her part.

Because we’re about to finish month 10 without a balanced budget in place for Illinois, she’s going to delay payroll for state legislators and constitutional officers – including herself. After all, if other bills are not being paid, why should the legislators get paid?

IT’S A SOUND theory, and one that will offend the legislators who will claim they did their work. They were the ones who sued when former Gov. Pat Quinn tried to delay their paychecks, and they won – although the state Supreme Court recently ruled that the lower courts were probably wrong in favoring the legislators in that case.

But anyway, we now have the prospect of the General Assembly members not receiving their legislative salaries – all to make some sort of point about the current financial situation where the unpaid bills are now in the billions of dollars.

I’d be willing to respect Munger for doing this, except that I think she’s ridiculously late. And it is her delay in taking such action that has caused the total of unpaid bills by state government to climb so high!

If anything, I wonder if she’s really trying to pressure legislators into breaking with Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, D-Chicago, and siding instead with Gov. Bruce Rauner?

I THINK WE’RE beyond the point where anyone is going to change their stance Although if there had been a cut-off of pay back last year when this situation was just beginning, perhaps the threat of a lack of income would have been enough to scare political people into a serious compromise mode.

By now, political people are too hard-headed. It would probably take more than this to shift support from one side to the other.

Although it did come off as greedy all those years ago when the legislators defied Pat Quinn when he threatened payment of their salaries. But it comes off equally greedy now to cut them off for partisan reasons.

Besides, the simple fact is that the payroll for our General Assembly is just over $1 million per month. Something like $14 million for the year.

WHEN YOU CONSIDER that unpaid bills are at $7.8 billion and growing, the Legislature’s payments are nowhere near enough to close the gap.

This really is a move meant to irritate the Legislature with its solid Democratic Party majority that gives Republican Rauner no chance to prevail on his desires to impose several measures meant to undermine the influence of organized labor over state government.

Or perhaps it should be described as his desire to bolster the influence that big business and corporate America has over this state.

I’ll be the first to admit that Madigan is more than capable of being a hard-head whose primary concern is to ensure that his political authority over the Illinois House of Representatives is not challenged. It wouldn’t surprise me if on some level, he’d be willing to consider some of the suggestions that Rauner has made.

IF ONLY THE governor had asked a little more respectfully, perhaps? Or if this issue hadn’t started out as the need to undermine the current ways of doing things, just to benefit big business?

This budgetary situation is literally going to have to be resolved by the two of them. I don’t think it’s possible to drag the individual legislators in. They’re going to follow orders (whether Democrat or Republican) to the very end.

So as for Munger, who a year ago resisted the idea of delaying the payments of state employees of any kind because of the lack of a budget, she may think she’s being noble by now threatening to hold the legislative payroll to the letter of the law.

But it really comes across as, “Too little, too late!”

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Emanuel/Lewis could get U-G-L-Yer; could Chuy reputation be the winner?

The smartaleck in me wonders if Jesus Garcia is getting miffed that the contract talks by the Chicago Public Schools and the teacher’s union didn’t get heated up prior to Election Day.

Because with the way the two sides are showing that it will take a political miracle for them to agree on a deal, I wonder if that could have been enough of a factor get get Garcia’s mayoral aspirations the additional votes to close what was a 56-44 percent gap in the electoral turnout.

NOT THAT I think any of the people who wound up voting for Rahm Emanuel’s re-election could have been swayed into backing Garcia’s mayoral campaign. But could it have motivated more of the roughly three-fifths of registered voters who didn’t bother to vote to take some sort of action?

Could we now be dealing with “Mayor-elect Jesus Garcia” if the contract talks had become more of an issue prior to April 7?

That thought popped into my mind this week when I learned that the Chicago Teachers Union filed an unfair labor practices complaint with the Illinois Educational Labor Relations Board.

It seems the Chicago Public Schools has asked the teachers to take a pay cut, supposedly to avoid the possibility of layoffs. The union has called that pay cut proposal an insult.

THE PAY CUT is allegedly necessary to come up with the money the district needs to cover a larger share of the cost of covering pension payments for teacher retirement programs – supposedly a 7 percent cut in the amount of paychecks the teachers currently receive.

It’s coming across that the Chicago Public Schools wants help from its labor in terms of addressing the financial problems that now face District 299 (a.k.a., the city’s public schools system).

The current contract expires June 30, but I don’t think there’s anybody out there who expects the two sides to suddenly come to terms and meet that deadline.

We’re likely to see continued talks throughout the summer months, then the possibility of wondering if the schools will open on time (and stay open) for the 2015-16 academic year.

BECAUSE THE TWO sides have had several sessions dating back to November, yet there doesn’t seem to be anything in the way of progress. The Emanuel mayoral administration is likely go to into the local history books as the one that continually provokes strikes from its teachers.

Unlike the Richard M. Daley administration that managed to go for decades without labor disputes.

Now I can already hear the rants of certain types of people (the ones who think the City Council was disrespectful to Gov. Bruce Rauner by immediately passing their anti-turnaround measure after the governor urged them to support it) who are going to claim that the unions ARE the problem and that we’d all be better off if we’d realize that employers should be able to give us what they think is proper.

But this desire to advance oneself and look out for our interests IS the “American Way,” so to speak.

I CAN’T REALLY fault the teachers union officials who are following the lead of union President Karen Lewis, who this week said she believed the public schools’ negotiating tactics are “reactionary and retaliatory” for past grievances.

Even though I’m sure some people would argue they are merely examples of Rahm being Rahm. And I mean the overly-profane Emanuel; not the nice, soft, fuzzy Rahm who tried creeping up in the campaign commercials while talking about how incompetent a person Garcia is.

Well, Election Day is past. We have the officials we have. Those people who care about Garcia’s future are likely to focus on the talk that he will run for something (most likely a Congressional seat) come the 2016 election cycle.

Although I do wonder if he could wind up getting a boost in such a campaign if the teacher contract talks do wind up resulting in picket lines for a second time in four years. Sort of a “Who’s not qualified now?” type of vote for Chuy against whomever he winds up challenging!

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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.

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Minimum wage test? I’d sooner get bucket of water dumped over my head

I’ve never personally tried to do the stunt that many politically-minded people are taking on these days – living for a week on an amount of money they estimate they would have if they were to earn only the minimum wage for a salary.

 

Perhaps it’s because I have memories of the days in decades past when I earned salaries that were at, or barely above, minimum wage. I remember how tight financially things were. I don’t need to engage in a silly symbolic stunt to prove a point.

 

PARTICULARLY SINCE IT always seems that the person doing the stunt always manages to reinforce whatever ideological hang-ups they carried with them prior to the test. What really gets proved?

 

For the record, the most recent person to take on this alleged test is Gov. Pat Quinn, who estimated that after paying for housing, travel and taxes, a minimum wage-salaried person has only $79 to last for the week.

 

So he’s going about with only that sum of cash for the week. If he runs out, he’s broke – in a symbolic sense.

 

He’s been quick to tell us of his banana for breakfast, or how he couldn’t order the deluxe hamburger for lunch and had to settle for the child’s menu version instead.

 

HIS LATEST FUNDRAISING e-mail message tells us that Quinn is, “draw(ing) attention to the struggles that far too many Illinois families face every single day.”

 

Although I also remember when an Indianapolis radio broadcaster (whom I knew back in the days when he was a Springfield, Ill. Broadcaster) took on a similar challenge (and wrote about it all over his Facebook page) and went out of his way to claim that holding down his expenses was no big deal.

 

As though people who couldn’t confine their spending to minimum wage were somehow being wasteful. Although I suspect what many of the ideologues really believe is that some people aren’t entitled to have certain things. Or else maybe they really believe they’re better than the rest of us and somehow are entitled to finer items in life.

 

My guess is that is what they are thinking these days now that the tidbit has come out that Republican gubernatorial hopeful Bruce Rauner is a member of a private club that charges him in excess of $100,000 per year to buy wine made from grapes grown at the Napa Valley Reserve.

 

PERSONALLY, I’M NOT a wine fanatic. I don’t know how wonderous the wine from this particular place is. I also appreciate that people have a right to spend their own money on whatever luxuries they particularly desire.

 

But Quinn is going out of his way to let us know he’s going broke for a week while Rauner is guzzling down (or so he’d have us believe) unique wines that most of us couldn’t even dream of buying.

 

Whether people will buy into that line of logic is uncertain. We’ll have to wait and see come Nov. 4 for the vote tallies. Although I think there has been enough evidence to show that Rauner isn’t like the majority of us (he once self-described himself as part of the “0.0001 percent” of society).

 

But I’m not sure that someone who has been a part of public life for as many decades as Quinn can truly claim to be a part of us either – even if he’s using his latest campaign ad to show himself mowing his own lawn.

 

A COMMON MAN touch similar to how Dawn Clark Netsch shot pool in her 1994 campaign ads? That was gimmicky too, just as the so-called minimum wage test is.

 

For the reality of living life poor is that you don’t just get to do it for a week, then know that things will return to normal. It becomes a condition that becomes such a permanent mindset that it is next-to-impossible to figure things will ever change.

 

It makes me think the minimum wage test tells us less than those people who are having water buckets dumped over their heads to show solidarity with those suffering from Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis

 

It makes me wonder if Lou Gehrig himself would want to knock a foul ball into the stands off of one of these peoples’ heads; in hopes of knocking some sense into their craniums.

 

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EXTRA: What would "Bartlet" do?

How would 'President Bartlet' get a minimum wage hike? And can he educate Pat Quinn on the matter? Photograph provided by state of Illinois

Am I the only one who learned of Gov. Pat Quinn's stunt Thursday to promote the idea of raising the minimum wage, and thought to myself, "Gee, has President Bartlet got old-looking!"

For Quinn made an appearance at a South Side church, with actor Martin Sheen (he is 73) in tow.

SHEEN DID HIS part to tout the idea of boosting the minimum wage in Illinois from $8.25 an hour to at least $10. Although I still think the Barack Obama rhetoric about making the minimum $10.10 is a bit cute.

I just wonder how much Sheen's presence really added to the event. How many got distracted.

And how many let their ideological leanings become so disgusted wiht the old "West Wing" program that they're going to disregard anything that got said? (Has that program really been off-the-air for seven years now?)

Maybe he'd be more persuasive if he could adopt his "Capt. Willard" persona from "Apocalypse Now." At the very least, maybe people would think they'd better vote for a higher minimum wage to avoid suffering the fate of actor Marlon Brando's "Col. Kurtz" character.

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Will Mr. Burns “release the hounds” on Pat Quinn? Minimum wage lingers on

My first thought to learning that Gov. Pat Quinn tried bashing all four of the major Republican candidates who want to take his post from him was to wonder if a rush of Dobermans would now come charging at him and tear his body to shreds.

BURNS: Should he be Ill. gov?

After all, Quinn issued a statement (on his campaign letterhead, not his official gubernatorial stationery) saying that the GOP candidates for governor, “have all the compassion of C. Montgomery Burns.”

I CAN’T ENVISION the “Mr. Burns” character from “The Simpsons” (a television program that has been around for nearly half my life, even though I can’t remember the last time I watched a new episode) putting up with any guff from a mere peon like Pat Quinn.

“Release the hounds!!!!!!!” Let them deal with the impudent excuse for a governor that we have.

Now I realize that Burns and his nuclear power plant that probably violates every single environmental law in existence (how else to explain the three-eyed fish of old) is a fictional character.

Although somehow, I suspect the gubernatorial candidates are going to wish they could use such a tactic against Quinn – who’s trying to make sure that the whole fiasco related to the minimum wage lingers around for awhile.

IF IT FADES away, Quinn loses what could be his weapon that could inspire voters to think that they approve less of the Republican challengers than they do him.

For the record, Quinn wants an increase in the minimum wage for Illinois to $10 – which probably would be phased in over a few years.

Candidate Bruce Rauner created a whirlwind when he suggested that the minimum wage could actually be decreased – for the benefit of businesses in Illinois. The stink he stirred up was so intense that he’s now backtracking (and also trying to claim his thoughts were distorted).

QUINN: Devoured by the hounds, or the voters?

Other candidates aren’t ridiculous enough to say something so blunt – although they’re not about to back Quinn’s suggestion that low-level labor ought to get more money. They’re more interested in the corporate vote, which sees this as an attack on their financial bottom line.

WHICH IS USUALLY key to determining what kind of financial bonus they get for their work. Non-profitable companies don’t pay out such perks.

It’s also interesting to see the “debate,” of sorts, that has arisen, as Rauner wrote a commentary on the minimum wage issue that hints at letting such salaries increase – under certain circumstances.

“By far, the best ways to raise wages are to have a booming economy with companies competing to hire workers, and have great schools and vocational training that provide skills people need to move up the economic ladder,” Rauner wrote.

While Quinn, after making his “Simpsons” allusion, said he thinks the increase is the way to start toward a booming economy, saying, “Everyday people don’t admire the extra money they earn in the bank; they spend it in the local community, creating more jobs.”

IT’S ALL TRULY a matter of just which set of voters do the candidates want to appeal to.

Rauner wants to get the votes of the bosses who run companies, while Quinn wants their employees. Although Rauner seems to think that maybe if those employees are suffering a bit, they’ll blame Quinn and vote for him instead.

SMITHERS: Would he be Lt. Gov?

In all, it’s a rhetorical exchange notable only because we don’t get all that many “Simpsons” references in an election cycle. Although I wonder if the most-offended person in all of this is Peter Jones.

He’s the Franklin Park resident who also is seeking the Republican gubernatorial nomination who wasn’t even included in Quinn’s attack. Does that make him the equivalent of Burns’ sycophant “Smithers?”

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