Mayor Emanuel’s minimum wage executive order doesn’t apply to political pals
With great fanfare, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel recently announced an executive order requiring city contractors and concessionaires to pay their employees no less than $13 per hour. The move was highly touted in both the Chicago Sun-Times and Chicago Tribune, as well as a number of other publications and television news broadcasts. None of these...
With great fanfare, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel recently announced an executive order requiring city contractors and concessionaires to pay their employees no less than $13 per hour.
The move was highly touted in both the Chicago Sun-Times and Chicago Tribune, as well as a number of other publications and television news broadcasts.
None of these news outlets picked up on a how Emanuel’s executive order contains a special crony provision designed to grow the power of Chicago labor unions and their favorite politicians.
Here’s the fine print:
“After the effective date of the Order, its requirements may be waived in a bona fide collective bargaining agreement, but only if the waiver is set forth explicitly in such agreement in clear and unambiguous terms.”
In other words, the executive order of a $13 per hour minimum wage doesn’t apply to labor unions as long as they include a collective bargaining “waiver” in the contract. Employees in labor unions can be paid as little as $8.25 per hour, the statewide minimum wage in Illinois.
The special union minimum-wage waiver isn’t just a Chicago phenomenon. Citing examples in Los Angeles, Milwaukee and Seattle a recent article in The Wall Street Journal illustrated how minimum-wage waivers are an increasingly popular union negotiating tactic across the country.
Maxford Nelsen wrote: “This waiver enables labor organizers to approach a nonunion employer struggling to pay the new minimum with the following offer: assist them in unionizing employees by signing a ‘neutrality agreement,’ for which, in return, the union will use the collective-bargaining waiver to allow the employer to pay less than the new statutory minimum.”
Labor unions are using the heavy hand of government to raise minimum-wage requirements on their competitors, while advocating for lower minimum wages for their own dues-paying members.
Rank-and-file union members should be outraged. They are being used as pawns by unscrupulous politicians and crony union leaders, who create and exploit loopholes in local minimum-wage laws.
With an election approaching next year, Mayor Emanuel is seeking to gain support from labor unions. Emanuel potentially faces a tough mayoral election matchup against Chicago Teachers Union President, Karen Lewis, a powerful union leader who could give Emanuel a real, well-funded challenge if she decides run against him. Strategically, Emanuel needs to gain as much support from other labor unions as possible.
Thus, the special minimum wage exemption Emanuel has created for his union allies.
As if labor unions didn’t have enough power in Chicago, as long as Emanuel’s executive order remains in place, labor unions will have a tremendous competitive advantage over nonunionized workforces for city work.
Since forming the Minimum Wage Working Group in May of this year, Rahm Emanuel has gained the financial support of at least 21 different labor unions and raised nearly $340,000. Both the union cash and the boots on the ground will be very helpful in Emanuel’s re-election efforts.
The nationwide minimum-wage waiver movement shows how union leadership is far from altruistic. Unions’ real end goal is to grow the number of employees who are forced to pay membership dues, while using those dues to grow the power of their preferred politicians.
Instead of imposing restrictions preventing certain groups from openly competing for government work, all prospective employees and contractors should be equal before the law
Emanuel, or the City Council, should rescind his executive order.
