Daley Stirs the Wal-Mart Pot, City Unions Look at Compromise

By Kevin Robinson in News on Dec 17, 2009 3:00PM

In a political move that should come as a surprise to absolutely nobody, Mayor Daley is all ready to re-open the Wal-Mart debate in Chicago, just in time for several contentious primaries that will be viewed as referendums on reform and incumbency in the area. “I am raising a political hot potato,” Daley said Wednesday. “These are very complex issues. They are completely different than they were three years ago.” Citing the high unemployment rate in the region, Daley painted a bleak picture for Chicago. “There’s no future jobs. People can’t get jobs. They’re not only being laid off, they’re being eliminated out of their companies,” Daley said before calling on Chicago’s unions and aldermen to sit down with Wal-Mart and negotiate a compromise that will lead to the successful operation of their stores in the city. 9th Ward Alderman Anthony Beale told the Tribune that there may be a private deal to allow Wal-Mart to build stores in Chicago, if they agree to certain wage standards, rumored to be around $11 an hour. "They're saying, OK, these are some of the provisions that will allow us to say 'OK, we will allow them to come in," Beale said.

Wal-Mart, for their part, wanted nothing to do with discussing any of this in the media. John Bisio, manager of public affairs for Wal-Mart in Illinois, told both the Sun-Times and the Tribune that the company hasn’t been approached with a specific proposal for wage standards that would lead to the labor movement dropping its opposition to Wal-Mart in the city. "It doesn't make sense for us to dignify that, because to do so would be to accept that what we offer (compared to other large retail companies) isn't good enough, and that's just not the case," Bisio said.

While this might seem like progress coming from the mayor’s office on a contentious issues that’s clearly emotional to many Chicagoans, the fact of the matter is that, regardless of whatever agreement Chicago’s unions accede to, Wal-Mart will have negotiated wages and benefits with a labor organization, something that is anathema to the way that business is run. And while that might seem like a win for workers, the reality is that Chicago’s unions, by agreeing to a basic wage proposal without the employees of Wal-Mart voting on the agreement, stop being a labor movement, and becomes little more than a public interest lobbying group. American unions have struggled mightily in the last decade to maintain the gains they’ve made for working and middle-class families. Negotiating a static “living wage” through the city council just isn’t good enough; they need to fight for their members, and their industries, or risk becoming that stifling, undemocratic form of unionism, the Labor Boss.