City Prepares For Change (And Dollars) With Minimum Wage Hike On Horizon

By Rachel Cromidas in News on Jun 11, 2015 2:15PM

Fast food workers protesting for a higher minimum wage are arrested by police outside a McDonald's on 87th Street in Chatham on the South side, Sept. 4, 2014. (Photo credit: Aaron Cynic/Chicagoist)

The mayor’s office has a plan to ensure the city’s potentially game-changing minimum wage hike actually gets enforced this summer.

In anticipation of the law raising the minimum wage to $10 an hour taking effect after July 1, the city's Department of Business Affairs and Consumer Protection announced a series of workshops, the first of which kicked off this past Wednesday morning in Pilsen, to prepare businesses and workers for the change. The regulations are also available on the department's website, including a notice about the wage increase that businesses will be required to display in their windows starting in July.

Enforcement will also be up to the department, which says workers can file complaints if their employers are in breach of the law. As the Tribune skeptically reported, it remains to be seen whether this approach will be effective.

The city council voted to increase the minimum wage to $13 an hour by 2019 last December. Since then business owners have been preparing for the controversial policy, which is rolling out with a smaller bump to $10 this year and will be bumped up again every year until it hits $13.

City officials anticipate that the increase will ultimately boost $860 million into the local economy and lift about 70,000 workers over the poverty line. But there's also been no shortage of business leaders decrying the hike’s potential to stifle business development in the city. And on the other side of the fence, some local activists and political figures believe Chicago needs to raise its minimum wage even higher to $15 an hour.