Chicago can afford it, Cook County can afford it, Evanston can afford it, but Oak Park, according to the four trustees who voted against it, can’t!
With this vote, these overly pro-business trustees have shown their true colors. They do not represent the values of Oak Park’s residents who voted 60 percent to 40 percent for a Living Wage Ordinance. Instead, they voted against 14 months of hard work and considered deliberations, including two public hearings by the Community Relations Commission which issued a detailed report and voted seven to two to support a living wage ordinance. These trustees felt that it wasn’t even worth studying the issue further, but in their arguments they demonstrated how little they know about this issue and how little they care about economic justice in our community. This is a travesty for a community that pioneered local public policy to address racial and sexual preference discrimination.
The specious and ill informed arguments made by these trustees at the July 6 meeting (that I attended) demonstrated clearly the ideological and factually vacuous nature of their opposition.
Poor people can get welfare and other public assistance so they don’t need a living wage. The Santa Fe “living wage” law (which is actually a local minimum wage law) shows that “living wage” laws can be detrimental to the local economy. The ordinance (estimated to cost the village $25,000) is too costly, but on the other hand, because it costs so little, would not be effective. Some people who get living wages may not need them (what a terrible travesty – it would not be “perfectly” targeted towards the poorest of the poor!). This was pure illogical and mean-spirited nonsense. It is time to throw them out!
Ron Baiman
Long time Oak Park resident Ron Baiman is an economist and author and co-author of numerous reports and papers on Chicago area living wage ordinances. He is also male co-chair of the Chicago Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and a member of the Greater Oak Park DSA, the group that initiated and co-sponsored the Oak Park living wage ordinance.