Less than a week after it was announced on Facebook that the Oak Park Board of Trustees would discuss opting out of Cook County’s minimum wage ordinance, the item was pulled from consideration.
This follows a few days of discussion primarily on the Facebook profile pages of Oak Park trustees Deno Andrews and Dan Moroney.
The county ordinance requires the minimum wage to increase from $8.25 to $10 an hour beginning in July and rise one dollar per year until it reaches $13 in 2020. Employers also would have to pay sick leave for minimum-wage employees who would earn one hour of leave for every 40 worked.
The withdrawal of the item did not stop residents from turning out for the Monday board of trustees meeting, where advocates voiced their support for the decision not to discuss. Others opposed the decision, arguing that the wage hike will hurt their business.
Mary Anne Mohanraj, who serves on the Oak Park Library Board, voiced support for the wage hike and told the board it would make a “huge difference to workers.” Small businesses “should be able to come before the board and make their case,” she added.
Cathy Yen, executive director of the Oak Park Chamber of Commerce, said the issue is not one of employers against workers. Oak Park business owners will have to raise prices and “are terrified that you will not pay those prices,” Yen said.
“Help us stay in business in a way that is fair and equitable to all of us,” she said.
Andrews, who owns Felony Franks fast-food restaurant, made the original request that the item be placed on the agenda for discussion, noting on his Facebook page that the wage increase would force him to replace employees with automated kiosks.
“I’ve already been getting calls from companies that install ordering kiosks that allow customers to place their own orders,” Andrews wrote on Facebook. “These already exist in Europe where the labor costs are traditionally high. So the question is which is better — a higher minimum with fewer people working or a lower, market-based wage that puts more people to work? I don’t think we can have it both ways.”
After it was announced via social media that the board would discuss the issue, proponents of the county’s minimum wage ordinance flooded trustees with hundreds of emails voicing their outrage.
Rev. C.J. Hawking, a pastor at Euclid Avenue United Methodist Church and executive director of Arise Chicago, which has advocated for the raise and sick pay, had planned a meeting last Friday at the church in an effort to persuade the board to stick with the wage hike.
Hawking said it was disappointing that the item was placed on the agenda without an opportunity for discussion with trustees or the mayor. The lack of an official forum “takes away from the democratic process,” she said.
She also reminded trustees that 86 percent of Oak Park voters approved a minimum-wage increase in a 2014 nonbinding ballot measure and 87 percent approved a ballot measure in 2016 on the issue of paid sick leave for minimum-wage employees.
“If any politician got 87 percent of the vote, they would call it a landslide,” she told Wednesday Journal. “The voters have spoken.”
Hawking also said many of the wage-hike proponents believe that trustees with businesses possibly affected by the ordinance, such as Andrews, should recuse themselves from voting because of the conflict of interest it posed.
“Workers should not have to live at poverty wages in order to make a business thrive,” she added. “Employers can’t have a business plan based on exploitation of its workers.”
The pressure on Facebook and elsewhere was enough to make Andrews withdraw the motion to consider opting out. It was announced on Friday afternoon, again via Andrews’ Facebook page, among others, that the item was pulled from the agenda at Andrews’ request.
Andrews said on Friday that he originally requested to have the item placed on the agenda to give business owners the opportunity to discuss the issue.
“I don’t believe there would be a single vote [on the board] to opt out, but it doesn’t negate the inherent issues with the law and how it would affect local businesses,” he said.
Andrews said he felt the public “misconstrued our wanting to discuss it as wanting to opt out and that wasn’t the case.”
He said he discussed the issue with various business owners over the last few weeks, noting, “I didn’t meet a single business owner that was against higher wages for their employees.”
Their concern, he noted, was about high sales taxes, increasing property taxes, and the so-called sugary drink tax that is being imposed by the county.
“It’s an issue about overall taxation,” he noted.
Moroney said he likely would have not voted to opt out of the county wage hike, but the topic nonetheless merited discussion.
The Oak Park Chamber’s Cathy Yen, he said, sent a letter to board members earlier in June requesting that the issue be placed on the agenda because a survey showed 70 percent of Oak Park business owners who will be affected by the legislation opposed the wage increase.
Oak Park Trustee Bob Tucker said the item never should have been placed on the agenda in the first place.
“Honestly, I think the outpouring of comments from Oak Parkers to the village board made them reconsider whether or not they should move forward with this,” Tucker said in a telephone interview. “I think the community spoke loud and clear on this, and it’s a big win for Oak Park and Oak Park values.”
Tucker said hundreds of emails were sent to the board calling on elected officials to stick with the wage hike.
“I was thrilled to see that reaction because I never wanted it on the agenda to begin with,” he said.
Moroney, however, believes some businesses in Oak Park will have to lay off some workers or close their doors entirely once the wage hike takes effect.
“I was fine if it was kept on [the agenda],” he said, although “I think it would have been a little bit of a circus [that] I wasn’t looking forward to.”
Trustee Simone Boutet also had requested the item be placed on the agenda for discussion, she said in a telephone interview, but only to find out more about the county ordinance and what effect it would have on businesses in Oak Park.
Boutet said she and others on the board were unaware of the issue until a story was published on the topic in Wednesday Journal.
Although it was placed on the agenda for discussion, Boutet said, “I don’t think the intent was ever to opt out.”
CONTACT: tim@oakpark.com