On July 26, 2006 the Chicago City Council voted to approve an ordinance which for 7 weeks made Chicago the largest United States city that required big-box retailers to pay what the ordinance's sponsors characterized as a "living wage." Formally entitled "AMENDMENT OF TITLE 4 OF MUNICIPAL CODE OF CHICAGO BY CREATION OF NEW CHAPTER 404 ENTITLED "LARGE RETAILERS"", [1] the ordinance was popularly known as the "Living Wage Ordinance" or "Big Box Ordinance." The ordinance defined "Large Retailers" as those with annual gross revenues of $1 billion or more or with stores of 90,000 square feet or more. "Large retailers" were required to pay $9.25 per hour in wages and $1.50 per hour in benefits, with a schedule of cost of living increases. [1] (At the time, the minimum wage was $6.50 per hour state and $5.15 federal). [2]
The ordinance was sponsored by Aldermen Moore, Flores, Tillman, Preckwinkle, Hairston, Lyle, Beavers, Stroger, Beale, Pope, Balcer, Cardenas, Olivo, Theodore Thomas, Coleman, Latasha Thomas, Murphy, Troutman, Munoz, Chandler, Ocasio, Ed Smith, Reboyras, Matlak, Austin, Colon, Allen, Laurino, Levar, Shiller, Schulter, Maryanne Smith and Stone. [3] [4]
This legislation was widely reported in the national press. More than two dozen publications, including the Fort Worth Star-Telegram , Houston Chronicle , The Kansas City Star , Rocky Mountain News , The Seattle Times , and Philadelphia Daily News , carried the story. [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10]
Mayor Richard M. Daley vetoed the ordinance on September 11, 2006, and two days later the City Council sustained the veto. [11]
Gould is a city in Lincoln County, Arkansas, United States. Its population was 663 at the 2020 census, down from 837 at the 2010 census. It is included in the Pine Bluff, Arkansas Metropolitan Statistical Area. Gould is a farming community. It was named after the American railroad magnate Jay Gould.
A living wage is defined as the minimum income necessary for a worker to meet their basic needs. This is not the same as a subsistence wage, which refers to a biological minimum, or a solidarity wage, which refers to a minimum wage tracking labor productivity. Needs are defined to include food, housing, and other essential needs such as clothing. The goal of a living wage is to allow a worker to afford a basic but decent standard of living through employment without government subsidies. Due to the flexible nature of the term "needs", there is not one universally accepted measure of what a living wage is and as such it varies by location and household type. A related concept is that of a family wage – one sufficient to not only support oneself, but also to raise a family.
A big-box store is a physically large retail establishment, usually part of a chain of stores. The term sometimes also refers, by extension, to the company that operates the store. The term "big-box" references the typical appearance of buildings occupied by such stores.
Big Box, Big box, or Big-box may refer to:
Joseph A. Moore is a former Chicago politician. Moore was first elected to Chicago City Council as the alderman for the 49th ward, which includes the majority of Rogers Park and portions of West Ridge, in 1991. Moore won re-election six times, before losing to challenger Maria Hadden in 2019.
Tom Weisner was an American politician. He became the mayor of Aurora, Illinois, beginning in April 2005. Prior to his election he worked for over eighteen years in high-ranking positions in the city of Aurora and for five years as a volunteer in the Peace Corps.
Steve & Barry's was an American retail clothing chain, featuring casual clothing, footwear and accessories. Headquartered in Port Washington, New York, the chain operated 276 stores in 39 states before liquidating throughout 2008 and 2009.
Sandra Lee Jackson is an American politician. She was elected to the Chicago City Council as an alderman of the 7th ward of the City of Chicago in the 2007 municipal elections held on February 27, 2007. She succeeded Darcel A. Beavers who had been appointed by Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley after the 2006 November elections to succeed her father William Beavers, Jackson's rival, as alderman of the 7th Ward. Jackson resigned from Chicago City Council, effective January 15, 2013. On February 20, 2013, Jackson pleaded guilty to one count of filing false tax returns, and on August 14, 2013, was sentenced to one year in prison.
In the United States, the minimum wage is set by U.S. labor law and a range of state and local laws. The first federal minimum wage was instituted in the National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933, signed into law by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, but later found to be unconstitutional. In 1938, the Fair Labor Standards Act established it at 25¢ an hour. Its purchasing power peaked in 1968, at $1.60 In 2009, it was increased to $7.25 per hour, and has not been increased since.
Jon Graham Burge was an American police detective and commander in the Chicago Police Department. He was found guilty of having "directly participated in or implicitly approved the torture" of at least 118 people in police custody in order to force false confessions.
Toni Lynn Preckwinkle is an American politician and the current County Board president in Cook County, Illinois, United States. She was elected to her first term as president of the Cook County Board of Commissioners, the executive branch of Cook County government, in November 2010, becoming the first woman elected to that position.
Vi Daley was an alderman in the Chicago City Council, representing Chicago's 43rd ward. The 43rd ward includes much of the Lincoln Park and a small portions of the Near North Side Community areas. Daley was elected to three four-year terms, and chose not to seek reelection when her last term ended in 2011.
The BP Pedestrian Bridge, or simply BP Bridge, is a girder footbridge in the Loop community area of Chicago, United States. It spans Columbus Drive to connect Maggie Daley Park with Millennium Park, both parts of the larger Grant Park. Designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Frank Gehry and structurally engineered by Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, it opened along with the rest of Millennium Park on July 16, 2004. Gehry had been courted by the city to design the bridge and the neighboring Jay Pritzker Pavilion, and eventually agreed to do so after the Pritzker family funded the Pavilion.
Boeing Galleries are a pair of outdoor exhibition spaces within Millennium Park in the Loop community area of Chicago in Cook County, Illinois, United States. The spaces are located along the south and north mid-level terraces, above and east of Wrigley Square and the Crown Fountain. In a conference at the Chicago Cultural Center, Boeing President and Chief Executive Officer James Bell to Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley announced Boeing would make a $5 million grant to fund both the construction of and an endowment for the space.
The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 29 U.S.C. § 203 (FLSA) is a United States labor law that creates the right to a minimum wage, and "time-and-a-half" overtime pay when people work over forty hours a week. It also prohibits employment of minors in "oppressive child labor". It applies to employees engaged in interstate commerce or employed by an enterprise engaged in commerce or in the production of goods for commerce, unless the employer can claim an exemption from coverage. The Act was enacted by the 75th Congress and signed into law by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1938.
Arthur Schultz was an American Republican politician. He was a five-term mayor of Joliet, Illinois, the then fourth largest municipality in the state after Chicago, Aurora, and Rockford. He was last elected in April 2007. Prior to his first election, he served in the United States Navy and in the Joliet Police Department.
The Minimum Wage OrdinanceCap. 608 is an ordinance enacted by the Legislative Council of Hong Kong to introduce a minimum wage in Hong Kong in July 2010. The executive branch proposed a minimum wage of HK$28 (~US$3.61) per hour in November 2010, which the Legislative Council voted to accept after much debate in January 2011. It came into effect on 1 May 2011. Prior to this, there had also been a fixed minimum wage for one specific class of workers, foreign domestic helpers, of HK$3,740/month. The Hong Kong statutory minimum wage for non-domestic workers is HK$37.5 (~US$4.83) per hour, effective 1 May 2019.
Wage theft is the failing to pay wages or provide employee benefits owed to an employee by contract or law. It can be conducted by employers in various ways, among them failing to pay overtime; violating minimum-wage laws; the misclassification of employees as independent contractors; illegal deductions in pay; forcing employees to work "off the clock", not paying annual leave or holiday entitlements, or simply not paying an employee at all.
Sophia D. King is an American politician and former member of Chicago City Council, who served as alderman from the 4th ward, which includes portions of the neighborhoods Bronzeville, Hyde Park, Kenwood, Oakland, and South Loop. King was appointed to the position in 2016 to replace retiring incumbent Will Burns. She won a special election to serve out the rest term of the term in 2017 and was re-elected to a full term in 2019. She was a member and chair of the City Council's Progressive Reform Caucus. King forwent reelection to the city council in 2023 in order to make an unsuccessful run for mayor of Chicago in the 2023 Chicago mayoral election.
Gregorio Eduardo Casar is an American politician who is the member for Texas's 35th congressional district in the United States Congress since 2023. He served as a member of the Austin City Council from the 4th district from 2015 to 2022. Casar is a member of the Democratic Party and was endorsed by the Working Families Party in his run for Congress. Casar is an unendorsed member of the Democratic Socialists of America. He was first elected to the Austin City Council in 2014, representing District 4. He was reelected in 2016 and 2020. He was elected to Congress in 2022.
