In two months, Chicago's first Wal-Mart will open, 450 people will be employed by the West Side store. But later today, a vote in Chicago's City Council might ensure that this will be the only Chicago Wal-Mart for the foreseeable future.
This Chicago Tribune editorial (free registration required) closely matches my opinion on this event:
Chicagoans without jobs flooded Wal-Mart with applications for those 450 openings. The lucky ones will be going to work Sept. 19. The unsuccessful Wal-Mart applicants had better hope their aldermen focus on how to keep more new jobs like these coming to town--rather than on how to shunt them to suburbia at the behest of organized labor.
I took this picture outside a storefront near the still under-construction Niles Wal-Mart on Golf Road.
If a majority of Chicago's 50 alderman for the "living wage" big box ordinance later today, signs like the one above probably won't be seen in Chicago for a long time.
And by the way, just how many job offers do the United Food and Commercial Workers and the Service Employees International Union hand out?
Technorati tags: Wal-Mart Chicago Illinois business retail politics Illinois Politics big box Unions Labor SEIU UFCW
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