As many as four million workers labor in clusters of warehouses scattered across the United States. Many are mislabeled as ‘temps’; all are poorly paid, and on-the-job injuries are high. In the article “The Warehouse Archipelago”, John Lippert and Stephen Franklin investigate the current state of staffing in the warehouse industry. Part Four of the weekly Chicago Reporter series Lippert and Franklin explore the reopening of the economy battered by COVID-19 mitigations providing new hope for warehouse workers. THE NEWS ABOUT worker shortages and rising wages at companies with the reopening of the economy may suggest new hopes for warehouse workers.
Perspectives: The Powers That Be
Report: Amazon workers’ injuries spike during holiday season at Illinois facility
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Safety records obtained by the Warehouse Workers for Justice build on recent reporting by Reveal finding that warehouse injury rates climb with automation.
Perspectives: The Powers That Be
Study: Restaurant industry thrives in cities that have eliminated subminimum wage
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As Mayor Lori Lightfoot and City Council members debate changes to how Chicago’s tipped workers are paid, a new report highlights how other cities have fared after eliminating the subminimum wage.
Perspectives: The Powers That Be
After Goodwill controversy, spotlight on subminimum wage
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Many workers in Illinois classified as having mild or moderate disabilities currently make less than $1 an hour, advocates say.
Perspectives
Getting poorer while working harder: The ‘cliff effect’
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Stressing out about potentially losing benefits can prolong financial instability. Solving this problem will help low-paid workers and everyone else.
Employment and Labor
Chicago is the fastest shrinking major metro area
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Black and low-income residents continue to move out, but unlike other groups, a majority of African-Americans exiting the Chicago area didn’t have a job when they left.
Employment and Labor
Worker cooperatives face particular challenges in Illinois
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Worker-owned businesses, or co-ops, can create jobs with better wages and working conditions, but remain limited by state law and a lack of support in Illinois, advocates say.
Perspectives
Universal basic income could redress the high cost of underemployment in Chicago
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In a booming economy failing to provide enough living wage jobs, the city can more than afford to try Ald. Ameya Pawar’s proposal to relieve poverty.
Employment and Labor
Labor watchdog would give city’s worker protection laws some teeth
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The Office of Labor Standards would enforce Chicago’s minimum wage increase, guaranteed paid sick days, and guard against wage theft for vulnerable workers.
Perspectives
Fifty years later, what the Kerner report tells us about race in Chicago today
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Many of the city’s racial disparities in 2018 are all too similar to those of 1968, when a federal commission analyzed the causes of racial tensions in cities across the country.
Perspectives
Widening the tent for a multiracial labor movement
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Unions, which embraced black workers, must better address immigrant rights and the struggle against police violence.