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
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.
Perspectives: The Powers That Be
From police to schools to transit, a crisis of accountability in Chicago
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As Rahm Emanuel courts flashy projects amid a slew of scandals, it seems the mayor is more accountable to big-money donors than to neighborhood constituents.
Perspectives
Worker-owned co-ops: a model to build wealth for low-income communities in Chicago
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Illinois law stops worker-owned cooperatives from being established as businesses in Chicago, a city ripe to join the national movement to democratize local economies.
Perspectives: The Powers That Be
Highway expansion drives jobs away from communities that need them
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The costly projects will add to the exodus of jobs to the suburbs making employment out of reach for low-income Chicagoans who rely on public transit.
Cuando les roban el salario, pocos trabajadores de Illinois recuperan sus sueldos
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Los trabajadores que reportan robo de salarios ahora enfrentan periodos de espera más largos, un porcentaje mayor de despidos y más burocracia.
Employment and Labor
Wage theft victims have little chance of recouping pay in Illinois
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Low-wage workers face long waits and high dismissal rates when filing stolen wage claims with the state labor department.
Perspectives: The Powers That Be
On $15 minimum wage hike, Rauner should listen to constituents
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A bill sitting on the governor’s desk would heed the call of Illinois voters, a majority of whom endorsed a minimum wage increase in a 2014 referendum.
Employment and Labor
Chicago needs to better enforce labor ordinances, aldermen and advocates say
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Lax enforcement of the minimum wage hike highlights the need for a dedicated Office of Labor Standards to ensure workers are getting their due, worker groups say.