Chicago Ald. Howard Brookins Jr. (21st) envisioned a Wal-Mart rising from the site of a shuttered steel plant in his South Side ward, creating jobs and drawing shoppers from the neighborhood and beyond.
The Wal-Mart never came, and now he faces unexpected fallout from his push to bring the retailer into the city.
Angered by Brookins’ vote against an ordinance mandating higher wages for employees of “big-box” stores such as Wal-Mart, unions are pouring money and volunteers to oppose him in the Feb. 27 election.
Brookins is one of a dozen aldermen targeted for defeat by unions that deemed some recent City Council votes unfriendly to organized labor.
In past elections, races for aldermen have typically revolved around matters intensely local: city services, crime and jobs.
But for some aldermen–including Ald. Emma Mitts (37th) and Ald. Shirley Coleman (16th)–this election resonates with national issues.
Big-box stores, the living wage and the political power of organized labor have supplanted garbage pickup and snow removal as hot-button issues.
“If Emma Mitts and I are defeated, then that probably sends a strong signal [about] the power of the unions,” Brookins said.
Mitts, who was successful in bringing the city’s first Wal-Mart to her West Side ward, remained defiant about the union’s threat.
“Let them come after me,” said Mitts, who also opposed the wage ordinance. “My stand is to represent the people of my ward.”
Brookins and his colleagues voted in July against the big-box pay ordinance, which would have mandated $13 an hour in pay and benefits for employees at big-box stores.
The City Council approved the measure, but Mayor Richard Daley vetoed it in September.
Believing Daley beyond their political reach, the city’s largest unions have promised support for their candidates with literature, phone banks, professional staffers and volunteers campaigning door to door.
Service Employees International Union officials said they hope to count on more than 1,500 “block captains.”
In predominantly African-American wards, incumbents such as Brookins are trying to counter the unions by alleging that labor discriminates against African-Americans, particularly in the high-paying building trades.
“I don’t know how I got painted as anti-union because I am truly not,” said Brookins, who faces four challengers in his bid for a second term. “On this issue I believe they are wrong.”
Leroy J. Jones Jr., who has the backing of the unions in his race against Brookins–and expects $300,000 in union support–counters that “labor is trying to raise the standards.”
Brookins also faces Sylvia Y. Jones, a retired county employee; Mildred McClendon, the former chief of staff of Brookins’ predecessor; and Dwayne Belle.
Brookins, an attorney whose father was a state senator and funeral-home operator, said he is proud of the Best Buy, Burlington Coat Factory, Staples and Starbucks that have opened in the ward. He said people are tired of driving to Tinley Park or Lemont to shop.
“There’s a hell of a lot of difference between no job and a $7 an hour job,” Brookins said.
Leroy Jones, who is a city division director for SEIU, knows that “most constituents think some job is better than no job.”
Jones and the unions contend that the state subsidizes low wages at big-box stores by having to provide aid to the stores’ underpaid employees.
Explaining that nuance to voters–some of whom have no job at all–is “a hard message to get across,” Jones said.
McClendon also supports living-wage legislation.
McClendon, the chief of staff of former 21st Ward Ald. Leonard DeVille, said wages should permit a reasonable standard of living.
“If retail is where middle-class America must work, it must pay middle-class wages,” McClendon said.
Sylvia Jones, who recently retired after 28 years in the Cook County assessor’s office, discounts the notion that a job at a big-box store is good place to begin a career. “You’ll never climb up from Wal-Mart unless you have unionized labor,” she said.
But aldermen such as Mitts have a different view.
Mitts says her ward, which includes portions of Austin and West Humboldt Park needed the 700 jobs Wal-Mart brought to her community.
She also finds irony in the fact that advocates of higher wages were silent until Wal-Mart entered the picture, even though other big-box stores were opening in the city.
“Why didn’t they think about it when they were building all those stores on the North Side,” said Mitts, who grew up in Arkansas and is the political protege of Ald. Isaac Carothers (29th). “They built all those stores and nobody said a word about a living wage.”
Mitts, who garnered 73 percent of the vote in 2003, faces five challengers, including Tommy O. Abina, Cook County Assistant State’s Atty. Daryl Jones, Arlene P. Jones and Eric P. McKennie. Also on the ballot is Percy Z. Giles, former 37th Ward alderman who was convicted in 1999 of pocketing $10,000 in cash bribes from a government mole and extorting an additional $81,200 from a company operating an illegal dump.
Coleman, whose 16th Ward includes the economically challenged Englewood neighborhood, changed her vote on the big-box ordinance. She initially supported it but later voted to help Daley veto the measure.
“It was more important as an elected leader to bring an opportunity for jobs, and that was an excellent opportunity,” Coleman recently explained.
Joann Thompson, who has the support of the unions in her bid to unseat Coleman, said “it’s not a lot to ask” of big-box stores to pay their employees the $10 an hour in wages and $3 in benefits called for in the ordinance.
“Why wouldn’t you want to pay your workers $10 an hour?” said Thompson, a lieutenant in the Cook County sheriff’s department.
Coleman’s other opponents are split on the big-box issue.
Challenger Hal Baskin, who manages real estate, said he opposed the wage ordinance. “You can’t put the onus on big boxes and not put them on medium and small boxes across the board,” Baskin said.
Community organizer Denise Brown, however, said she would have supported the measure. “If you don’t have the jobs that pay a decent wage [people] won’t ever be able to afford [decent housing],” Brown said.
Also running for the 16th Ward seat are Darryl Smith, Eddie Johnson III and Jeffrey L. Lewis.
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