Ald. Brookins Won’t Give Up on Second Wal-Mart Store, Ups Pressure on City Council

It’s like deja vu all over again. Alderman Brookins is still pushing for another Wal-Mart store in Chicago. This time he is ratcheting up the pressure on his fellow city council members to support the South Side project.

His message is clear: build a Wal-Mart store and soon there will be hundreds of high paying jobs and Chicago will become a retailing utopia.

Unfortunately, most Wal-Mart jobs are low wage and part-time. On our speak out website, veteran employees—some who have worked for the company over 10 years—describe how Wal-Mart is using the recession to cut hours like never before. As in...let’s hire 500 people to inflate our job numbers to the press, while cutting everyone to 10 hours a week.

As we outlined in our urban campaign, Wal-Mart is just not a good fit for the city of Chicago. According to the UC Berkeley Labor Center, “There is strong evidence that jobs created by Wal-Mart in metropolitan areas pay less and are less likely to offer benefits than those they replace.” In addition, analysis by Civic Economics concludes “For every $100 in consumer spending with a local firm, $68 remains in the Chicago economy...For every $100 in consumer spending with a chain firm, $43 remains in the Chicago economy.”

City leaders have done a good job so far of keeping another Wal-Mart out of Chicago. Now is not the time to give in to pressure from Wal-Mart lobbyists and Alderman Brookins.