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Why not improve the Northside Chicago
Workforce Center
at 4740 North Sheridan Road?
Labor Ready is not a “service” to low-wage
workers. It is a billion-dollar
company listed on the New York
Stock Exchange.
Each morning, Labor Ready operates as a holding cell
of low-wage workers from which employers can draw. There is no systematic effort to make
sure any one worker gets the work they need.
A local study and national statistics suggest
that workers don’t want day labor jobs.
Day laborers say they want help getting full time jobs that pay a
living wage. Labor Ready has a poor
track record doing this.
The Chicago Jobs
Council has lots of recommendations for improving Chicago’s workforce. None of them include bringing for-profit
day labor agencies into poor neighborhoods.
Although superior alternatives exist, Labor
Ready’s supporters are trying to make it look like the people who demand
the best for Uptown are against the poor. The opposite is true.
It is a question of bad jobs. Labor Ready and its Uptown supporters are
ignoring the problem of “bad jobs” and are furthering the problem rather
than offering a solution.
Photo: Chicago Journal News-Star
Facing a multinational corporation and a powerful
alderman, our rag tag group of local citizens was denied due process.
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There are several reasons why Uptown residents are
angered over the ZBA decision. They
are: Lack of Community Input, Incompatible Use, Insufficient Due Diligence & Inadequate Due Process. Please stand with us and fight for
democracy and socially responsible public policy in Uptown.
Lack of
Community Input
Despite the fact that this location
is on the very edge of the 46th ward, there was no coordination
whatsoever between the 46th ward Alderman and the 48th
Ward Zoning and Planning Committee.
Are the ward boundaries brick walls dividing little fiefdoms, or are
we one community? If we want to be
one community, we should endeavor to treat our neighbors with dignity and
respect. We should also respect each
other enough to recognize that everyone deserves fair representation and
due process at City Hall.
Incompatible
Use
Much has been said about the
proximity to the McCormick Boys & Girls Club, the McCutcheon School
and the Buttercup Playlot. Given that these empty storefronts are located
within a nexus of child-centered spaces and residences, the community wants
businesses that will enhance the quality of life for the people who live in
the immediate area. Residents want pedestrian friendly businesses that will
protect and support the residential character of the neighborhood. These
sentiments are widely held. Read what Corridors of Vision imagined for
these blocks of Sheridan Road.
No one envisioned a day labor agency as part of the “lush promenade.”
Insufficient
Due Diligence
Inspiration
Corporation and Heartland Alliance wrote letters of support for Labor
Ready. As respected social service
agencies in our community, we rely on them to make socially responsible
decisions on behalf of the entire community. This is an especially heavy
responsibility when parts of the community are not invited to provide any
input. We contend that these
organizations failed to conduct due diligence in offering their opinions to
Alderman Shiller, other leaders in the community and to the ZBA.
Unemployment, skills rehabilitation and getting
access to living wage jobs are major issues for some people living in
Uptown. Despite the fact that there
are many resources to assist people, some residents still struggle to make
ends meet. One of the ways that the
City has tried to address these issues is through the Chicago Workforce
Centers (CWC). The Chicago
Workforce Centers
and affiliate organizations comprise the largest component of Mayor Daley's
WorkNet Chicago, a citywide service delivery system of over 130
community-based and private organizations. WorkNet Chicago also has special
programs for ex-offenders. Heartland
Alliance
and Inspiration Corporation are Affiliate Organizations of WorkNet Chicago
and work with ex-offenders as well.
The
Northside CWC is located at 4740
N. Sheridan Road---approximately one block
south of Labor Ready’s intended location.
Core services available
free to Chicagoans at Workforce Centers include:
- Computerized listings of local, state, and
national job openings
- Seminars in resume writing, job search, and
interviewing skills
- Free faxing, copying, telephone, and
internet services for job searches
- Unemployment Insurance information
- Basic job skills courses, such as English as
a Second Language (ESL)
- Veterans Services
Job Seekers may also be
eligible for skill development through local training providers certified
by the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity
(DCEO).
However,
The Chicago Coalition for the Homeless found that the City’s CWC (or “one stop”
centers) are not fully meeting the needs of today’s workers. They found
that homeless people did not receive the services they requested and did
not get enough specific help with job leads. The homeless people in the
study said they couldn’t realize the “career plans” they developed with the
counselors because they had difficulty accessing the training and education
opportunities they needed. Finally,
the length of time between when a person list their job and when they found
a new one through the CWC was simply too long. These low-income workers
didn’t have enough savings to carry them through a period of unemployment.
(If you’d like to read their study, click here.)
In
light of these conditions, organizations like Inspiration Corporation and
Heartland Alliance may have been willing to support Labor Ready because
they know their clients need faster ways to clear a paycheck. Instead of
working to improve the CWCs, however, these organizations took the easy way
out. Labor Ready surely will provide “cash today” but it will do so under
conditions that will hurt low-wage workers in the longer term. As
organizations that are well-versed in the conditions for low-wage workers, it is breathtaking that they would not
only support the for-profit
solution to these problems but also uncritically accept Labor Ready’s
self-serving descriptions of itself.
For
example, Heartland Alliance’s letter states “Labor Ready exists because
there is a market for low-skilled workers in neighborhoods similar to
Uptown who could benefit from this kind of employment option.” This is not true. Labor Ready’s business model is
unequivocally not organized around providing a service to job seekers. If it were, it would create a pool of
people looking for work and then go look for opportunities for them as
individuals. It would start from what they have to offer and then seek out
employers who could use their services. Unfortunately, Labor Ready’s
approach happens the other way around.
They start with a demand for low-skill/low-wage workers on the part
of employers and then they open up shop in neighborhoods that have these
kinds of workers. They offer a
service to the employers in that Labor Ready sorts the workers and
then gathers them together on a daily basis so that they can dispatch
people “on-demand.” Each morning, Labor Ready operates as a holding cell
from which employers can draw. There is no organized and systematic effort
to make sure than any one worker develops skills and experiences over time
so as to become a more marketable worker.
(Click here for a supply and
demand graph which describes the economic conditions that have led to the
emergence of for-profit day labor companies. Click here for a
website that discusses how day labor fits into the global economy.)
The
Heartland Alliance letter is even so callous as to imply that this system
is organized around worker preferences. It says, “given Labor Ready’s flexible
work schedule, it is likely that the population we serve will find this
flexibility attractive.” This may be
how Labor Ready and employers want to paint the conditions for low-wage
workers, but it is not what workers themselves are saying. They are saying that they want to work
well-paying full time jobs but they can’t find them. (Click here for a study by the Chicago
Coalition for the Homeless.)
Likewise, national statistics show that of all people who do
“flexible work” people who work on-demand are the most likely to want to
work in another way. This preference is only to be expected
because on-demand workers have no job security, experience more on-the-job
injuries,
receive no benefits and are paid very poorly.
While
a small minority of workers can pick up day labor jobs to supplement their
regular income, day labor has become the employment of last resort for many
low-skill workers. Organizations
trying to help these people should know these facts and use them when they
make decisions on behalf of their workers and the wider community.
If
Heartland Alliance and Inspiration Corporation made a mistake in supporting
Labor Ready, what other options should they have advocated instead? The Chicago Jobs Council has been studying
this very question and came up with a list of 17 recommendations for
improving Chicago’s
workforce. Nowhere in this extensive
list did they recommend that for-profit day
labor agencies should be attracted into low income neighborhoods. (Click here for a
copy of the recommendations.)
Heartland and Inspiration could
also have recommended that Uptown’s leaders investigate the possibility of
opening up a multicultural worker center that would help place workers into
temporary positions but also advocate for worker rights at the same time.
Labor Ready uses a portion of its profits to support political action
committees and lobbying efforts that further its interests as part of the
temporary staffing industry. It goes without saying that increased worker
protections and living wage ordinances never make it to the top of the
American Staffing Association’s legislative agenda. Worker Centers (like Chicago’s San Lucas Worker Center
and Chicago Workers Collaborative,
the Latino Union of Chicago
and Suburban Job-Link Corp.
and the Primavera Foundation [which
also has an ex-offender program]) provide resources for workers in addition
to linking them to temporary assignments. As noted earlier, this approach to day labor was pretty
much invented right here in Uptown on Sheridan Road. Why have our
social service agencies and a local alderman ignored this approach and
argued before the ZBA as if Labor Ready is the only option?
Steven C. Pitts of the University of Berkeley is a vocal critic of the
kind of “jobs” that Labor Ready would be bringing to Uptown. His
perspective deserves to be quoted at length because it is particularly
suited to what is happening in Uptown. He says,
“An important crisis facing the Black community
is the crisis of bad jobs: jobs that pay poorly;
jobs with few benefits; jobs that offer no protection from employer
harassment; jobs whose only future is a dead-end.
During the expansion of the 1990s, the U.S.
economy generated a large number of these bad jobs. At the same time,
persons of color received a disproportionate number of the bad jobs. Hence,
the expansion of the 1990s could be characterized as a “racially polarized
job expansion.” By 2000, many of the occupations, where a significant number
of African Americans maintained employment, paid wages that made it
difficult to sustain a family.
Research indicates that a large number of
organizations with African American constituencies focus on issues other
than work. These groups deal with crucial concerns such as housing,
environmental justice, the criminal justice system, drug counseling, and
education. Most of the organizations that do have programs addressing
issues of work do not attempt to improve the jobs held by Black workers.
Instead, the emphasis is on the individualized provision of job readiness
counseling, soft skills, and hard skills. There are some examples where
organizations take up a transformative approach to bad jobs. While there are a variety of ways to
transform jobs, the activities fall under two broad categories: building
worker organizations to directly engage employers and enacting public
policies.”
The Labor Ready
“solution” does not solve what Dr. Pitts calls “the problem of bad
jobs.” Why should the people of
Uptown have to accept slip-shod public policy when we have the knowledge
and the infrastructure right here to really address the problem? Don’t we all deserve better? (If you
would like to read more of Dr. Pitts’ research, click here.)
Inadequate Due Process
Labor
Ready was given an unfair advantage before the ZBA and our rag tag group of
local citizens was denied due process. We failed to receive an impartial
hearing because:
- We were
denied a continuance so we could have an attorney properly present our
case.
- We
were deprived of the right to fully cross-examine Labor Ready’s
witnesses.
- We
never were granted an opportunity to refute the demographic study
which provided the basis for Labor Ready’s “public convenience”
claims.
- The
appraiser only included abutting properties and not enough of the
surrounding area in order to arrive at his conclusion that there would
be “no significant adverse impact on the general welfare of neighborhood or
community."
- About 100 citizens appeared to testify but
only 4 were granted an opportunity to speak.
- Our statements were dismissed as opinion and
hearsay but Labor Ready witnesses were permitted to make hearsay
statements and express wide-ranging opinions. The ZBA applied a
different evidentiary standard to witnesses on behalf of Labor
Ready and the opponents.
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