How will Mayor Daley’s record be judged on the issues that impact Chicago’s communities?  One primary source is a report card issued earlier this year by a coalition of community and civil rights groups, and it’s not particularly favorable.

The Developing Government Accountability for the People project rated the city’s record on a range of issues in March, giving an overall grade of D and finding that the city’s performance in several areas had declined since a previous assessment three years earlier.

On criminal justice, DGAP gave the city a D, citing the failure to institute an effective early warning system for abusive cops or to fund alternative crime models like CeaseFire.

On economic development, the city got a D, with the O’Hare expansion serving as “a prime example of the inequity and corruption that plagues economic development in Chicago: money is ill-spent and goes to the people who need it least.”  DGAP called for living wage protections for big box and TIF-backed development, and for stepped up funding for jobs, including TIF funding for summer youth jobs.

On education, DGAP gave the city a D+ and called for a moratorium on school closings and for support for LSCs.  On the environment the city got a B+, with DGAP calling for action on recycling and coal power plant pollution.

On ethics and corruption, the city got a D+, with DGAP calling for enacting Shakman Decree protections, making budget information transparent, limiting campaign contributions, and requiring public hearings and independent evaluations of privatization deals.

The city got an F on housing, with DGAP reporting that the CHA Plan for Transformation has been a disaster for many residents, and the city’s ten-year plan to end homeless has only two years left and “there is still no city investment in creating permanent housing for homeless people.”

On transportation, with CTA service cuts “exacerbating inequities in service provision across the city,” DGAP gave the city a D and called for a congestion tax, full accessibility on public transit, a new formula for RTA funds, and a commitment to the Gold Line and the Red Line extension “to rectify the huge transportation inequity on the southeast side.”

The report showed that “despite all of its efforts to beautify and modernize the city, local government does not adequately and equitably serve all of its communities,” said DGAP coordinator Michaela Purdue in a statement with the report’s release.

“Where residents have expected to be actively engaged in the implementation of equitable policies that benefit all residents in every neighborhood across the entire city, they have instead found themselves in a constant struggle against forces that ultimately exclude their voices from the democratic process,” according to the report.

The Mayor still has several months to get his grades up.

Wal-Mart’s effort to move into Pullman invites a comparison of the 21st century company store with the 19th century version.

“The parallels are almost too obvious too mention,” said Jeff Helgeson, a Pullman resident who teaches labor studies at the University of Illinois-Chicago.  “There’s a sense in which [Wal-Mart] is very much like the model community of Pullman.”

Built by George Pullman as a planned community for workers at his railroad car plant, the town of Pullman was “celebrated internationally as a utopia,” but “within 15 years was the scene of one of the largest labor strikes in U.S. history,” Helgeson said.  He’s one of a group of neighborhood residents who’ve organized Labor Day celebrations to mark Pullman’s history.

Like Wal-Mart, the Pullman Company paid lower wages than other employers. (In 2004 a University of California-Berkeley study found Wal-Mart’s wages for non-managerial employees were 31 percent lower than the average retail wage; Chicago’s Center for Labor and Community Research estimated that Wal-Mart wages were $2 to $3 below those of its competitors.)

Both companies banned trade unions.  Both companies are known for spying on their workers to prevent any stirrings of organization.

The Pullman Company also owned every home, every store, every school, and every church in the town – even the town library – until the Illinois Supreme Court ordered the sale of all non-manufacturing property in 1898, ruling that company towns are “opposed to good public policy and incompatible with the theory and spirit of our institutions.”

A low-income cycle

Wal-Mart has commonly been called a “company store” because, in economist R.J. Eskow’s words at Huffington Post, “Wal-Mart lowers your living standards then sells you cheap goods that are all you can afford.”

“Wal-Mart has created and perpetuated a low-income cycle of worker/consumer,” said Al Norman of Wal-Mart Watch in an interview with Grist.  “Wal-Mart’s 1.5 million workers have to shop at the company store because they can’t afford to shop elsewhere. It’s a great closed-loop system, akin to a plantation where the field workers went to the company store with their day’s wages.”

“In a chilling reversal of Henry Ford’s strategy, which was to pay his workers amply so they could buy Ford cars, Wal-Mart’s stingy compensation policies…contribute to an economy in which, increasingly, workers can only afford to shop at Wal-Mart,” wrote Liz Featherstone in the Nation in 2004.

A couple years later Barbara Ehrenreich wrote of “signs… that Wal-Mart was beginning to be priced out of the reach of its own employees.”  Workers getting $8 or $9 an hour buy their clothes at thrift stores, she pointed out, and the store’s electronics and lawn and garden products “weren’t even on the distant horizon.”

In at least one other country, an old-school solution was attempted – company scrip.  But in September 2008, the Mexican Supreme Court ordered Wal-Mart’s Mexican subsidiary to stop paying its employees in vouchers redeemable only at Wal-Marts.  (The company called the program its “Social Welfare Plan,” according to one report.)

The court held that the practice was “similar to what happened in old company stores” that were outlawed by the constitution of 1917, Reuters reported.

Food stamps: a double boost

Another approach may be on view in Wal-Mart’s store on Chicago’s West Side.  Employees there interviewed by Chicagoist said “the company purposely cut worker’s hours [so they] can remain eligible for the Link Card,” the state’s food assistance program.

“There’s a lot of workers on Link,” says one employee, and when workers’ hours are cut, their Link Card allocation goes up.  And “shoppers that use their Link card at Wal-Mart include many Wal-Mart employees,” according to Chicagoist.

The use of public assistance programs like food stamps and Medicaid by underpaid Wal-Mart employees has long been an issue.  In 2004 California Assemblywoman Sally Lieber released Wal-Mart’s “Instructions to Employees” telling them how to sign up for food stamps and health assistance.  “Public assistance is very clearly part of the retailer’s cost-cutting strategy,” Featherstone wrote.

But with Wal-Mart supercenters now selling food – and accepting Link Cards – the company gets a double boost to its bottom line.

The old company store merely recouped the wages the employer had paid out.  In this innovative twist, the money paid by taxpayers to supplement Wal-Mart’s low wages can now be spent at Wal-Mart, contributing even further to the Walton family’s riches.

It gives an entirely new meaning to the term “corporate welfare.”

With a proposed Wal-Mart in Pullman on the agenda for Wednesday’s zoning committee meeting, public opinion in the community remains divided, as an unsuccessful effort to  win an endorsement by the Pullman Civic Organization shows.

It was only a week and a half ago, at a meeting of the civic group, that residents learned that Wal-Mart has signed a tentative agreement to anchor Pullman Park, a massive development project south of 104th Street and west of the Bishop Ford Expressway.

At the end of a long meeting, a vote in favor of the project was moved, but Wal-Mart skeptics won a vote to postpone a decision.

Buses are being provided for residents who support the Wal-Mart to come downtown for the zoning meeting en masse.

But some Pullman residents are asking how well the project has been marketed to other retailers, why economic development assistance isn’t flowing to small businesses in the area, and whether the rush to close a deal will foreclose an opportunity to impact Wal-Mart’s employment policies.

“They say nobody else is going to come but Wal-Mart, and we’d better take it or we won’t get anything,” said longtime Pullman resident Tom Shepherd.  “Why don’t we try a little harder?”

Developers have said that Jewel, Dominick’s, Target, Costco, and Ikea have turned down the spot.  But spokespersons for several of the companies told the Chicago Reader last week that they hadn’t been contacted.

David Doig of the Chicago Neighborhood Initiative told the Reader he’d worked through brokers, though reports on those contacts weren’t provided.  Alderman Anthony Beale told the Reader that he’d contacted retailers about a development at 115th and Michigan and assumed that if they turned that down, they wouldn’t be interested in Pullman Park.

Resident Ellen Garza would prefer to patronize small businesses, and thinks economic development should support that sector.  “Beale has done nothing for small business,” she said, mentioning commercial strips along 115th and 111th where “small businesses are limping along.”

“Where’s the economic development that would promote them and help them grow?” she asks, arguing that “small businesses help the community, make the community richer.” [Newstips explored this issue in 2006.]

Garza objects to the argument that any job is a good job, especially in economically-depressed minority areas. “Why are African Americans always treated like second-class citizens?” she asked.  “They don’t need unions, they don’t need a living wage, they don’t need benefits – it’s racist.”

“I think it’s a terrible idea to have a Wal-Mart in our neighborhood,” she said, calling the company “the worst employer on the face of the earth.”

Another resident, Jeff Helgeson, says Chicago has an opportunity to influence Wal-Mart. The company is “not a lost cause,” he said.  “They have changed – they stopped locking employees in their stores overnight, for example – and they did that in response to public pressure.”

“If they want to come into this market, they need to be kept to Chicago standards, not bring Chicago down to the level of other places,” he adds.  He’s afraid that “we might be giving in at a moment when we have some leverage.”

It’s been a long haul for the Pullman Park proposal since Park National Bank acquired the old Ryerson Steel site for $24 million in 2008.  A series of meetings seeking community input for development plans were held; PNB talked about building 1,000 single-family homes in keeping with the architecture of the Pullman Historic District, along with big box and smaller retail, a hotel, senior housing and a community center.

But the bank was seized by the FDIC last October and sold off to U.S. Bank, the nation’s sixth largest bank.  Not until this March did U.S. Bank announce that the PNB’s development efforts would be spun off in the Chicago Neighborhood Initiative.

“Park National Bank was really responsive to the community,” says Helgeson. “They were trying to do it without going to Wal-Mart. When U.S. Bank came in, suddenly Wal-Mart is the only option.”

Also subject to change is the financing of the project.  Before U.S. Bank and Wal-Mart, city financing through a new TIF zone passed last summer was said to be crucial to the feasibility of the project.  Now, according to residents who attended the presentation at the PCO meeting, developers say that phase one of the project – building the Wal-Mart store – will only use private funds.

This could avoid getting the project tangled up in the Finance Committee – or, perhaps, coming under the sway of a proposed ordinance that would require that beneficiaries of city subsidies pay a living wage.  Wal-Mart has consistently rejected such a requirement.

City Hall sources told Fran Spielman that “Wal-Mart has agreed to hold an unprecedented face-to-face meeting with organized labor,” and that got a front page headline suggesting a “Big-Box Breakthrough.”

But in the story, Wal-Mart’s Steven Restivo said company officials “have not made any commitment to meet,” and Jorge Ramirez of the CFL said a scheduled meeting had been called off, and Wal-Mart hadn’t yet rescheduled.

It wasn’t clear who had set up the meeting – or whether Wal-Mart had actually agreed to it in the first place.  The company has been completely consistent in refusing to discuss wages or benefits with anyone, ever.

It was only 9th Ward Alderman Anthony Beale who thought it was significant, calling the meeting (or the suggestion of a  meeting) a “huge” breakthrough, according to Spielman.

That remains to be seen – as does Beale’s repeated claims that he has the votes to win City Council approval for a Wal-Mart in Pullman.  He said so in February, in March, and in  April, even as he postponed presenting the matter to the Zoning Committee.

It’s worth recalling Beale’s 2007 boast to Mick Dumke that Wal-Mart would open in his ward within a year.

UFCW Local 881 President Ronald Powell issued a statement saying “Wal-Mart has not met nor committed to meet” with labor representatives.  “While we have requested that such a meeting take place, Wal-Mart has previously stated it was not interested,” Powell said.

Noting Wal-Mart’s “long, well-documented history of egregious violations of labor, worker, taxpayer, and human rights,” Powell said Chicago has “a unique opportunity” to require the company to do business differently here.

The union called for “a set of enforceable standards…that ensure living wages, comprehensive and affordable health benefits, [and] workplace rights” covering all big box retailers.  Powell reiterated Local 881’s stance:  “No Wal-Mart expansion in Chicago until Wal-Mart comes to the table to negotiate solid, enforceable wage and benefit standards for their workers.”

Local 881 represents workers at Jewels and Dominick’s groceries, where it’s likely that a new Wal-Mart supercenter would lead to pressure for benefit reductions.  After Wal-Mart moved into southern California in the early 2000s, the proportion of grocery workers with health benefits in that area dropped from 97 percent in 2003 to 54 percent in 2007, as noted here last year.

It’s hard to say where the Pullman Wal-Mart proposal stands right now, and Beale’s enthusiasm may not be the best guide.  What is clear is that Mayor Daley, hoping to move the proposal forward, is calling on Wal-mart to sit down with its critics, and Wal-Mart is refusing.

If there’s a “Chicago model” (or “Daley model”) of urban development, it’s this: use public TIF subsidies to attract corporate headquarters and big-box retailers that sometimes pay poverty-level wages and send employees to public health programs, and to subsidize high-end real estate development that gentrifies and displaces; and privatize public services from schools to parking to airports, in a mad scramble for revenue.

Meanwhile, in the search for ever-elusive “bipartisanship,” federal jobs and economic stimulus policies are sapped by tax cuts while shortchanging direct stimulus like unemployment assistance and aid to states, and a “green” energy and jobs policy spends billions of dollars to subsidize nuclear power and “clean coal.”

Cleveland offers a better way.  As detailed in the Nation this week (and Yes magazine last year), Evergreen Cooperatives of Cleveland are creating large-scale employee-owned green businesses aimed at serving “anchor institutions,” particularly hospitals and universities, which purchase billions of dollars of goods and services every year.

Backed by the Cleveland Foundation and Shorebank Enterprise Cleveland among others, Evergreen Cooperative has launched  the Evergreen Cooperative Laundry to provide green services to hospitals and Ohio Cooperative Solar, which is weatherizing residences and installing solar panels on nonprofit and municipal buildings.  Also in the works is Green City Growers, a massive year-round hydroponic greenhouse which will be the largest urban food-production operation in the nation, and Neighborhood Voice, a community-based newspaper.

Based in low-income communities, all the businesses will pay living wages and provide health coverage.  And unlike multinational chains, where profits are whisked back to Wall Street, they will build assets for low-income families:  employee-owners are projected to build a $65,000 equity stake within eight years.  On top of that, 10 percent of profits from each enterprise will go back to the Evergreen Cooperative Development Fund to develop more jobs.

Here’s the video.  It’s pretty inspiring.

The project is modeled on the Mondragon Cooperatives, begun by a priest and five workers in Spain in 1953 and now comprising 200 enterprises in 40 countries with 100,000 employee-owners and annual sales of 16 billion Euros.  As Carl Davidson explains, Mondragon workers build buses and appliances and high-tech machine tools and operate a chain of supermarkets—and they run their own banks, health clinics, schools, and Mondragon University, all worker-owned co-ops.

Last year the United Steelworkers announced a partnership with Mondragon to develop manufacturing cooperatives here.  According to Davidson, the partnership is now looking for viable small enterprises where owners are interested in cashing out.

“Too often we have seen Wall Street hollow out companies by draining their cash and assets and hollowing out communities by shedding jobs and shuttering plants,” said USW President Leo Gerard.  “We need a new business model that invests in workers and invests in communities.”

Mayor Daley was just kidding when he said he would go after Oregon businesses last week, after the state voted for a modest income tax hike for the top 3 percent  of its wealthiest residents, and for an equally modest reform of the state’s corporate income tax.

At least that’s a what a Daley spokesperson told the Portland Business Journal Friday.

Even as a joke it doesn’t make sense.  What business is going to leave a state with responsible fiscal policies for one like Illinois with a $13 billion deficit?  What businessperson would choose a state with public education and urban transit in crisis, and with social services in danger of closing with the state unable to pay its bills?

Meanwhile, as Oregon House Speaker Dave Hunt tells the Oregonian, Chicago has the highest sales tax in the country.  (And even with the minimums just enacted by the voters there, the corporate income tax is still higher here than in Oregon.)

Daley’s “economic development” policy throws millions upon millions of public dollars at multinational corporations to bring a relative handful of jobs here, while cutting funding for neighborhood development groups that support small business, which is the strongest engine of job growth. Meanwhile a maze of fees and regulations makes Chicago “hostile to start-up businesses and self-employed people,” as a study by the Institute for Justice found last year.

Check the list of organizations backing the Vote Yes For Oregon Coalition in its call for what the Nation termed “budget sanity.”  Look on the right side of that list for the many small business endorsers.  They knew the measures that passed were needed to “protect the foundations of our community — our schools, our health and human services, our public safety system,” as the Oregon Center for Public Policy put it.

Progress Illinois wonders why Daley still calls himself a Democrat.  Is he really against progressive taxation?  Last year, when Democrats in Springfield were unsuccessfully wrestling with budget reform, he was out of town, lobbying for the Olympics.

[UPDATED]  Again with the polls — Walmart has a full-page ad in the paper today touting three polls showing over 70 percent support for a Walmart on the South Side.

Of course, the next question is not asked.  It’s this:  do you think Walmart and other big businesses should pay a living wage?

In fact, as Amisha Patel of the Grassroots Collaborative reminds us, when voters were asked the followup question, they responded overwhelmingly in the affirmative.

In voter referendums in 300 precincts during the campaign for a living wage ordinance in 2005 and 2006, voters supported a requirement that big box stores pay a living wage by margins in the 80 percent range.  Patel points out that support for the ordinance was strongest in African American precincts.

In 2007, when the living wage ordinance was a major issue in a number of aldermanic elections, supporters of the ordinance carried the day by a wide margin.

Those are the polls the politicians care about – and that’s why, for all the outrage of editorial boards and columnists demanding full deference to the world’s largest corporation, there’s a limit on what Walmart can do in Chicago.

Even Mayor Daley recognizes it, so far at least, declining to approve the 83rd Street Walmart without Council backing.  And whenever an amended redevelopment agreement for the site is brought forward, the Good Jobs Chicago coalition intends to ensure that alderman get to vote on adding a community benefits agreement guaranteeing decent wages and benefits, and local hiring and investment.  And all these people can count votes.

Good Jobs Chicago has been canvassing the 9th and 21st wards and reports residents are responsive to their message.

“People hear only one side of the story – that a Walmart job is better than no job,” said Latrell Smith, an organizer with Action Now.  “When they hear the other side, it hits them that $8 an hour won’t begin to cover basic necessities or get people off public assistance.  Almost everyone we talked to agreed it’s a good thing to set reasonable standards for the ‘big boxes.’”

Patel applauded Ald. Edward Burke’s proposal to require a living wage of companies receiving city subsidies (withdrawn Monday after business leaders objected), noting similar measures have been passed in Denver and Pittsburgh. “It’s a great way to make sure development is creating good jobs,” she said.

Judging from polls, the ones where voters vote, Chicagoans would tend to agree.

Talking about economic development and “regional planning” – and no doubt eyeing a possible endorsement by U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. – Ald. Toni Preckwinkle has come out in favor of Jackson’s scheme for a new airport in Peotone.

Preckwinkle’s (rather far afield) support comes on top of Governor Quinn’s backing, which includes $100 million for property acquisition  in the state’s crisis budget and a promise to accelerate the process in his State of the State speech today.  Quinn actually got an endorsement from the Congressman in exchange.

Still, “there are so many obstacles,” said Peotone resident George Ochsenfeld of Shut This Airport Nightmare Down.  “The state is really broke – I mean really.  The airport industry is in a shambles.  And Jackson is damaged goods.”  The FAA has yet to approve a new airport, and there are still two competing plans.

Angry that his state representative wouldn’t speak out against the $100 million, Ochsenfeld is now a candidate for state rep in the Green Party primary in the 79th District.  He thinks he stands a chance come November – and he thinks his colleague in STAND, Judy Ogalla, has an even better chance to win the 40th District state senate seat; she’s running in next month’s GOP primary.

“Judy’s frustration with the state’s decades-long effort to build an unnecessary airport in the farm fields of eastern Will County was the catalyst for her desire to run for office,” says her website. “She has already stood up for her friends and neighbors in the path of the state’s favored project.”

Said Ochsenfeld:  “We’re closing down health services and social services — and we have $100 million to force people off their property?”

Airport opponents have held township offices in the area for several years now.  (For more see 6-12-08 Newstips.)