Gov. J.B. Pritzker signs law raising Illinois' minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2025

[brooklynite]

Source: Chicago Trubune

ow-wage workers across Illinois will ring in 2020 with a $1-per-hour raise after Gov. J.B. Pritzker on Tuesday signed a bill that sets the state’s minimum wage on a path to reach $15 per hour by 2025.

Pritzker signed the bill into law Tuesday morning during a ceremony at the Governor’s Mansion in Springfield, making Illinois among the first states to approve a minimum wage of $15 per hour, a goal set by the labor-backed Fight for $15 movement. California will hit that level in 2022, Massachusetts in 2023 and New Jersey in 2024. New York’s minimum wage eventually will reach $15 per hour statewide through a series of increases tied to inflation.

“Today is a victory for the cause of economic justice,” Pritzker said before signing the measure.

By signing the minimum wage increase into law before delivering his first budget proposal to lawmakers on Wednesday, Pritzker scored a major victory in the opening weeks of his term, fulfilling a campaign promise and demonstrating the power Democrats now wield in Springfield with control of the governor’s office and the legislature. But Pritzker’s first legislative victory came without a single Republican vote, highlighting the challenge he’ll face making good on his promise to work with the minority party.

Read more: https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/politics/ct-met-illinois-minimum-wage-pritzker-signs-bill-20190219-story.html

[msongs]

1. not until 2025??????????????????? gee thanks a lot nt

[bearsfootball516]

5. Have to give businesses time to adapt to the raises.

If you're a business that has 40 employees that make $10 an hour and suddenly they all get $5 raises and you don't have time to adapt your business model, there would be a lot of companies going out of business very quickly.

[sandensea]

7. +1

I'm all for the $15 an hour minimum. But for the very reasons you stated, it's important these reforms be phased in rather than implemented all at once.

Besides, 2025 will be here before we know it. Time flies.

[frazzled]

8. Interesting article from a few days ago about how businesses are dealing with it

At least the businesses that can afford to invest in technology. I've already seen it: touchscreen ordering kiosks at McDonald's instead of counter persons; our local Jewel supermarket just added a whole bunch more lines for self-checkout (fewer cashiers); hotels encourage you to use online check-in and using your smartphone as a key (so fewer desk clerks), etc.

“They’re chipping away at manual tasks to reduce the number of hours employees have to work,” said Rob Wilson, managing director and partner in the Chicago office of L.E.K. Consulting, a strategy firm. “A lot of it is under way. … This (the minimum wage increase) would just accelerate it.”

Chicago is already on the front lines of counter service automation. In September, Amazon opened a cashierless store in Chicago, the company’s first outside of its hometown of Seattle. Quick-service Asian chain Wow Bao opened a fully automated restaurant in Chicago in late 2017.

...

Hotels might offer guests bonus points to use mobile check-in and digital room keys via their smartphones, he said. Already some chains offer guests similar incentives if they forgo housekeeping for a day.

Even kitschy technologies, like robots that deliver toiletries and other requests to rooms, might transition from fun toys to necessities, he said.

“The more and more that labor costs increase, you’re going to see it become less trendy and more a reality,” Jacobson said.

https://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-biz-automation-minimum-wage-illinois-20190214-story.html

PS: This article was updated to reflect today's minimum wage passage. I'm glad about it, but as usual, I know that many companies will find ways to get around it. Technology is definitely a major one.


http://www.trbimg.com/img-5c672657/turbine/ct-1550263887-yxvzosh3z5-snap-image/750/750x422

[ProfessorPlum]

11. that would have happened

and continues to happen,

anyway

[frazzled]

14. That is true

(although the article mentions pushback from consumers who are not happy with it). But I can still see how the hours and numbers of workers will be reduced further, and how the effects of wage increases may well be erased, partially or entirely.

It's something we're not considering very much when we look only at laws that raise wages but fail to see the encroaching effects of technology. And, as usual, this affects the lowest-wage earners the most: sales clerks, hotel maids, fast-food workers. It's a no-win game for them.

Obama did consider technology, and tried to view job creation through the lens of creating new, non-tech industrial work, especially in the field of new energies. We've kind of lost sight of that forward thinking. If we don't adapt to the growing technology in our political views, we will be overcome by it. Indeed, it's my belief that a lot of the contemporary angst of the world has at its root discomfort with the changes that have come from technology. Just as it did after the Industrial Revolution. And we know what that led to.

We ignore the effects of burgeoning technology at our own risk.

[ProfessorPlum]

15. Even many lawyers are now being replaced with AI

very few jobs will withstand the spread of technology, in the end.

We'd better decide what we want life to look like when so many more of us are "unemployed". It will take a major refiguring of what life in the US means.

[onit2day]

13. If they can't pay any better than that then they need to go out of business

[ZeroSomeBrains]

2. That's a solid raise

2025 is a ways away though and making it on $15 an hour is tough. I make almost $17 and it isn't easy to keep up with the cost of living in the suburbs. Still a positive development. Let's get legal weed in Illinois too sometime this year!

[TJKay]

3. Don't get in a damn hurry about it! Nt

[IllinoisBirdWatcher]

4. Thank you, JB. More accomplished in one signature than Rauner in four years.

And we will have a budget from this governor in just a few months. Unlike the last disaster where we couldn't even have a budget for multiple years.

[Joe Nation]

6. JB is going to change many things in Illinois

Next on the slate is recreational marijuana. Hey, we have to pay for the increased minimum wage somehow.

[murielm99]

9. Some of the repiggie legislators in Springfield

are griping that this will hurt small businesses.

BS

Even the local newscasters are having a hard time finding local businesses that agree with that. Many of them already pay that amount and more.

[ProfessorPlum]

10. Why the big rush?

It's not like people have bills to pay in the next six years

[onit2day]

12. What a load of crap. by 2025 $15/hr will be same as MW now buys.