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A bill that would increase Illinois’ minimum wage by 65 cents this summer is slowly gathering support from Democrat lawmakers from Chicago.
Sen. William Delgado and Sen. Rickey Hendon added their names Tuesday to a growing list of supporters of Senate Bill 1565, which was introduced earlier this month.
The bill would increase the minimum wage by 50 cents, plus the rate of inflation every year, until it is restored to its “historic level” above $10 per hour. Get the full story »
U.S. Federal Reserve officials are increasingly confident of the economic recovery but remain unsatisfied with the healing of the job market, minutes of their January meeting released Wednesday showed.
“Participants generally expressed greater confidence that the economic recovery would be sustained,” the Fed said. Get the full story »
Employees at a Home Depot in Evanston. (Tribune photo)
Home Depot will be hiring 2,000 seasonal workers in the Chicago area in advance of what the Atlanta-based retailer calls its “Spring Black Friday.”
Home Depot has about 60 stores in Chicago and the suburbs. The addition of the seasonal workers will help free up regular store associates to wait on customers, but the seasonal employees will be trained on customer service, basic product knowledge and where to find items in the store.
The 2,000 seasonal workers in Chicago are part of the retailer’s plans to hire more than 60,000 such employees nationwide for spring, which is the busiest time for the home improvement industry. Get the full story »
Cook County is cutting 138 nursing jobs at two hospitals in a process that began today. Nurses union leader Leslie Curtis says nurses are calling it the “Valentine’s Day massacre.”
Cook County Health and Hospitals System spokesman Lucio Guerrero says the jobs are being eliminated at Oak Forest Hospital in the south suburbs and Provident Hospital on the city’s South Side.
General Motors Co. will pay more than $189 million in profit-sharing to 48,000 U.S. hourly workers and millions more in performance bonuses to salaried employees, according to a person briefed on the matter.
The company, less than two years out of bankruptcy protection, will pay most hourly workers more than $4,000 each as compensation for the company’s strong financial performance last year, the person said. The payments are more than double the previous record payment of $1,775 in 1999, the height of the boom in sales of sport-utility vehicles and pickup trucks. Get the full story »
From the Chicago Sun-Times | Senate Democrats proposed raising the state’s minimum wage in a bid that eventually would boost pay for the working poor to more than $10 an hour. Sen. Kimberly Lightford (D-Maywood) introduced legislation that would raise Illinois’ $8.25-an-hour minimum wage by 50 cents plus the rate of inflation annually until it reaches the equivalent in today’s dollars of what $1.60-an-hour was in 1968 — currently about $10.03 an hour.Get the full story >>
U.S. workers have reason to hope for slightly better pay raises this year, a shift that could add momentum to the economic recovery.
This could mean average wage gains of as much as 3 percent in 2011, compared with 1.7 percent in 2010–enough to boost consumer spending, which accounts for more than two-thirds of the economy, but not so much that it would stoke concerns of an inflationary spiral. Get the full story »
Motorola Solutions has laid off 175 employees in its networks business, which is slated to be sold to Nokia Siemens Networks in a $1.2 billion deal.
Motorola Solutions spokeswoman Tama McWhinney said the cuts took place in January and affected workers in Arlington Heights, as well as Fort Worth, Texas, and Tempe, Ariz. The company maintains a presence in all three cities. Get the full story »
The number of Americans filing for first-time unemployment benefits fell to the lowest level in more than 2-1/2 years last week, easing some of the disappointment about a weak monthly jobs report.
There were 383,000 initial jobless claims filed in the week ended Feb. 5, the Labor Department said Thursday. That was down 36,000 from the week before, and much better than the 410,000 claims economists surveyed by Briefing.com had expected. Get the full story »
U.S. unemployment remains too high despite increasing signs of economic strength, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke told Congress on Wednesday, suggesting the central bank would push on with its $600 billion stimulus program. Get the full story »
U.S. job openings slipped in December, a government report showed Tuesday, but a decline in layoffs supported views of a gradual labor market recovery.
Job openings, a measure of labor demand, eased 139,000 to a seasonally adjusted 3.1 million, the Labor Department said in its monthly Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey. Get the full story »
Looming U.S. rules that power utilities face on air pollution could create nearly 1.5 million jobs in the next five years, according to a report.
Engineering, construction and pipefitting are some of the professions that could see a rise in jobs as Environmental Protection Agency rules push utilities to invest in new capacity and pollution controls, said the report “New Jobs — Cleaner Air,” commissioned by Ceres, a coalition of environmentalists and institutional investors. Get the full story »
Kmart is among seven companies that have warned the state this month that they are planning closings or mass layoffs. Kmarts in Franklin Park, Ill., and Washington, Ill., will close, the company said, putting 144 employees out of work.
The Illinois Department of Commerce and Opportunity requires employers to provide 60 days notice of plant closures or mass layoffs. The law applies to businesses with 75 or more full-time workers. Get the full story »
