A reader writes in:This 1997 Chicago Reader front-page story documents the history of day labor abuse in Alderman Helen Shiller’s 46th Ward. In it you will read that:
1. Day-labor firms seek to locate in Uptown’s Montrose/ Broadway/ Wilson area because it allows them to discriminate on behalf of employers by tapping a poor, white labor pool. In 1997, not one day labor agency located anywhere on the predominately African-American South and West sides, but four located on Uptown’s Wilson Street and Broadway Avenue. In 1971, 26 day labor agencies thrived in Uptown. Thirty-five years ago, most of Chicago’s daily-pay hiring halls located in the skid rows of the West Loop and Uptown, home to immigrants and poor, Appalachian whites.
2. Critics say employers companies prefer day labor temps because they’re less likely to speak up about racial discrimination, sexual harassment, unsafe working conditions, and other abuses, and street wisdom is that this is because so many are immigrants without papers.
3. John Donahue (Shiller’s activist preacher buddy at the Chicago Coalition of the Homeless) states that, without benefits or guaranteed work, these workers “get stuck in day labor and when they don’t get out, then they don’t have a place to stay.”
4. Urban League reports show that race influences how day workers are treated and blacks and Latinos proportions are double of that of the area work force.
5. In 1974, 46th Ward Alderman, Chris Cohen outlawed paying day laborers with vouchers that could be cashed only at taverns owned by day labor agency bosses or friends. (We know this practice continued at Mike Siegel’s notorious Wooden Nickel bar at 1134 W. Wilson, long into Ald. Helen Shiller's aldermanic terms.)
6. At our Wilson Club chicken-wire ,"cage hotel," residents often worked as low-paid day laborers to barely subsist in a cycle of substance abuse.
7. In the late 1990’s, Uptown day labor activists concluded that raising the minimum wage could not solve the day labor problem. Ironically, they, along with the Mayor’s Office of Employment and Training and the MacArthur Foundation, determined that “job readiness training” and cheap transportation out of the city to jobs in the west and northwest suburbs were the answer. With city and foundation funding, our Uptown day laborer advocacy program relocated from Uptown to Bensenville and was renamed the Suburban Job-Link.
Read the article here
Update: Another reader sent us a photo showing the day labor van's that used to park on Clifton across from Truman College (when a day labor office was open in the building currently housing Nick's On Wilson). It will surely be a trip down memory lane for many residents. We will assume this was taken in the late 1990's, but perhaps the photographer can comment.
And Alderman Helen Shiller missed this so much that she wants to bring it back again.
ReplyDeleteI'm surprised that she and Bomberg don't put another Labor Ready branch next to the Wilson Men's Hotel so they can exploit them just like old times. And who knows, perhaps using our TIF dollars she will.
I was just playing around on Google Maps and discovered that the "1132" visible in this photo is the now vacant space in the "Nick's On Wilson" and soon-to-be 7-Eleven building.
ReplyDeleteYep! That two-story building was the former site Mike Siegel's Uptown empire. His Wooden Nickel bar and day-labor operation were on the ground level. Steps lead up to his skid row SRO on the second floor. In Morton Grove, Siegel also owned the former Admiral Oasis Motel at 9353 Waukegan Road, where tenants paid $100-$150 per week for run-down rooms. The Admiral was the last residential motel on the North Shore and Siegel demanded $.4.5 million for that property when Morton Grove attempted to buy it.
ReplyDeleteMany of his ex-con hotel residents worked at Siegel’s Midway Movers, which temporarily lost its Illinois movers license for various crimes including stealing furniture and deposits from customers. Not so amazingly, one often saw furniture and clothing for sale at the old Uptown "fencing fence" , which existed at the Midway Movers parking lot located at the Southwest corner of Montrose and Broadway. (Yes, just South and across the street from Wilson Yards.) The upside to this Midway Mover connection was that Mike Siegel’s SRO purportedly had some very nice furniture.
SRO residents complained that Mike forced them to make him the recipient of their SSI checks Their aid checks went directly to him, so when they misbehaved (his words) or moved out, he refused to give them their government aid money or their mail.
Midway Movers warehouse workers stated that they believed that Midway Movers transported stolen guns because there was always a certain unmarked truck on a certain day coming in from the East Coast with long, extremely heavy boxes, which no one could touch or watch unload.
But, not to worry. As hard as Uptown residents and the State of Illinois worked to stop the Siegel family, Mayor Daley worked to offer the Siegels’ a deal to resuscitate their image. That same year, Midway Movers became the "Official Movers of Taste of Chicago", a saying you can still see plastered on older Midway Movers trucks.
It pays to play. Or, does it play to pay? In Uptown, it’s just hard to say.
About Midway Movers
ReplyDeleteProve it or shut up don't believe everything you read in blogs folks.
Just google. It is getting harder to hide in this new technological age, isn't it? And that must really tick-off those who exploited Uptown for years.
ReplyDeleteI think I took those photos in 1997.
ReplyDeleteJust google. It is getting harder to hide in this new technological age, isn't it?
ReplyDelete??
Midway Movers and Guns?
lies all lies
Just repeating what the workers said.
ReplyDeleteIt's getting harder and harder to keep those underprivileged and uneducated poor that have been manipulated and bullied by the activists divided from those nasty condo owners with those computers and professional degrees isn't it? What if they start helping each other to make Uptown a better community for all?
Shiller certainly won't like that. She's worked so hard over the eyars to drive an imaginary wedge between different segments of the community.
ReplyDeleteAnon @ June 5, 2008 3:35 PM
ReplyDeleteInteresting. I see Midway Movers is a partner in the CHA corporate partners program. Nice gig. I wonder how much revenue is generated from relocating all these CHA residents.
I gotta find a way to get my back scratched.
the Reader opening up their archive for free is a huge boon to the citizens of Chicago
ReplyDeleteThey make alot of money. They've been the only corporation to afford the entire back cover of the AT&T Chicago Yellow pages every year for ten years or so.
ReplyDeleteHugely expensive. Huge.
No wonder they can only afford to pay ex-cons minimum wage.
This post really isn't about Midway Movers. It is about the history of Day Labor abuses in Uptown.
ReplyDeleteIn the recent Labor Ready case, which could be reheard, the zoning board indicated that assertions that day labor industry harms Uptown residents was simply based on stereotypes.
Wrong. Here is that historical evidence.
But that is the rub, 1:19. The official keepers of this history are the exact same people who are fighting tooth and nail to bring it here. The few dissenters among them have either been silenced or are conveniently looking away while this is happening because they don't want to piss off Shiller and they don't trust the people who are opposing Labor Ready. That is too bad and it is their loss because they missed a grand opportunity to get the issues of their clients on the forefront of everyone's minds. Maybe the money that was raised could have gone towards an alternative but that opportunity was lost when they kept silent.
ReplyDeleteI, for one, will remember what was said and left unsaid by people who should have known better.