Is Mayor Daley Calling Unions "Racists"?

The Chicago Sun-Times reports:

Armed with the votes he needs to sustain his first veto, Mayor Daley accused organized labor on Tuesday of forcing the issue on a big-box minimum wage ordinance only after giant retailers started coming to impoverished black neighborhoods.

Implied, but not stated, by Daley on the eve of Wednesday's City Council override vote was that union leaders somehow consider African Americans expendable.

The ordinance requiring big-box retailers to pay employees at least $13 an hour in wages and benefits by 2010 was pushed through the City Council only after Wal-Mart got zoning approval to build its first Chicago store in Austin and suffered a one-vote defeat in Chatham.


"Not one mayor or alderman has ever been threatened in the suburban area. ... Only on the West Side. Only on the South Side," Daley told cheering supporters at 119th and Marshfield, vacant site of a Target store placed on hold after the City Council's 35-to-14 vote in favor of the ordinance.

"It was all right for the North and Southwest sides [of Chicago] to get big boxes before this. No one said anything. All the sudden, when we talk about economic development in the black community, there's something wrong. ... This issue defines whether or not you stand for economic development on this site or are you going to let this site stand idle? That is unacceptable."

It appears the one-party town of Democrats in Chicago isn't one big happy family.The union movement is strong,in Chicago, and over half the African-American Aldermen voted against the Big Box ordinance.Are Blacks getting sick of the white union bosses in Chicago?