Three members of the Mid-America Carpenters Regional Council union stood outside Doc Ryan’s old property on Madison Street Tuesday, picketing against the wages that those working on the building are getting paid.
They held a banner that read “Worker exploitation is not social equity!”
The construction workers renovating the building are not part of the Mid-America Carpenters Regional Council union, which represents over 50,000 workers in Illinois, Missouri, Kansas and Eastern Iowa.
The purpose of the banner, according to Phil Davidson, communications director for the union, was to “let the public know when there are companies, in this case Parkway, that are hiring contractors that pay below the area’s standard wages that we fight for.”
Advocating for these wages helps provide a livable wage for workers in the construction trade, he said.
The Mid-America Carpenters Regional Council’s wages are $52.01 an hour, what Davidson said is the “going rate” for union carpenter contractors. He added that he didn’t know what Parkway Dispensary is paying their contracted construction workers.
The property is in the process of becoming one of Parkway Dispensary’s first locations (there’s one in Tilton, and locations opening in Brookfield and Fox Lake early this year). It will also be Forest Park’s first dispensary, if it opens before the Bloc Dispensary that’s slated to replace the CVS on Harlem Avenue.
An often-cited argument against paying higher wages is that the cost is often passed on to the consumer.
The 1937 Group, the Chicago-based grower and seller that distributes cannabis to Parkway Dispensary, did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
“We don’t think it’s fair because it’s essentially undercutting the middle class,” Davidson said. By picketing to raise awareness for this, he added, the Mid-America Carpenters Regional Council can lift up all construction workers, even those who aren’t members of the union.
He pointed to the United Auto Workers strike against General Motors, Ford and Stellantis that went on late last year. Soon after the Big Three automakers agreed to raise United Auto Workers wages, other manufacturers, like Toyota and Hyundai, followed suit.
According to Davidson, Mid-America Carpenters Regional Council has often investigated contractors who claim to pay what the union considers a standard wage, only to discover they aren’t keeping true to that promise.
“We will actually go negotiate settlements on behalf of the non-union carpenters who are getting cheated on their money,” he said. In “making sure that companies pay those good living wages, it lifts up everybody, it’s not only union carpenters.”