The average male Cook County government employee makes roughly $6,000 more than the average female employee, according to the Cook County Pension Fund’s latest annual actuarial report.



Wage equity advocates said Monday the data should be used to determine whether there is gender discrimination in county employment, but a spokesman for President Toni Preckwinkle said the data do not illustrate “important legacy issues which undoubtedly contribute to the disparity.”

“First, we are committed to a fair and equitable workplace, and that includes fairness and equity in salaries,” Preckwinkle spokesman Frank Shuftan said. “We do not set salaries based on gender; rather, salaries are informed by job type and collective bargaining agreements with our labor partners.”

“For example, the largest variances are in the ages (roughly) of 45-69. Many of these staff members in these age ranges and were undoubtedly hired decades ago, when women in most workplaces faced a glass ceiling, or were hired into lower-paid job classifications,” Shuftan added.

Regular cost of living adjustments and step increases would not erase the gap, he said.

Shuftan said the smaller gap for younger employees shows there has been improvement, and highlighted Preckwinkle’s hiring of women in management positions and on her leadership team.

“The president’s record on hiring and promoting women is second to none,” Shuftan said.

But Melissa Josephs, the director of equal opportunity policy at Women Employed, called the numbers troubling, even when considering union contracts and different jobs at the county – ranging from clerk, to attorney, to surgeon or trade laborer.

“It definitely looks like discrimination to me, it’s very blatant,” Josephs said.

The differential between genders — the lowest is $1,129 for employees between 25 and 29 and is as high as $24,640 for employees older than 70 — is the most troubling, Josephs said.

“If women are earning less than men, anywhere from $5,000 to $10,000 a year over 50 years – and there are a lot of people that work in Cook County government for a long time – they’re losing hundreds of thousands of dollars,” Josephs said. “It’s a problem.”

Age	How much more men are making annually on average	Cents on the dollar women are making compared to men
20-24	$3,919	0.92
25-29	$1,129	0.98
30-34	$2,839	0.96
35-39	$3,792	0.95
40-44	$4,789	0.94
45-49	$5,663	0.93
50-54	$9,931	0.89
55-59	$8,873	0.90
60-64	$8,722	0.90
65-69	$16,832	0.81
70 and over	$24,640	0.72

Cook County Acting Human Rights and Ethics Commissioner Amy Crawford said no employee had made a complaint of wage discrimination on the basis of gender in her two years at the commission.

There are other venues for such complaints – including the state’s Human Rights Commission, the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the city’s Commission on Human Relations.

“What I would say is that the county should be examining the data behind these statistics to do some analysis as to what the discrepancy is all about,” said Barbara Yong, a partner at the law firm Golan Christie Taglia and the founder of Equal Pay Day Chicago.

“Is it people who have, for example, more education or when they start, they have greater experience?” Yong said. “Or is it that after time they get promoted into more higher level management positions? More men than women get promoted. It’s good that they have this, but without doing a deeper dive and examining why the men are getting paid more, it’s difficult to draw conclusions.”

The annual Equal Pay Day event is held in Daley Plaza, smack in the middle of where many county employees work.

“In government, at least, there is typically either pay grades or various classifications. So when you enter the workforce you tend to get paid similarly, it’s not until after a while you see who gets promoted and who doesn’t,” Yong said.

Aside from the county taking a harder look at its own practices, women in county employment should take advantage of the fact that their colleagues’ salaries and available pay scales are public information, Yong said.

“Women need to investigate the positions that they’re applying for, what it pays, and negotiate for a fair salary and to go ahead and apply for those promotions and those positions that do pay more,” Yong said.

Beyond female employees advocating for themselves, Josephs said the county should be regularly auditing its hiring practices. Salesforce reviews its employee wages and bonuses annually, and has spent millions balancing unexplained pay differences for similar employees between gender and race.

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff is “making a conscientious effort,” Josephs said, “not trusting people below him to do the right thing. He’s doing the right thing, he’s a a high road employer… certainly Cook County government can do the same thing.”

The Civilian Office of Police Accountability opened an investigation after a video surfaced on social media of a confrontation between a white officer and a group of young African American men. Another aldermanic candidate made a big contribution to their campaign account, and proposals to build tiny homes to help shelter the city’s most vulnerable residents are due this week.

Cook County’s released its Comprehensive Annual Financial Report, better known as the CAFR, last week. The audited report looks back at spending from the 2017 fiscal year. What the 200-plus page report lacks in glitz, it makes up for in easily comparable line items that are great for graphing. The graphs below are interactive if you view them on our website.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel is set to unveil his campaign team Friday — and it will be led by Jay Rowell, officials said. City Clerk Anna Valencia, preparing for her first run for elected office, reported a massive haul of campaign cash. The National Police Association took aim at Emanuel for allowing Black Lives Matter and the ACLU help craft a consent decree set to reform the Chicago Police Department. In addition, the executive director of the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District announces a retroactive resignation.

Business owners or groups worried about crime — and a police force stretched thin — would be allowed to hire off-duty Chicago Police officers to patrol commercial districts under a plan resurrected by Ald. Brendan Reilly (42.)

The Daily Line 2018 aldermanic spreadsheet features four new candidates. 48th Ward challenger Morry Matson, a delegate for President Donald Trump, includes a letter he wrote to Attorney General Jeff Sessions about his efforts to bring a wheelchair-accessible boardwalk to the Edgewater lakefront on his old-school website. Our spreadsheet also includes the most recent statements of financial interest for incumbent aldermen. Mayor Rahm Emanuel challenged President Donald Trump once again in court, and the Cook County Republican Party named two new committeemen.

More than 12,400 Chicagoans worried that the water they drink and bathe in might be tainted with lead asked city officials to send them a free testing kit between April 1 and June 15. But only 33 percent of those requests have been fulfilled, and far fewer have received results, according to data provided to The Daily Line by the Department of Water Management.

Chicago Police brass will brief the news media Tuesday on their plans for the 4th of July holiday, which data shows is often the most violent of the summer. A nonpartisan watchdog group gives the City Colleges of Chicago the thumbs up on its budget, while the Ethics Board announces it will consider the case of a former city employee who took a banned gift in exchange for assistance.

• CPD steps up patrols for holiday: Police brass are set to announce Tuesday that more than additional 1,500 Chicago police officers will hit the streets to keep violence down over the 4th of July holiday. More than 100 people were shot — and 15 people killed — over the 4th of July holiday in 2017, when more than 1,300 additional officers were assigned to patrol. The holiday weekend is often one of the most — if not the most — violent weekends in Chicago, according to police data.
  

• Civic Fed backs City Colleges budget — The nonpartisan Civic Federation called the proposed $436.1 million budget for the City Colleges of Chicago “a prudent plan to continue to stabilize the district’s finances.” The proposal calls for a “modest” hike in the college district’s property tax levy, and will reinstitute a per-credit hour based tuition structure for part-time students while maintaining a flat-rate tuition structure for full-time students, according to the Civic Fed. Their fiscal year started on July 1.
  
  


• Inspector General refers case to Ethics Board — After an investigation by Chicago Inspector General Joseph Ferguson, the Chicago Board of Ethics will consider a case involving a former city employee. The inspector general’s investigation found the employee “received a gift worth in excess of $50 from a business owner with whom he dealt, and provided advice and assistance on matters concerning business in exchange for that gift.” City ordinance limits gifts to less than $50 per year from any single source. Danielle Perry, a spokeswoman for Ferguson, declined to answer questions about the case.

A coalition of community groups rallied Friday at Daley Plaza to mark the first anniversary of the expiration of Chicago’s labor agreement with the police union that represents most rank-and-file officers and to push elected officials to ink a new deal that holds officers guilty of misconduct accountable.

The oldest son of President Donald Trump took time out of his busy schedule campaigning for Republican candidates in the looming midterm elections to travel to Chicago City Hall Thursday morning to meet with Downtown Ald. Brendan Reilly (42.)

With the city’s contract with the union that represents most rank-and-file officers hitting the first anniversary of its expiration, groups will rally at the Daley Center to press for a new agreement that holds officers accountable for misconduct. Chicago Police First Deputy Supt. Anthony Riccio implored the Rev. Michael Pfleger to change his plans to shut down the Dan Ryan Expressway to protest gun violence.

Affordable housing advocates rallied Thursday at City Hall in support of a pair of ordinances that would limit aldermen’s ability to block projects that have apartments set aside for low- and moderate-income Chicagoans.

Police have solved 47 percent of the homicides committed this year, Chicago Police First Deputy Supt. Anthony Riccio told aldermen Thursday at a meeting of the Public Safety Committee, a boost to an often-criticized clearance rate.

Mayor Rahm Emanueland Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle slammed the 5-4 U.S. Supreme Court decision in the Janus v. AFSCME Council 31 case, and criticized Gov. Bruce Rauner for celebrating a ruling the mayor called “an attack on working families.”

Union officials said they anticipated no changes to current negotiations.

No longer do government employees have to pay fees to the labor unions that represent them in contract negotiations. Those requirements violate workers’ First Amendment free-speech rights, according to the decision.

“I strongly disagree” with the court ruling, Emanuel said. “It is not a victory for taxpayers.”

Emanuel said about 900 of the city’s 33,000 workers pay fair-share fees to unions that represent them but to which they do not belong. Emanuel said he would only be “guessing” when asked how the city will implement the decision, which he noted was “hours old.”

However, Emanuel said he would continue to partner with the city’s 35 unions.

Preckwinkle also blasted the decision.

“This is the culmination of yet another partisan effort to weaken and undercut public employee unions,”  Preckwinkle said. “Janus was funded and supported by corporate interest groups that want to make it harder for workers to stand united, among them our own problematic governor. Collective bargaining remains an important part of the fabric of our country… I’ll continue to support unions and efforts they’re undertaking to protect working families.”

Approximately 82 percent of the county’s workforce belongs to a union or pays fair share fees.

At the county, fair share fees and union dues are withheld from employee paychecks by the comptroller and remitted to unions during the payroll process. Cook County will stop collecting fair share dues effective Wednesday, spokeswoman Becky Schlikerman said. Asked if the county will ask union members to opt-in to paying dues, as the state is reportedly doing, she said their legal department is reviewing the issue.

Velisha Haddox, the head of the county’s Bureau of Human Relations, said the decision would not effect ongoing collective bargaining negotiations. One third of the county’s labor agreements up for negotiation have been confirmed by the board.

“At this point, bargaining continues and we’re not anticipating any impact, but we continue to work with the unions to the extent they raise issues, new issues on the table that we need to help them resolve,” Haddox said.

Chicago Federation of Labor President Bob Reiter said he expected the city and county to begin complying with the ruling immediately.

The decision will likely not have an impact on future contract negotiations, Reiter said. Anders Lindall, a spokesman for AFSCME Council 31, agreed.

“We believe that both the city and the county understand the depth of labor’s collective strength in the Chicago, as well as the rest of the state,” Reiter said.

Several aldermen condemned the decision, which was announced just before the City Council’s June meeting.

Ald. George Cardenas (12) said unions had made it possible for thousands of Chicagoans to live middle-class lives. He pledged to fight the impact of the decisions, which could cost unions millions of dollars the groups have used to support candidates and campaign for issues such as a $15 minimum wage.

“Chicagoans, pull up your sleeves and get ready to fight for progress, equality and the American Dream, one union at a time," Cardenas said.

Ald. Carlos Ramirez-Rosa (35) also struck a defiant tone.

“The labor movement is bigger than any right-wing court decision, bigger than any billionaire, or corporation,” Ramirez-Rosa said. “Our labor movement will never die because it is reborn every time a woman says no to sexual harassment in the workplace, every time a worker goes on strike, every time a worker demands dignity in the workplace and stands up for their rights.”

The City Council’s Progressive Caucus called the decision “radical.”

“We will always stand with the public employees keep our communities safe and healthy — and we will continue to defend workers’ right to organize, bargain collectively, and stand up to right wing attacks," the group said in a statement.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel backs a plan to rename Congress Parkway, but there is a catch in the proposal. Gov. Pat Quinn brings his effort to limit Chicago mayors to two terms to City Hall, and is ignored. Ald. Carlos Ramirez-Rosa was out, but now he’s back in — and aldermen will return to City Hall for a rare committee meeting scheduled for the day after a full council meeting.