"Raising the floor," is a common refrain from Women Employed Executive Director Anne Ladky. Much of her summer has been spent co-chairing Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s Working Families Task Force with Ald. Ameya Pawar (37). Modeled after the Minimum Wage Task Force, the group is responsible for recommending worker-friendly employment changes throughout the city after 82% of Chicagoans said they’d be in favor of mandating paid sick leave in a February referendum. A paid sick leave ordinance already has the support of more than half the City Council, but Ladky says the task force is also talking about scheduling and access to dependent care, but employers have to take the bait.

“Profitability and good care of employees can go hand in hand…we know it can be done,” Ladky told Aldertrack in an interview last week. To get businesses to buy in, the Task Force and in turn, city government “need to make job quality a business advantage.”