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Behind the US Chamber’s rankings
Friday, Mar 4, 2011 - Posted by Rich Miller * This Crain’s piece doesn’t even begin to tell the whole story about why the US Chamber ranks Illinois so low…
* Here are a few of the actual reasons for our low ranking. From the Chamber’s list…
Those “wide-ranging” anti-discrimination laws above and beyond federal laws include sexual orientation protections. The “significant restrictions” on employer inquiries include worker credit histories. And, yes, we’re not a right-to-work state. That idea was even dropped by Indiana’s conservative Republican legislature the other day. * It’s obvious that unions are a big reason for the US Chamber’s displeasure…
* What states are their heroes? The Chamber’s “top tier” includes Alabama, with a 9.1 percent unemployment rate, Florida, which has a 12 percent unemployment rate, and Georgia, with its 10.4 percent unemployment rate. All of those rates are higher than ours. Others on their favorable list had lower unemployment rates, including Mississippi, Texas, Idaho and Kansas. Only Texas has a somewhat comparable economy to ours, but it also has rich oil and natural gas deposits, and that sector is booming right now. * So, does this study have anything to do with reality? After all, Site Selection magazine measures real world behavior, not ideology-based projections. It put Illinois in its top ten and ranked the Chicago metro region as number one. Back to the Crain’s story…
* Is there room for improvement? Absolutely. We have a very high number of labor and employment lawsuits here - about the same as Florida, which was one of the Chamber’s “top tier” states. And then there’s stuff like this…
* And, of course, our workers’ compensation premiums are outrageously high. The “reform” effort five years ago, which was agreed to by the business lobby, has failed miserably. It needs to be revisited. Gov. Pat Quinn said this week that he’s working on a fix, but nobody knows yet what it will be or if it can pass. But the very real problem of workers’ comp premiums is barely mentioned by the Chamber. Instead, the Chamber’s analysis is almost all about the unions.
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- CircularFiringSquad - Friday, Mar 4, 11 @ 6:36 am:
* What states are their heroes?…Alabama….Florida…Georgia, Mississippi, Texas, Idaho,….”
We believe these also allow you to marry your cousins, pile your appliances in the front yard and mandate neck tatoos too. Perhaps that is part of the fondness factor?
- Precinct Captain - Friday, Mar 4, 11 @ 8:01 am:
The chamber has been and will be a lobby for its own Big Corporate agenda, not the needs or wants of small business owners, let alone workers, or (this is ghastly) the American people.
- PublicServant - Friday, Mar 4, 11 @ 8:20 am:
Yet another story confirming the US Chamber of Commerce is a tool. I rank them last on my list of entities whose rankings I pay attention to.
- wordslinger - Friday, Mar 4, 11 @ 8:39 am:
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has nothing to do with Main Street America. The chamber is the biggest supporter of undocumented workers in the country. They’d only be happy if every worker had no rights.
- 47th Ward - Friday, Mar 4, 11 @ 8:59 am:
A unionized public employee, a member of the Tea Party, and a Chamber of Commerce member are sitting at a table. In the middle of the table there is a plate with a dozen cookies on it. The Chamber member reaches across and takes 11 cookies, looks at the Tea-Partier and says,”Watch out for that union guy; he wants a piece of your cookie.”
- PublicServant - Friday, Mar 4, 11 @ 9:45 am:
What? No tea at the party?
- Bitterman - Friday, Mar 4, 11 @ 10:00 am:
A union member, a US Chamber member and a small business owner are sitting around a table. The union member and the Chamber member, both relatively corpulent, are arguing over the plate of cookies for several minutes. The small business owner tries to enter the conversation over the dividing of the cookies but the other two look over and tell him shut up and go away.
- Truth Seeker - Friday, Mar 4, 11 @ 10:09 am:
Whether we like it our not the Chamber is a respected organization with business people. We, in Illinois, can simply try to degrade what is reported and recognize our weaknesses and do something about it. We have got big issues that need to be addressed.
- Small Town Liberal - Friday, Mar 4, 11 @ 10:15 am:
- Whether we like it our not the Chamber is a respected organization with business people. -
Yeah, I’m sure a bunch of young startups are going to flock to Alabama because the chamber ranks them top tier. The chamber is a lobbying group, not a respected authority on location.
- Excessively Rabid - Friday, Mar 4, 11 @ 10:29 am:
I’m not a union fan at all, but it sure seems like unions are being scapegoated for a lot of things at the moment.
- Anonymous - Friday, Mar 4, 11 @ 10:34 am:
As a state employee, I am wondering: Where were all the complaining taxpayers 22 years ago when I started here making $16,000? Even in 1989 that was below poverty level! So now that I finally have a salary that allows me to live decently, you want me to apologize and give it up?? NO WAY! I am proud to be union and have earned every “cadillac perk” that the stae “gives” me.
- Fed up - Friday, Mar 4, 11 @ 11:04 am:
Wow circular firing squad. Way to throw out stereotypes not borne out by facts. Liberals love to use stereotypes but if someone were to say something about the morals and upkeep of the south and westside of Chicago that would be wrong.
- Judgment Day - Friday, Mar 4, 11 @ 11:23 am:
“Yeah, I’m sure a bunch of young startups are going to flock to Alabama because the chamber ranks them top tier”
You are correct - as far as you’ve gone. Unfortunately, that’s not very far. Illinois should be a great location (literally, a top 10 location) for small tech startups. We’re not - with all our advantages, and we have many - we’re still probably below average among all the states.
In the small startup biz, it’s not unions that are the primary issue. It’s more the entire government structure that’s the issue - It’s all the little things.
Try being a small 3-4 person startup here in IL and running up against the IDES the first time and figuring out that clown show. They seem to treat most tech startups like we are manufacturing facilities, so rates for startups are high.
IMO, Illinois just isn’t a particularly friendly place for small startups to grow and prosper.
- jerry 101 - Friday, Mar 4, 11 @ 11:33 am:
What do alabama, mississippi, georgia, texas, and the other favored states have in common?
Low wages. Poor education. Poor government services. Lax environmental regulation. Cheap land. And a long history of desperation for some kind of development - any kind of development really. (There are areas of Texas, Florida, and Georgia that don’t suffer too much for development, but there are huge swathes of those states that got nuttin)
They’re like third world countries. There should be a name for them. Third world states doesn’t sound quite right, so maybe “developing states” fits.
What’s the difference between Vietnam and Mississippi? Mississippi’s closer.
The Chamber of Commerce wants the entire country to be governed like Mississippi. A state that ranks at or close to the bottom in just about any category related to quality of life - education, life expectancy, infant mortality rate, per capita income, so on and so forth.
The neo-liberal race to the bottom. Eventually, there is a push back against the race to the bottom. Just look at Egypt and Tunisia.
To the chamber, good business states are the ones that keep their workers in grinding poverty, toiling under a thick layer of smog, drinking polluted water, and surviving off of buying things from the company store (on credit, and they’ll never earn enough to repay it).
Sorry…rant over.
- MrJM - Friday, Mar 4, 11 @ 12:46 pm:
Alternate answer: http://www.iancfriedman.com/?p=284
– MrJM
- Aldyth - Friday, Mar 4, 11 @ 2:03 pm:
The US Chamber of Commerce would like to see unions disappear, OSHA vanish, DOL slip into the Twilight Zone, and anything resembling worker’s rights go defunct. Rather sounds like a third world country, doesn’t it?
- formerpolitico - Friday, Mar 4, 11 @ 2:39 pm:
All I know is that my father-in-law just moved to Florida and took his wealth with him. He’s saving millions in income and estate taxes that the Illinois pols will now never get a hands on! It seems half of his neighbors are also from Illinois.
- Rich Miller - Friday, Mar 4, 11 @ 2:40 pm:
formerpolitico, Florida has no income tax. Should Illinois really abolish its income tax? How would we afford to build the warming dome?
- wordslinger - Friday, Mar 4, 11 @ 2:47 pm:
Former Politico, people retiring to Florida? I’ve never heard such a thing. When did this start?
Virtually the whole Gulf Coast from Ft. Meyers to Naples are Illinois snowbirds. They made their fortunes and raised their families here and live the good life in the sun.
New Yorkers got Miami. It started about the same time as home air-conditioning.
- Yellow Dog Democrat - Friday, Mar 4, 11 @ 3:21 pm:
=== Unfortunately, that’s not very far. Illinois should be a great location (literally, a top 10 location) for small tech startups. We’re not - with all our advantages, and we have many - we’re still probably below average among all the states. ===
LOL. Tell that to Groupon.
According to Site Selection Magazine, Illinois’ ranks 15th in New Economy jobs. Our advantages come from world-class higher learning institutions, great public research facilities like Argonne and Fermi, the Beckman Institute in Champaign; a highly-skilled workforce; and great places to live.
- Commonsense in Illinois - Friday, Mar 4, 11 @ 4:34 pm:
As some have pointed out, different surveys look at different measurable criteria. It shouldn’t be all that surprising that the US Chamber would differ widely with Site Selection when you look at what they considered. That said, there is vast room for improvement if Illinois is to stay competitive with other states in a number of areas - Work Comp, Med Mal, tort reform, education funding to name just a few. Right now, we’re not a healthy environment, and this week’s proposal to strip business tax credits and incentives would have added additional strain on our economic development efforts. Amidst all these surveys, somewhere in the middle lays the absolute truth. While it’s fun to bash this survey or that survey, we should try to learn something of value from each.