Workers plan march in Chicago to protest minimum wage

Low-wage workers and their advocates will march along Chicago’s “Magnificent Mile” to campaign for an increase in Illinois’ minimum wage.

The march begins Thursday at 11 a.m. along Michigan Avenue from the Tribune Tower Plaza to Huron Street.

The event is sponsored by Raise Illinois. It’s a coalition of community, business, religious and labor organizations working for an increase in the minimum wage.

The coalition contends the General Assembly has helped businesses along Chicago’s premiere shopping street by reforming the workers’ compensation law. They want lawmakers to increase the minimum wage from the current $8.25 an hour gradually over four years to more than $10.

The group says that’s the equivalent in today’s dollars of what minimum-wage workers made in 1969.