Report: Public development subsidy deals should guarantee better jobs, working conditions

A proposed development that would bring a new soccer stadium to downtown Milwaukee should include guarantees of good wages and a path to union representation for workers in the stadium district in return for public subsidies, a new report recommends.

The report, “Worker Power Levels the Playing Field,” was released Tuesday by COWS, a think tank at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. It says taxpayer-funded support for the proposed Milwaukee soccer stadium project, dubbed the Iron District, should come with strings that ensure local hiring and strong job standards even after the project is built out...

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Ken Notes: Love the "idea" but would urge some caution on the implementation. Businesses are in business to be successful and should then share that success with employees, mandates that impede the opportunity for success can, while sounding good, be bad for development in the long run. We need to focus on a business being able to succeed first then focus on that business lifting employees with them. In the case of the Deer District the business was not as dependent on the employees at the service level but rather the "employees" at the Giannis Antetokounmpo (39.34 million USD) level. Clearly not a fair comparison...