Evanston Target Stores Raise Minimum Wage For All Employees

EVANSTON, IL — Target stores announced Thursday that the company is permanently raising its starting wage to $15 beginning July 5 at all of its locations, including in Evanston.

Additional bonuses are coming, too. The stores will give a one-time $200 bonus to employees for working throughout the coronavirus pandemic.

Target officials said the company will spend nearly $1 billion more this year than it did in 2019 on the health and safety of its workers — including increased wages, paid leaves, bonus payouts, personal protective equipment and a donation to the Target Team Member Giving Fund.

“In the best of times, our team brings incredible energy and empathy to our work; and in harder times, they bring those qualities plus extraordinary resilience and agility to keep Target on the forefront of meeting the changing needs of our guests and our business year after year,” Brian Cornell, chairman and CEO of Target Corporation, said in a release.

“Everything we aspire to do and be as a company builds on the central role our team members play in our strategy, their dedication to our purpose and the connection they create with our guests and communities.”

The one-time $200 recognition bonus will be distributed at the end of July to eligible full-time and part-time hourly team members at stores and distribution centers, company officials announced.

The payments follow earlier bonuses of $250 to $1,500 paid in April to 20,000 hourly store team leads who oversee individual departments in Target stores.

Target granted a $2-per-hour temporary pay increase in March, which was extended twice, the company said.

The Minneapolis-based company opened its second Evanston location, a small-format store at 1616 Sherman Ave., in March 2018. At the time, the company announced its plan to raise pay to $15 an hour by the end of 2020.

Evanston's first Target stores, at 2209 Howard St., opened a quarter-century ago amid a legal battle between the cities of Chicago and Evanston involving a three-foot guardrail placed in the middle of Howard Street by the late former 50th Ward Chicago Ald. Bernie Stone.

"The public is entitled to the full use of Howard Street unimpeded by the erection of the barrier," Cook County Circuit Judge Albert Green ruled, according to a 1994 Chicago Tribune report. "The use of Howard Street and the shopping center cannot be restricted merely because neighbors fear that it might affect the value of their properties."