Walmart, owned by the fabulously wealthy Walton family of Arkansas, has told the city of Washington, DC, that it will not build stores there if the City Council passes a “living wage” bill. The members of the family are billionaires and at the very least multimillionaires.
Walmart wants to pay only the minimum wage of $7.50 an hour. The City Council wants a “living wage” of $12.50 an hour, reflecting the high cost of living in DC.
Walmart says it will abandon DC if required to pay such “high” wages.
Have you seen the ads that Walmart is running on national television that show how their employees are achieving their dreams because of their beneficent employer? On $7.50 an hour?
The Walton Family Foundation is happy to throw millions of dollars into DC charter schools, but not provide a wage that will allow the parents of the children in those schools to make choices about their lives.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
So now we know how communities can prevent Walmart from opening and causing locally owned businesses to shut down: pass a living wage law!
LikeLike
Actually – they had already offered to pay that rate – they are just objecting to being forced to pay it arbitrarily. Why doesn’t this rule apply to all stores? Why just the big ones?
LikeLike
“Walmart says it will abandon DC if required to pay such “high” wages.”
DC could only be so fortunate.
Refuse to shop at Wally World or Sammie’s or their gas stations whatever they’re called!
LikeLike
The low hourly wage isn’t the only problem at Walmart. They also keep most of their employees on a part-time schedule that can vary wildly, from 0-39.5 hours per week. Of course, almost no one works 40 hours per week (so Walmart can avoid paying benefits), and overtime is forbidden–so employees are sometimes forced to work off the clock or take hours long breaks to “make up” for overtime. Lately Walmart has been hiring mostly temps, who have even less job stability than part-time Walmart workers.
LikeLike
Those who argue that capitalism is not based on exploitation have a hard time defining “exploitation”. Wal-Mart can always argue that if working at Wal-Mart were not better than the alternative, no one would choose to work there. It’s the same argument that can be used by people who exploit children in sweatshops and sex rings – “better than the alternative”.
These people usually draw the line at outright slavery, although making the worker’s choice to extricate himself from the claws of the employer extremely unpleasant isn’t technically slavery, so…
LikeLike
Ron — how would you define exploitation? I might not disagree that capitalism’s based on exploitation, but I confess I do have a hard time defining the term.
LikeLike
EXACTLY! There’s no definition, so no way to PROVE that anyone is doing it — and no need for pesky laws intended to prevent it! Welcome back, child sweatshops!
LikeLike
Actually, the most disgusting Walmart commercial I’ve seen lately was of them patting themselves on the back for what they’ve done to feed the hungry, when they have more employees on Food Stamps than any other American company! Whatever happened to truth in advertising?
I have been boycotting Walmart due to their employee policies for many years.
LikeLike
Me, too!
LikeLike
Anybody here own any Walmart stock? Own any shares in mutual funds or 401K funds that hold Walmart stock? Participate in a pension fund that holds Walmart stock?
LikeLike
Followup hint: The answer is probably yes.
This isn’t a cheap “gotcha” point. The point isn’t that you’re not allowed to complain about Wal-Mart labor practices if you own Wal-Mart stock. The point is that most working people, like teachers, are deeply invested in a system that is designed to maximize profits and minimize costs, including labor costs. Pension funds are MAJOR holders of the stock in big corporations. Along with others (mutual funds, hedge funds, big banks), they own these corporations. They are these corporations. And everyone with a vested interest in these pension funds benefits when Wal-Mart’s profits increase.
I don’t have any prescribed courses of action related to this. I just note it. It’s a tricky thing.
LikeLike
No way, Nada, Nope and NO. I do not own anything, like many Wal-Mart employees, except for my clothes, my furniture and my 14 year old used car.
LikeLike
With all due respect, Walmart refuses to pay a living wage most anywhere.
LikeLike
Let me be clear here….if Walmart avoids paying benefits to employees by keeping them on a part-time schedule I don’t agree with that, however, Walmart has the right to run their business as they see fit. As consumers if we don’t like it then we don’t have to shop or work at Walmart but you can’t force them into running business a particular way. The same goes for this min. wage increase….you can’t force Walmart or any other large retailer in DC to pay a higher min. wage. It simply is not fair. If DC wants to pass this law then all retailers should have to pay the increased min. wage to employees.
I would hope (in a perfect world) that Walmart and other large retail that can afford it would be willing to pay the increased min. wage because of the overall good it can do for the proverty in these communities….but you can’t force it upon them. What you can do is choose if you want to shop or work for Walmart.
Why don’t we reward big retail who is willing to pay the higher min wage amount rather than force them.
LikeLike
Is a minimum wage an unfair burden on employers? Can we be globally competitive if workers in Bagladesh are paid $1 a day and ours get $7.50 an hour? Should employers be free to pay $1 a day without benefits?
LikeLike
“Walmart has the right to run their business as they see fit. As consumers if we don’t like it then we don’t have to shop or work at Walmart but you can’t force them into running business a particular way. The same goes for this min. wage increase….you can’t force Walmart or any other large retailer in DC to pay a higher min. wage. It simply is not fair.”
Walmart has the right to run its business as it sees fit, but has the obligation to comply with the law. Walmart can most certainly be forced to run its business a particular way, unless there are other laws that trump.
Whether it’s fair, or good policy, that’s another question. Focus on that question and develop reasons why it’s unfair or bad policy.
LikeLike
Ah, but when you have the money to heavily influence what the law IS, the mandate that you comply with the law becomes so much easier to live with!
LikeLike
mklincoln … I agree with you ! You can’t require a company to pay anything other than minimum wage. WalMart has the right to run it’s business any way it sees fit so long as it is paying what is the minimum required wage.If government would requires businesses to do this it would stifle the growth of new companies. Why start a business when you’re shooting yourself in the foot to start with. This is far more than outrageous and we should be standing up for the rights of those who create jobs and stimulate the economy.If you don’t like a business’ policies then voice yourself through your right to shop and work elsewhere.
LikeLike
Good way to keep them out and to promote the Mom and Pop’s. Which do you want? They want to take our money from every source and only make wealth for the very few. Who cares about those scruffy employees no matter the lies we tell on T.V. in our advertising. D.C. keep to your living wage and keep them out and start the end of them doing what they do. If they want to join the world of the good let them come. If they want to stay in the world of the evil, tell them to stay away. How does Costco compete with real wages and benefits? They do it. All the profit at Walmart goes to the kids who inherited did not build and broke their fathers operation of remember “Buy American.” Wealthy greedy brats is who they are.
LikeLike
Anyone else watch Frontline last night? This is everyone’s problem. Cheap clothes, food, furniture, etc. are actually expensive when we realize that the cost is actually despair and hunger for those whose jobs have been outsourced and downgraded. Where are the middle class jobs for your children and grandchildren? No matter how many stained glass windows the Waltons contribute to cathedrals (or how much money they put into destroying public education) I wouldn’t care to be in their shoes when they meet their maker.
LikeLike
I don’t want to be in anyone’s shoes when they meet their maker.
LikeLike
Vote with your money.
LikeLike
A job at Walmart is better than no job. At least employees have a little self esteem for working. Let’s keep government out of enterprise.
LikeLike
Right, right… And hey, a job in a brothel is better than no job at all, right? I mean, if the alternative is for some 15 year old girl to be on the streets with nothing to her name, really, the brothel owner is doing her a big favor by giving her work, isn’t he? Why, he’s a PHILANTHROPIST!
LikeLike
Walmart is the largest private employer in the US and the Waltons are fabulously wealthy. Walmart/the Waltons are rabidly anti-union. The serfs (employees) are forced to watch anti-union films and are subjected to anti-union propaganda in the employee areas of the stores. If anyone even whispers the word union, they are bullied and intimidated into silence. If the employee persists in union efforts then he will be fired on trumped up charges. The well orchestrated and well funded war against unions has been going on for 30 plus years, union membership is down to 11.3% of the workforce and keeps falling every year. Workers are not allowed to have unions, they are not allowed to have a minimum wage or living wage, no benefits, no pensions, no paid sick leave, no vacations, no job security, no full time job, only part time or temporary employment. Gee, that almost sounds like indentured servitude.
LikeLike
“The members of the family are billionaires and at the very least multimillionaires.”
Actually, the six Walton heirs own more wealth than the bottom 40% of Americans. http://www.politicususa.com/2012/07/31/wing-billionaires-shudder-politifact-confirns-bernie-sanders-speaks-truth-wealth-inequality.html
This family can well afford to pay their employees a livable wage. Since they are too greedy to do that voluntarily, then government needs to require that of them.
And “self esteem” does not come from being exploited or from being told by your employer how to apply for Food Stamps, as Wal-Mart does with its employees –which means that tax dollars have been subsidizing the wealthiest family in America.
LikeLike
Sue, is that what the slave masters told their slaves? Be thankful that you have a job? So much for the American dream. Keep government out of enterprise? So you are saying that corporations can make their own rules, do whatever they want without any government intervention (laws and regulations)? I guess paying taxes is government intervention if you’re a libertarian or right winger?
LikeLike
Remember — there’s no way to define “exploitation”, so there must be no such thing!
LikeLike
I’m confused — are you satirizing something that others say? Or are you saying that it’s actually impossible to define the term “exploitation”? If that’s actually true, then why would anyone believe it exists?
LikeLike
Job-seekers need not apply at any establishment if they reject the wage offered. Wages should be set according to difficulty, risk, or amount of expertise needed to perform the job. When I flipped burgers and stocked at a warehouse, I deserved the minimum wage I received.
A flat rate ($12.50 /hr ?) could never define a living wage because of variables like the individual’s ability to spend responsibly, delay gratification, and live within one’s means (see celebrity bankruptcies: even millionaires fall.)
LikeLike
L, so you would be okay with letting the market set the floor for wages and some people might work for $1 a day to beat the competition in Bangladesh. And living conditions for them would sink to Bangladeshi levels.
When you were in school, did you ever learn about the New Deal?
LikeLike
No, Diane, your assertion is a strawman. The Fed established minimum wage at $7.25, and OSHA defines fair working conditions.
My paradigm is influenced by the scores I see complaining loudly while sporting smart phones and tennis shoe wardrobes. I was a poor kid in hand-me-down clothes taught to forego luxuries until they were earned. And we earn less in low-skill jobs.
If Walmart did pay higher wages, they would pass the cost to the same demographic currently benefiting from bargain prices. Higher wages would shift the burden, not solve the problem.
The method by which I was “taught” about the New Deal is best left for another conversation on locally controlled curriculum.
LikeLike
L,
The “but you have a smart phone!” line was wearing thin years ago. Now it is just embarrassing to see. Smart phones have become ubiquitous in our culture. The poor have them because they are now cheap enough for the poor to afford. The accusation that anyone with a smart phone has no right to complain about “the system” has become akin to the accusation that anyone who has a television set or access to the internet has no right to complain. That argument’s time has come and gone. You need a better one.
LikeLike
Ron, Those unable to pay bills are crying foul play when their bills need not include entertainment.
Ubiquity does not dictate necessity.
LikeLike
“When I flipped burgers and stocked at a warehouse, I deserved the minimum wage I received.”
Presumably you deserved less than that. You only got the minimum wage because there was a minimum wage requirement.
LikeLike
By entering into an employment contract, I accepted the wage offered. (I did earn less than minimum wage at a mom-and-pop place because “turnover was just too high”–go figure– and I needed work.)
LikeLike
Right, you probably took what you didn’t deserve.
LikeLike
FLERP!, Perhaps, but work was easy, I was fed each shift, left work behind when the clock dismissed me, and had the energy to keep up with coursework.
I also didn’t expect them to pay me more after I became a single parent. The job performance never changed, my needs did, so it was on me to find better.
LikeLike
This is not a job-seekers market. The jobs report that came out last week said that only 47% of Americans have full time jobs. Full time positions are very hard to come by in this economy. I’ve been looking for a full time job for five years. Many of us have felt that we had no choice but to take low paying part time jobs, just for basic survival. And it has nothing to do with qualifications. 48% of those with college degrees are under-employed, working in jobs that don’t require a college degree –and not just recent graduates.
I have three college degrees and two part time jobs with no benefits. In one of my jobs, I’m making less than minimum wage, because they hired everyone as “independent contractors,” so they can pay us whatever the hell they want. And I end up working more hours than I would in a full time job. When your choices are to become homeless and starve or to take whatever work you can get, you don’t feel like you really have much choice. And believe me, I have faced the prospect of homelessness more times than I care to count over these past five years. In fact, I’m facing it again now, because my hours were cut in my other job, due to ObamaCare. So I’ve been desperately seeking a third job –but to no avail.
Do you think that flipping burgers or stocking a warehouse is less deserving of a livable wage than picking up garbage or ringing a cash register? All those jobs are needed by our society. Adults who work hard for a living should be able to make a livable wage, regardless of the kind of work they do. That’s just being humane. With these highly profitable corporations, this is not a matter of whether they will make a profit, but how HOW MUCH profit they make. There is something very wrong with our society when it’s perfectly acceptable that between 1978 to 2012, CEO compensation increased about 875 percent, while the typical worker’s compensation grew 5.4 percent over the same period.
Anyone interested in hiring a veteran career educator to work from home, please contact me at: other_spaces@yahoo.com
LikeLike
“Do you think that flipping burgers or stocking a warehouse is less deserving of a livable wage than picking up garbage or ringing a cash register?”
If the job requires only basic skills or knowledge, and does not include risk, then yes, pay should be less than those requiring highly trained employees or risk of injury.
I agree that it takes all kinds of jobs for our world to function. I respect any honest worker (any seasoned teacher knows that secretaries and custodians run the building!)
Waste Management is nothing to scoff–that job involves health risks, physical exertion, manipulation of heavy equipment, and disposal planning. Ringing a cash register, on the other hand, requires less physical exertion and risk, and although I’m always grateful to those with humor and patience, a 16-year-old working for iTunes cash may do the job as well as a 46-year-old raising a family. A company cannot dictate how those paychecks should be spent; likewise, an individual cannot dictate wages based on what he wants to spend.
LikeLike
It would be an enormous blessing for D.C. if the bill passed and Walmat decided to not build there. In Chicago, once Walmart got in and built its stores, we saw it fund many of the Mayor’s efforts to expand charters. The company gave a lot of money to promote many aspects of his ed agenda, including school closings.
If they come to your city, you cannot live on their wages and they will close down your neighborhood schools.
LikeLike
Carrie,
They will also destroy neighborhood businesses that had survived for many years. Mom and pop will work for Walmart as greeters instead of owning their own store.
LikeLike
This thread reminds me of James Kunstler’s description of the “Wal-Mart economy” in terms of energy and entropy. I’ve thought about it a lot over the years. Is efficiency just a measurement of the rate at which things fall apart?
“The first law of thermodynamics says that energy cannot be either destroyed or created, only changed. Entropy, the second law of thermodynamics, says that the change of state in any given amount of energy flows in one direction, from being concentrated in one place to becoming diffused or dispersed and spread out; from being ordered to being disordered. A hot cup of coffee cools off sooner or later. Its heat is diffused until the temperature of the coffee stabilizes to equilibrium with the air around it. It never gets spontaneously hotter. A tire goes flat, it never spontaneously reinflates. Windup clocks wind down, they don’t wind up. Time goes in one direction. Entropy explains why logs burn, why iron rusts, why tornados happen, and why animals die.
The reason that everything in the real world does not fall apart at once is that the flow of entropy faces obstructions or constraints. The more complex the system, the more constraints. A given system will automatically select the paths or drains that get the system to a final state — exhaust its potential — at the fastest possible rate given the constraints. Simple ordered flows drain entropy at a faster rate than complexly disordered flows. Hence, the creation of ever more efficient ordered flows in American society, the removal of constraints, has accelerated the winding down of American potential, which is exactly why a Wal-Mart economy will bring us to grief more rapidly than a national agglomeration of diverse independent small-town economies. Efficiency is the straightest path to hell.”
LikeLike
“Efficiency is the straightest path to hell.”
A big AMEN and HALLELUJAH to that brother!!!
LikeLike
Maybe if Walmart and pharmaceutical companies would drop the expensive ads they could afford to pay all employees a living wage and reasonable prescription prices.
LikeLike
Why do you think Walmart pays $7.50 an hour? Evidence says otherwise…
http://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Walmart-Stores-Salaries-E715.htm
And who benefits the most from Walmart’s low prices? I doubt the 1% shop at Walmart. Walmart’s low prices also keep competitor’s prices low. In fact…
” For families with incomes less than $10,000 annually, a super center makes a 30 percent difference in what they can buy”
LikeLike
Check out “Walmart: The High Cost of Low Prices” documentary. Anyone who willingly spends their money at Walmart should watch it, and they will never do so again.
LikeLike
This is why Walmart never made it in Germany. The Germans basically chased Walmart out. They were smart enough to see that these massive superstores would destroy their quaint downtowns and quality of life. Americans were not smart enough to realize this, and this is why most of America looks like a strip-mall hell right now. America had the choice (as Germany did) between cheap plastic, Chinese garbage and low wages or high quality products and high wages. We chose cheap plastic garbage and low wages. Actually I don’t think Americans were smart enough to see any of this. They were just going for cheap stuff. The end result is many, many low paying jobs at Walmart, Best Buy, Target, etc., and the destruction of the middle class. This is where ignorance leads. This played out with books (Barnes and Noble) coffee (Starbucks) hardware stores (Home Depot). Think of all the stupid decisions we have made as a country and a society. Oh well, you can always travel to Europe and see what a town or city (society) should really look like.
LikeLike
Barnes & Noble is the now the good old days for the book selling business.
LikeLike
The Walton Family=21st century robber barons.
LikeLike
From the first breaths of life to the last, our lives are being stolen out from under us. From infant care and early education to Social Security and Medicare, the dominant economic ideology is demanding more lifelong sacrifices from the vulnerable to appease the gods of wealth.
Middle-class wages are stagnant. Uemployment is stalled at record levels. College education is leading to debt servitude and job insecurity. Millions of unemployed Americans have essentially been abandoned by their government. Poverty is soaring. Bankers break the law with impunity, are bailed out, and go on breaking the law, richer than they were before.
And yet, bizarrely, the only Americans who seem to be seething with anger are the beneficiaries of this economic injustice – the wealthiest and most privileged among us. But those who are suffering seem strangely passive.
As long as they stay that way, there will be no movement to repair these injustices. And the more these injustices are allowed to persist, the harder it will be to end them.
Where the hell is the outrage? And how can we start some?
by Richard Eskow http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/17460-where-the-hell-is-the-outrage
LikeLike