Wal-Mart Announces It Will Raise Worker Wages

If you had any doubt that a giant corporation could be pressured into changing, then this should satisfy that doubt. After months of worker demonstrations, a couple of years of bad publicity (especially on social media), and two years of "sluggish" sales, Wal-Mart is crying "uncle". They have announced that they will be raising the starting wage to $9 an hour in April, and by February of next year, to $10 an hour. Here are the plans they announced to the Associated Press:

— Start raising entry level wages to at least $9 an hour in April and to at least $10 an hour by February of next year. That includes the less than 6,000 workers who make the federal minimum wage. Sam's Club locations will offer a starting hourly wage of at least $9.50 or higher in all markets, and at least $10.50 by next year.

— Raise the floor and ceiling of its pay range for each position in most stores. For example, the pay range for cashiers is $7.65 to $16. The new range will be $9.00 to $17.55.

—Raise the starting wage for some department managers to at least $13 an hour by this summer and at least $15 an hour by early next year.

— Give newly hired workers a $9 per hour training wage and when they successfully complete the six-month training program, raise it to $10 an hour. Those workers can pursue one of three career paths: hourly supervisor, a specialty path like working in a bakery or deli or expand their skills in their current role.

— Give hourly workers hands-on training in areas including teamwork, merchandising, retail fundamentals and communications. Store leaders like hourly supervisors will get refresher training on people leadership skills so that they can help workers grow and advance.

— Roll out a program that offers some workers fixed schedules so they can be able to choose the same hours each week. The program is being tested in Wichita, Kansas.

— Team up with its nonprofit, Walmart Foundation, to invest a total of $100 million spread over the next five years to support programs that help advance careers for entry level workers in the industry.

This is a huge improvement over what they are currently paying, but I still wish it was a little better. I tend to agree with the sentiments of Robert Reich about this. He said:

Walmart, America’s largest employer, announced this morning it will increase wages for a half-million employees. By April, all of its U.S. workers will earn at least $9 an hour. This is a raise for about 40% of its work force, to at least $1.75 above the federal minimum wage. It will put about $1 billion more into the pockets of Walmart workers this year. By February 2016, current hourly workers will earn at least $10. Other big retailers will be under pressure to follow Walmart’s lead. 

It’s still not enough. It doesn’t get Walmart workers to $15 an hour, and doesn’t provide full-time hours and jobs. But it’s progress. And it shows the power of all of us – Walmart’s workers, increasing public pressure, and the growing movement pushing corporations to raise pay.

This does not mean we should stop the effort to raise the minimum wage in the United States -- but just the opposite. There are still millions of American workers working hard for a poverty wage. The number of low-wage workers is nearing 20% in this country, and as Wal-Mart's raises show, most companies (especially the giant corporations) have been lying when they say they cannot afford to pay a livable wage.

Personally, I would like to see the minimum wage raised to $15 an hour ($31,200 a year), but I could settle for a raise to $10.10 an hour ($21,008 a year) as long as it was then tied to the rate of inflation (so it doesn't immediately start losing that minimum amount of buying power).

As Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) has said -- No American willing to work hard at a full-time job should be paid a poverty wage.

You're Paying Wal-Mart - Even If You Don't Shop There

Wal-Mart may well have the best scam of any of the giant corporations. They not only have have the lawyers to help them take advantage of many tax loopholes (so they pay very little in taxes), but by paying their employees poverty level wages they rope the American taxpayer into subsidizing the salaries of those workers (through food stamps and other government programs paid for by taxpayers).

And it doesn't matter whether you ever set foot in a Wal-Mart store or buy anything from one of those stores -- you are still, through your tax dollars, paying a substantial share of worker wages and contributing to the profits of that giant corporation. And the crazy part is that it's unnecessary. Wal-Mart could afford to pay its workers a livable wage and pay its full share of taxes, and still wind up with billions of dollars of profit.

How much are they soaking the American taxpayers for? Well, the Americans for Tax Fairness just did a study into that question, and they found that the taxpayers are providing billions in extra profits for Wal-Mart. Here is the summary of that report:

On tax day, when millions of American taxpayers and small businesses pay their fair share to support critical public services and the economy, they will also get stuck with a multi-billion dollar tax bill to cover the massive subsidies and tax breaks that benefit the country’s largest employer and richest family.

Walmart is the largest private employer in the United States, with 1.4 million employees. The company, which is number one on the Fortune 500 in 2013 and number two on the Global 500, had $16 billion in profits last year on revenues of $473 billion. The Walton family, which owns more than 50 percent of Walmart shares, reaps billions in annual dividends from the company. The six Walton heirs are the wealthiest family in America, with a net worth of $148.8 billion. Collectively, these six Waltons have more wealth than 49 million American families combined.

This report finds that the American public is providing enormous tax breaks and tax subsidies to Walmart and the Walton family, further boosting corporate profits and the family’s already massive wealth at everyone else’s expense. Specifically, our analysis shows that:

Walmart and the Walton family receive tax breaks and taxpayer subsidies estimated at more than $7.8 billion a year – that is enough money to hire 105,000 new public school teachers.

The annual subsidies and tax breaks to Walmart and the Waltons include the following:

• Walmart receives an estimated $6.2 billion annually in mostly federal taxpayer subsi- dies. The reason: Walmart pays its employees so little that many of them rely on food stamps, healthcare and other taxpayer-funded programs.
  
  
• Walmart avoids an estimated $1 billion in federal taxes each year. The reason: Walmart uses tax breaks and loopholes, including a strategy known as accelerated depreciation that allows it to write off capital investments considerably faster than the assets actually wear out.
  
  
• The Waltons avoid an estimated $607 million in federal taxes on their Walmart div- idends. The reason: income from investments is taxed at a much lower tax rate than income from salaries and wages.
  
  In addition to the $7.8 billion in annual subsidies and tax breaks, the Walton family is avoid- ing an estimated $3 billion in taxes by using specialized trusts to dodge estate taxes – and this number could increase by tens of billions of dollars.
  
  Walmart also benefits significantly from taxpayer-funded public assistance programs that pump up the retailer’s sales. For example, Walmart had an estimated $13.5 billion in food stamp sales last year. 
  

Walmart Makes The Grinch Look Like a Bleeding-Heart Liberal Philanthropist

(The image above is from the website salon.com.)

The most Scrooge-like corporation has to be Walmart, but continue their greed all year around. They aren't happy with just making billions in profit, they take that to an obscene level by abusing their employees with a wage that is too low to live on and by forcing the the American taxpayers to supplement those poverty wages.

That alone would be enough to put Walmart on the naughty list. But they don't stop there. It turns out that they are now trying to squeeze political donations out of their employees -- not for the political party or candidates the workers might prefer, but for the political preferences of the corporation's owners and executives.

Since it is illegal for the corporation to donate money directly to political action committees (PAC's), the company has found a way to make sure those PAC's get donations. They have made any company donations to the company employee hardship fund (a hardship created by company policies) contingent upon the employees donating to the PAC's preferred by the company. The company promises to donate $2 to the employee hardship fund for every $1 donated to right-wing PAC's.

Making matters even worse is the fact that the employees are being forced to donate to PAC's that support the Republican candidates -- the same candidates opposing any minimum wage raise and supporting drastic cuts to social programs. In other words, the employees must donate to the party that would make their precarious economic situation even worse.

As the story goes, the grinch had a heart that was two sizes too small, but the owners and executives of Walmart make even that small a heart look huge -- since they seem to have no heart at all. I would say they should be ashamed of themselves, but like other right-wingers, they don't seem to have a sense of shame.

Wal-Mart Sets A New Ethical Low In Corporate Greed

The photo above was taken by a Wal-Mart employee and was found at cleveland.com. It shows a collection set up by Wal-Mart management in an employees only section of a Canton (Ohio) Wal-Mart. The company is asking their employees to donate food items to help their fellow employees have a good Thanksgiving dinner.

Canton resident Norma Mills, who works with Stand Up for Ohio, said she was outraged when she saw the picture. She went on to say:

"Then I went through the emotion of compassion for the employees, working for the largest food chain in America, making low wages, and who can't afford to provide their families with a good Thanksgiving holiday. That Walmart would have the audacity to ask low-wage workers to donate food to other low-wage workers -- to me, it is a moral outrage."

I have to agree with her. It is ridiculous for a company like Wal-Mart, which specializes is providing low-wage, no-benefit jobs to do this. The company tried to defend itself, and their spokesman Kory Lundberg said:

"It is for associates who have had some hardships come up. Maybe their spouse lost a job. This is part of the company's culture to rally around associates and take care of them when they face extreme hardships." 

I wonder if he, or the company he works for, understands just what they have admitted to. First, it is not the company that is providing a Thanksgiving dinner for these needy employees. They are asking other employees to do it. Second, this is an admission that the wages they pay will not support a family -- that a Wal-Mart worker would need another family member to have an income also to support that family. And if that second job income was lost, the family could not live on what Wal-Mart paid its employees.

I expect that many of those low-wage employees will sacrifice a bit for their fellow employees and come up with donations. It is just a fact that those who have the least are more generous with the little they have than most of those who have a lot (the rich).

Wal-Mart made a profit of nearly $16 billion last year -- profit (not sales), after all expenses are accounted for. Wal-Mart could afford to provide their employees with a Thanksgiving dinner, but they prefer to horde their profits and ask their low-wage workers to do that. Actually, Wal-Mart could easily afford to pay all of their employees a livable wage, making something like this unnecessary (and saving taxpayers a ton of money that's currently paid out in poverty benefits to Wal-Mart workers).

But this is normal in a capitalist economy. The rich horde most of the income, while the rest struggle to live and to take care of each other. It's time to raise the minimum wage substantially (to at least $10.00 an hour) and tie it to the inflation rate. It's time to make the giant corporations pay their own expenses, and not foist part of those expenses onto the taxpayers.

Subsidizing Wal-Mart

Wal-Mart would like for Americans to think they have to pay their employees poverty wages, or they wouldn't be able to keep their prices low. That's just not true. Costco is able to keep their prices down, while paying a livable wage (with benefits) to their employees -- and they turn a nice profit while doing it.

The truth is that Wal-Mart could do it too. They just don't want to. By refusing to pay their employees a decent wage (with benefits), the owners of Wal-Mart are able to turn a healthy profit into an obscene profit. And they can get away with it because the taxpayers make up the difference by giving those workers food stamps, housing assistance, school lunches for their children, and other types of government assistance.

Frankly, I'm a bit tired of this. I'm not opposed to government help for the poor and disadvantaged, or those unemployed. But someone with a job should be making a livable wage, and should not have to rely on the government for assistance. It's time to raise the minimum wage to a livable level, and it's time to stop subsidizing greedy employers like Wal-Mart.

Your Tax Money Subsidizes Rich People

And billions of your tax dollars go to subsidize these people every year because they pay their employees so little that:

 Walmart policies have increased employee reliance on government assistance and the need for a government funded social safety net. In fact,Walmart has become the number one driver behind the growing use of food stamps in the United States with “as many as 80 percent of workers in Wal-Mart stores using food stamps.”

Walmart’s employees receive $2.66 billion in government help every year, or about $420,000 per store. They are also the top recipients of Medicaid in numerous states. Why does this occur? Walmart fails to provide a livable wage and decent healthcare benefits, costing U.S. taxpayers an annual average of $1.02 billion in healthcare costs. This direct public subsidy is being given to offset the failures of an international corporate giant who shouldn’t be shifting part of its labor costs onto the American taxpayers.

Dumping Business Costs On Taxpayers

(The above graphic is from the website GroAction.com)

A lot of Americans, especially teabaggers and other Republicans, think the problem of poverty in America would be solved if the poor would just go to work (at whatever job is available). The problem with that delusion is that many, if not most, of the poor are already working -- and many are working full-time. But working full-time at a minimum wage job will not pull a family out of poverty. In fact, it may force them to appeal to the government for help, since their full-time employer doesn't provide enough pay or benefits to provide for the needs of a family (or even an individual).

Too many businesses these days refuse to provide their employees with livable compensation. You may think this is just some small businesses struggling to survive, but that is not true. A prime example of this is the giant corporation know as Wal-Mart. Over at the blog Under The Mountain Bunker, there are some very interesting figures. It seems that this huge corporation is dumping nearly $1.6 billion of what they should be providing (through decent pay and benefits) on to the American taxpayers. Consider the following:

• The Democratic Staff of the Committee on Education and the Workforce estimates that one 200-person Wal-Mart store may result in a cost to federal taxpayers of $420,750 per year – about $2,103 per employee. Specifically, the low wages result in the following additional public costs being passed along to taxpayers:

• $36,000 a year for free and reduced lunches for just 50 qualifying Wal-Mart families.
• $42,000 a year for Section 8 housing assistance, assuming 3 percent of the store employees qualify for such assistance, at $6,700 per family.
• $125,000 a year for federal tax credits and deductions for low-income families, assuming 50 employees are heads of household with a child and 50 are married with two children.
• $100,000 a year for the additional Title I expenses, assuming 50 Wal-Mart families qualify with an average of 2 children.
• $108,000 a year for the additional federal health care costs of moving into state children’s health insurance programs (S-CHIP), assuming 30 employees with an average of two children qualify.
• $9,750 a year for the additional costs for low income energy assistance.”

• The total figure is based on the average $420,750 per-store figure, multiplied by 3700 (the approximate number of stores currently in the United States).
• Source: Rep. George Miller / Democratic Staff of the Committee on Education and the Workforce, “Everyday Low Wages: The Hidden Price We All Pay for Wal-Mart”, February 16, 2004.

Could Business Survive Paying A Fair Wage ?

There has been a disagreement in this country for quite a while about whether it is possible for businesses to pay a fair and livable wage to workers and survive. Many business leaders and politicians on the right say wages must be kept low. They even opposed a minimum wage law (which certainly doesn't guarantee a livable wage), saying it costs forces businesses to lay off workers or go out of business. Labor representatives disagree. They point out that rises in the minimum wage have not been shown to cost jobs, and urge the minimum wage be raised to give all workers a livable wage.

The public seems to go back and forth on this, and right now the pendulum has swung to favor the position of business. This has been true since the Reagan presidency, when policies began to be put in place that favored the corporations and the wealthy. This was done by convincing many people that when business had lots of money they would share the wealth by creating jobs and raising wages. It was called the "trickle-down" theory, and it has been a failed policy.

Instead of creating new jobs and raising worker wages, businesses have just squirreled away the extra money in their bank accounts or used it to play the stock market. And while they got much wealthier, the wages of workers have been stagnant for many years. Workers now have less buying power than than did in the early seventies (or earlier). But business still claims they would be mortally wounded by having to pay higher wages. Is this true?

Take Wal-Mart for instance. This discounter has made billions by keeping their prices low (and by paying their employees some very low wages). Wal-Mart has 1.4 million workers in the United States.  The company says that paying it's workers a livable wage (defined as about $12 an hour) would force them to have to raise their prices to an exorbitant level, and it is easy to believe that paying that many workers several dollars an hour more could do that. After all, that's a lot of workers and would take a lot of money.

But while their argument may seem to be reasonable on its face, it is simply NOT TRUE. A new study shows that low-wage employers like Wal-Mart could pay their workers a livable wage without threatening their profitability. The study was done by ken Jacobs and David Graham-Squire at the UC Center for Labor Research and Education, and by Stephanie Luce at CUNY's Murphy Institute for Worker Education and Labor Studies.

They found that the average Wal-Mart shopper would pay about 46 cents extra per shopping trip -- or about $12 dollars per year (not exactly a back-breaking rise in prices). They estimate that the wages could be covered by only a 1% price hike (or no price hike since that is well below the mark-up margin). That means an item that had cost $1.00 would go up to $1.01 (or a $10.00 item would be $10.10). And according to these researchers that would be the "most extreme estimate" (meaning it would probably be even less).

This blows the old "we can't afford to do it" argument out of the water. They could afford to do it, and so could most other low-wage businesses. They just don't want to do it. They don't really care about their workers, and if it weren't for the minimum wage laws (which have driven wages up to their current pitiful level) they would happily pay even less. They couldn't care less whether their workers have a decent standard of living.

Some might make the argument that the price raises would hit the poor hard. But only 28% of Wal-Mart shoppers can be classified as poor, and the slight increases would significantly impact even them. However, it would help the poor (who would get about 40% of the additional income -- an additional $1,670 to $6,500 a year).

It's time to discard this specious argument being made by business (and their Republican politicians). It would not break business to pay a livable wage, but it would be a huge boost to lower-paid American workers (and would probably actually benefit business since these workers would have more money to spend on their goods and services).

We don't need to lower or abolish the minimum wage. We need to raise it substantially.

A "Black Friday" Death

As a liberal, I generally believe that most people are good and really want to help their fellow man. But every now and then something so profane is done by human beings, that I have to wonder if I'm foolish and the human race is not really worth saving. One of those things happened yesterday -- on the very appropriately named "Black Friday".

It's insane enough that 2,000 people were lined up at the doors of a Long Island Wal-Mart at five o'clock in the morning, but what happened next is truly perverse. As 34 year-old Jdimytai Damour was unlocking the doors to let the people in the store, the crowd surged forward, breaking down the doors, and trampling Damour to death.

Some of Damour's co-workers tried to get to him and help, but they were also trampled. Fortunately, they only received minor injuries. But no one in the crowd offered any help. They were far too busy trampling the poor man so they could get into the store and save a few dollars on some cheap merchandise made in China. Damour's life was not worth the few dollars they hoped to save.

After calling for emergency help and learning of the death, the store asked people to leave because they were closing for a while as requested by authorities. Did the people cooperate? Were they sorry for trampling a fellow human to death? Of course not!

The people were angry because the store was closing and they had to leave. After all, they had bargains to buy and later brag about to their friends and family. One witness to the scene said the shoppers were acting like "savages". She said, "When they were saying they had to leave, that an employee got killed, people were yelling 'I've been on line since yesterday morning'. They kept shopping."

I realize we in a very bad economy, but is saving a few dollars or standing in line a few hours really more important than that young man's life? Sadly, these people don't even seem to be the least bit ashamed of their actions.

Well, I am. I'm ashamed that these people are fellow humans and fellow Americans.

Big Business And Tax Avoidance

We have all heard of the many things that corporations do to try and avoid paying their fair share of federal income taxes. Some corporations are so successful in this that they wind up paying very little or no income taxes at all. What many don't know is that these big businesses are trying the same thing on the state level.

Texas doesn't have a state income tax. Texas raises its funds mainly through a very regressive state sales tax and through property taxes. Although many businesses brag about how much they bring in for the state through the sales tax, the truth is that it is not business that pays the bulk of this tax -- it is the consumer.

The tax that hits business the hardest in Texas is the property tax. After all, most big businesses own the property that their business sits on. It should come as no surprise that this is the tax that business fights the hardest in Texas.

Most corporations (and some home owners) are paying less in property taxes this year. That is because the Republican leadership in this state cut property taxes in the last legislative session to help their corporate buddies. You didn't actually think they did that for home owners, did you? While home owners got a small tax cut, the cut added up to big money for the corporations.

But that was not good enough for the corporate powers that be. A new study shows that most large businesses in Texas challenge their property tax appraisals EVERY YEAR. Take Wal-Mart for example. At least 83% of their stores in Texas challenge their appraisals, compared to 35% of their stores in other states.

These corporations just consider this to be good business practice. Even if they are unable to get their appraisal lowered in a certain year, it serves notice on appraisal districts that they will fight every year and inhibits the willingness of these districts to raise their appraisals for these businesses.

They do this in spite of the fact that most are appraised too low, because the appraisal districts do not have access to the sale price of the property. These districts can easily find the sale price of a home because that is public record, but the sale price is usually excluded in huge corporate deals and there is no state law that requires them to reveal it.

Of course, the corporations will tell you they fight the property taxes because Texas has one of the highest propety taxes in the nation. That is true. But what they don't tell you is that when all taxes are considered, Texas is in the lowest one-quarter of states in terms of total taxes.

Texas could pass a state income tax and lower its property taxes, but most Texans would not support that, and these same businesses would then search for ways to avoid the income tax (as they do on the federal level). The truth is that they just don't want to pay taxes.

No one enjoys paying taxes, but most of us recognize that they are necessary to fund required government functions. Even big business would admit that taxes are necessary -- they just want the burden to fall on the middle and working classes, and not on the rich and the corporations (where it belongs).

New Class-Action Lawsuit Against Wal-Mart

Wal-Mart has been hit with another class-action lawsuit by its employees, claiming they were denied meal and work breaks and were forced to work off the clock. This time it's in New Jersey.

A trial judge and an appellate panel had denied class-action status, saying the plaintiffs had access to the state's Division of Wage Collection at little cost to them. But the New Jersey Supreme Court disagreed, and gave the lawsuit class-action status. It is believed that the class will contain about 80,000 workers.

The New Jersey Supreme Court said many of the low-wage workers would be hesitant to file a claim because of "legitimate fears concerning employer retaliation, lack of resources, or a sense of powerlessness when confronting their would-be corporate adversary. We cannot ignore the reality that if the proposed class is not certified, thousands of aggrieved employees will not seek redress for defendant's alleged wrongdoing."

Wal-Mart has already had to pay out big money in several other states for these kinds of employee abuse including:

$78.5 million in Pennsylvania,

$172 million in California and

$50 million in Colorado.

How many more states will it take to award judgements like this before Wal-Mart learns its lesson? All they have to do is pay a decent wage and stop making employees work off the clock. Many other American companies don't seem to have any problem doing this.

I don't understand why companies like Wal-Mart think the best place to lower costs is always to abuse their employees (except for management). They seem to have forgotten that a happy employee is a much more productive employee, while an abused employee is just trouble waiting to happen.

Wal-Mart already has falling sales numbers and a bad reputation. How much more trouble do they want?

Human Rights Watch Blasts Wal-Mart

Human Rights Watch, which investigates abuses of human rights around the world, said today that Wal-Mart is using many different techniques, both legal and illegal, to prevent its employees from forming or joining a union. By doing this, Wal-Mart is abusing the human rights of its workers.

Carol Pier, a researcher for Human Rights Watch, says, "Wal-Mart workers have virtually no chance to organize because they're up against unfair U.S. labor laws and a giant company that will do just about anything to keep unions out. Wal-Mart is a poster child for what is wrong with U.S. labor laws. Many tactics comport with U.S. law but taken together they create a climate of fear and intimidation."

These are some of the tactics used by Wal-Mart to keep workers from unionizing:

* Restricted the dissemination of pro-union views.

* Threatened to withhold benefits from pro-union workers.

* Eavesdropped on workers with security cameras.

* Interrogated workers about their union sympathies.

* Sent managers to eavesdrop on worker conversations.

* Fires employees it knows to be pro-union.

* Refuses to bargain collectively.

* Gives new-hires anti-union training sessions.

* Gives managers union-prevention manuals.

* Uses a centralized database to track union activity.

Of course, Wal-Mart denies this. Company spokesman David Tovar says, "Wal-Mart provides an enviornment of open communications and gives our associates every opportunity to express their ideas, comments and concerns. It is because of our efforts to foster such an enviornment that our associates have repeatedly rejected unionization attempts."

If anyone believes that, I've got some ocean-front property in Amarillo that I'll sell you real cheap! It's only been about a year since Wal-Mart closed a store in Canada because the employees voted to unionize. I think they thought if they didn't do that, the union would spread to other stores. So they made an example.

Here in the U.S., they are notorious for paying low wages. So much so that more Wal-Mart families are qualifying for poverty-level government health insurance than any other corporation. They do offer a company insurance plan, but with the poor wages they are being paid few workers can afford to buy it.

Human Rights Watch is right. Wal-Mart has taken employee abuse to a new level, and is not about to let any union correct the situation.