Wal-Mart Stores is the country’s biggest private employer. Its low wages have incited labor protests and congressional criticism, and have created a cottage industry of public policy research.
As a retiree with a defined-benefit pension; a former public employee who defended public workers’ pension benefits for decades; and an advocate who, after leaving the Service Employees International Union, chose to spend several years trying to create a national effort to build a new all-American retirement system, I want to offer my perspective on some of the recent pension issues in Rhode Island.
If a bad job market wasn’t damaging enough, the cost of paying off student loans does much more harm to the long-term prospects of young people than is commonly realized.
Credit card fees can be expensive and annoying, there’s no doubt about it. But many of them can be avoided if you’re careful and others may be worth paying if you get something worthwhile. For example, many of the best rewards credit cards charge annual fees, but people who use them frequently are able to earn additional rewards that outweigh the extra cost.
“We are on strike today to have respect and dignity at work,” says Walter Melendez, one of approximately 40 Los Angeles port truck drivers who walked off the job at 5a.m. morning in protest of alleged unfair labor practices. The strikes featured the rolling “ambulatory pickets” that the truckers have excelled at—chasing down trucks as they leave the port and setting up picket lines in front of them.
Walmart can easily afford to raise pay for its low-wage workers by $5.83 an hour, to an average wage of $14.89, a new report from progressive think tank Demos concludes. All the retail giant has to do is stop its massive stock buybacks—which only serve to enrich a shrinking pool of shareholders, not to improve productivity—and put that money toward its workers.
Walmart spends $7.6 billion a year buying back shares of its own stock:
Wal-Mart could afford to hike every U.S. employee’s hourly wage to at least $14.89 an hour just by not repurchasing its own stock, according to a new report from the progressive think tank Demos.
Walmart, enmeshed in a debate over low wages highlighted by a food drive for employees at a Canton store, can significantly raise the salaries of sales clerks and other workers without having to find additional money for the pay hikes, says a research brief by a think tank.
In the past week, both a senior editor at Fortune magazine and the liberal think tank Demoshave made similar proposals for how Walmart could greatly increase worker wages without harming its business prospects.
This is supposed to be a cheery season for retailers. Not at Wal-Mart (WMT), though, where it’s been a really bad week—and this is only Wednesday.
On Monday, the Cleveland Plain Dealer broke the news of a holiday food drive at an Ohio Walmart store—for its own employees. The newspaper story, including a photo of the bins set out for the donations, quickly made its way pretty much everywhere. And it came from OUR Walmart, a group of union-backed employees pushing for higher wages and better working conditions.
At the new Walmart superstore in the Chinatown district of Los Angeles, a Thanksgiving turkey costs a little over $30 (£19). The shop is kind enough to distribute ready-made holiday shopping lists to its customers, reminding them to buy cornbread mix and cranberry sauce, ground ginger and pumpkin pie. Yet not everyone can afford to stock their cupboards with each provision on the list – least of all Walmart’s own employees.
Walmart has gotten a lot of bad press this week over news of an Ohio store holding a food drive for its own workers, who were unable to buy Thanksgiving groceries on the retail giant's paltry wages. The store managers deserve credit for their thoughtfulness, but wouldn't it be better if Walmart simply paid its workers enough to feed themselves?
On Wednesday, Walmart workers called out or walked off the job at seven stores in Dallas, according to OUR Walmart activists, the group that has been organizing strikes and protests against the company. The company says that these were not independent actions but the result of activists being bussed between different store locations. [...]
Walmart is the largest private employer in the country, and the company's low-wage, part-time business model has an enormous impact on our country's labor, business, and employment climate. The "Walmart Economy" is a disaster for most Americans. That's why we should all be thankful that, during this holiday season, Walmart workers across the country are again leading the fight to change the way Walmart does business.
