Walmart's top brass and its shareholders face a confrontation with their "moms" at the company's annual shareholders meeting Friday in Fayetteville, Ark. That is, the "Walmart Moms" who are demanding higher wages from the nation's biggest employer. The labor union-supported workers' group is demanding a pay increase to $12.25 an hour, or $25,000 a year for full-time work. Organizers said that workers would picket on Wednesday outside stores in cities including Chicago, Miami, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Los Angeles and Tampa.
Walmart, the world's largest retailer (and America's largest private employer), occupies a rather strange place in the business landscape: a technologically innovative company with a down-home reputation – a low-wage, low-benefit employer that prides itself on a family atmosphere. Walmart masks the lousy working conditions that make its profits with its particular form of market populism: millions of "Walmart moms" can't be wrong for wanting to "save money, live better", can they?
Alongside the everyday low prices, Walmart shoppers in Landover Hills, Maryland, might encounter Gail Todd. A mother of three who works there as a sales associate, Gail would like to work full time but has recently seen her schedule cut to as few as 12 hours a week. She has no idea how much she’ll end up making this year; even when she was working closer to full time, she expected to bring home just $17,000. Currently she and her family depend on D.C.’s public health care system, food stamps and low-income housing to stay afloat.
Even at the mall or a discount store, where women are courted and catered to, they are paid less than men. Women in US retail jobs earn on average $4 an hour less than men, or 72 cents for every dollar men make, according to a new report by Demos, a liberal nonprofit public policy organization. The overall pay gap for women in the US is around 80 cents.
NEW YORK, NY— A new report by the national public policy organization Demos reveals prevalent business practices in the retail sector such as low pay, erratic scheduling and scarcity of basic benefits are keeping millions of hard-working women and families near poverty.
An industry that’s one of the largest employers of women and one of the fastest job creators in the country also has a huge pay gap. The average female retail salesperson makes $10.58 per hour, while her average male colleague makes $14.62, according to a new study from Demos, a think tank focused on income inequality.
At the McDonald’s annual shareholder meeting on May 22, CEO Don Thompson claimed that his company “has a heritage of providing job opportunities that lead to ‘real careers.’”
This is the face of today's fast food workers -- 70% of whom are over the age of 20, nearly 40% have children and a third of them have spent some time in college, according to U.S. census data. [...]
Public policy group Demos says CEO compensation in the industry just since 2000 quadrupled to $24 million, while average fast food worker's wage only increased 0.3%.
Fast food CEOs also make 1,000 times more than the average worker in the industry.
Irresponsible spending habits are not a cause of credit card debt in U.S. households, according to a new report, The Debt Disparity: What Drives Credit Card Debt in America.
The national survey of working age low- and middle-income households by public policy organization Demos finds that they accrue credit card debt due to lack of insurance coverage, expenses for children and unemployment.
The sylvan silence of McDonald’s suburban Chicago corporate headquarters provides executives of the world’s largest fast-food corporation a retreat far from its 860,000 U.S. workers—who face a schedule of days defined by sizzling grease, fast-paced work and low wages.
With another stroke of his pen, President Obama can authorize an Executive Order mandating paid sick leave for the same federally contracted workers whom he just gave a raise to.
Activists want to put the brakes on CEO Don Thompson's multimillion dollar pay package. Health advocates are petitioning LeBron James to stop peddling McDonald's junk food to kids.
When failed Republican presidential candidate and multimillionaire asset-stripper Mitt Romney said this week that he supported an increase in the minimum federal wage to US$10.10 ($11.63), as advocated by President Barack Obama, you knew the sounds of discontent from America's growing underclass must have penetrated the hallowed sanctuaries of the very rich. Not that Obama's proposal, the Minimum Wage Fairness Act, went anywhere. It was blocked by Senate Republicans last month and the wage remains at US$7.25 an hour.
Danielle can't afford to give her 3-year-old son gifts on holidays and birthdays. Munira Edens broke her phone three months ago and now goes without one because a repair is too costly. The eldest of six, James Moore tries to help his mother pay household expenses but often can't, because he makes just $150 a week.
On this Mother’s Day congratulations to Arisleyda Tapia, the hardworking mom of 5-year-old Ashley, are in order. And not only because this Dominican immigrant is the mother of a beautiful little girl, but because she has courageously joined the fight for justice for herself, and hundreds of thousands of other endlessly exploited fast food workers.
Fast food workers have held one-day strikes across the United States on different occasions the past few years, but on Thursday, they are taking their operation global. Their demand: a $15-an-hour wage. The strikes will take place in 150 cities across more than 30 countries as part of the 'Fight for Fifteen' movement.
On Thursday, the fast-food strikes that have been spreading around the country are going global. Workers at restaurants like Burger King, McDonald's, Wendy's, and KFC are walking off their jobs in 230 cities around the world to demand a minimum wage of $15 an hour and the right to form a union without retaliation. Strikers will protest in 150 US cities, from New York to Los Angeles, and in 80 foreign cities, from Casablanca to Seoul to Brussels to Buenos Aires.
On Thursday, fast-food workers around the world will stage an unprecedented protest for fair wages. They will be speaking out against income inequality -- and the world would do well to listen. Income inequality is one of the most destructive forces in the United States today. Minimum-wage workers devastated by the economic crash of 2008 have continued to languish in poverty while the subsequent recovery has sent executive compensation soaring.
