Last week, Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott told reporters that he is lobbying Congress to consider raising the minimum wage so that his customers wouldn't have to struggle so hard between paychecks.
Obviously, if low-wage workers were paid more, Wal-Mart would benefit as well.
The national minimum wage stands at $5.15 per hour.
An employee working full-time at minimum wage earns $10,700 gross annually.
Given that reality, it is no surprise Mr. Scott is advocating for labor!
"The U. S. minimum wage of $5.15 an hour has not been raised in nearly a decade and we believe it is out of date with the times," Scott noted. "We can see first-hand at Wal-Mart how many of our customers are struggling to get by. Our customers simply don't have the money to buy basic necessities between pay checks. . . .While it is unusual for us to take a public position on a public policy issue of this kind, we simply believe it is time for Congress to take a responsible look at the minimum wage and other legislation that may help working families."
I gotta tell you, things are out of hand if Wal-Mart, one of the nation's largest employers in the service industry, is lobbying for higher wages!
Scott knows that lifting the minimum is needed, as are other steps to insure that every working American can carve out a decent life.
It is something, isn't it? In the United States a growing number of public leaders in social equity and just policy are emerging from the business sector.
Auto makers and airline executives call for a national health plan.
Last Saturday evening here in Dallas, Bono, the leader of the rock group, U-2, offered a revival-like message concerning world hunger and poverty.
Spiritual messages about real life in the real world.
Will people of faith and their communities of faith join in?
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P. S. For those of you who live in North Texas and have access to KERA Channel 13--our PBS affliate--you may want to be aware of the programming for tomorrow evening, November 1:
Life in the Balance: Public Health Care In Texas
Tuesday, November 1 at 10 p.m. on KERA 13
The health care system in Texas is in turmoil — and the impact reaches far beyond indigent patients crowding public hospitals. As health care professionals and policymakers agonize over which patients deserve their attention, resources at public and private hospitals alike are stretched thin by a growing load of patients who can't pay their bills, driving the costs of care ever higher for those who can. This award-winning KERA documentary scrutinizes the system's failures and success as it documents an uninsured young mother of four coping with breast cancer.
Announcement from Duke Memorial UMC
2 weeks ago
14 comments:
Larry,
Do you think he's really advocating it, or trying to look good after dragging down wages in every market he enters? I agree the private sector's slowly developing a more responsible outlook, but I have trouble trusting a company who's routinely caught using heavily-underpaid illegal immigrant labor and undercuts unions who have set wage levels above minimum wages.
I admit I don't have primary sources for this - if I'm wrong, I'd definitely like to know the truth.
And regardless of their past, if Wal-Mart is truly interested in making life better for their employees and customers, then more power to them.
Charles
Charles, thanks for the post.
Your questions are sound and well-advised for sure. The report I read was from Fortune 500's website and it contained the very questions that you raise coming from labor advocates who document the same concerns and past facts that your bring up.
I really don't know what Wal-Mart's motive is here or whether it is pure or mixed. My point was simply that a major corporation is on record in favor of raising the minimum wage. To may way of thinking, this simple signals just how bad things are for wage laborers in this country. Any analysis of real earnings over the past several decades reveals that working people are getting poorer while those at the very top are gaining in an amazing way.
The other key point for me is the role or lack thereof among people of faith in advocating for better outcomes for people who work hard in this country.
Keep posting!
I would simply hope that some of WalMart's execs were so morally outraged with the state of working class America right now that they concocted this reason for WalMart to support raising the minimum wage and sold it to the other execs.
Whatever the case, its good to see some movement in the right direction, however, if all the pressure to raise the minimum wage comes from Big Business, then incentive for large scale labor organizing will disapear and we'll only see small gains .
Does anyone know how much Wal-Mart starts of paying its full-time general, non-skilled labor? I agree that minimum wage must be raised, but I certainly hope before Wal-Mart and other execs raise a fuss that they will put there money where their mouth is at.
I am not sure about the Wal-Mart pay scale, so I cannot pre-judge. However, back home I have a friend who works at Wal-Mart and she is a single Mother of two children and she is below the poverty level.
The guess of this skeptic is that Wal-Mart can no longer hire (legal) employees for $5.15 an hour.
If your lowest current salary is $6.00 per hour, then you might as well support an increase in the minimum wage to that amount. It costs you nothing and might garner some favorable publicity.
John is exactly right about the Wal-Mart pay scale. The point here though is that the company recognizes that if people don't make more than what the minimum pays their bottom line suffers because people at the bottom have so little income with which to work.
Wouldn't raising the minimum wage hurt some of the poorest workers. If someone has sub-5.15/hr skills, should our public policy prevent them from working? Advocates of an increased minimum wage rarely come out for a "middleclass" wage.(doubling or tripling the rate) Is this so that they can pretend not to see what is so obvious? Artificial wages may benefit some but will always hurt the most vulnerable.
We should be employing unskilled teenagers cheaply so that they get a running start at the workforce. Cutting the bottom rung off the ladder won't help people climb that ladder any faster.
interesting idea, c hand. but if that's the case, should we even have a minimum wage? or, rathter, should we allow employers to pay as little as workers will accept?
if you think we should have a minimum wage, what is its purpose? is the rate of $5.15 achieving that purpose?
It is tempting to suspect that Mr. Scott had a more selfish motive while supporting an increase in the minimum wage. Workers with higher wages will have greater purchasing power and, consequently, better customers at Walmart. But scepticism apart, the fact that a business leader of such stature has made such a statement is commendable enough, and something to be thankful about. If more business and political leaders realise that looking after the needs of the poor, low wage earners does not necessarily mean disaster, tehn, we might just see more reasons to rejoice.
One of the arguments used against raising the minimum wage is that it will simply result in a round of inflation that will not benefit anyone. If McDonalds is forced to pay more for labor, the cost is passed on to consumers. The Combo that cost $3.50 last week will now cost $4.25. The worker who still makes a minimum wage now pays more for goods and services, such as a Combo. Realizing that things now cost more, minimum wage workers ask for a higher wage, resulting in another round of inflation. And so forth.
While this argument is sometimes used to dismiss all attempts to raise wages, there is an undeniable element of truth to the argument that needs to be addressed as we discuss wages, minimum or otherwise.
I wonder why no one ever questions "wages" at the other end of the economic ladder? What about a cap on income for those at the top? One reason why prices continue to rise (you've noticed that they do even though we have had no increase in wages at the bottom, right?)is that shareholders and CEOs demand everything they can get from the system and from consumers.
The mythical notion persists that this creates more "good jobs" for labor. Really? With outsourcing, free trade and the "one-world economy" labor at the bottom here is stuck and the paralysis is spreading into the middle class.
Why does no one ever question "wages" at the top?
Good points, Larry. The gap in wages between the median salary in any given company and the CEO of that company has widened from a stream to a gulf in the past twenty years. The amount paid to CEO's of failed and failing companies is obscene, particularly when the CEOs who protect their own retirement bankrupt the pension funds of workers.....
You raise another excellent point about the dismal failure of "trickle down" economics....the idea that benefits and concessions to those at the top will create new jobs is a laughable myth in an era of globalization.
This having been said, an obscene salary to the guy at the top or even to the guy at the top and his cronies, is not much compared to the overall impact of a substantial raise to 10s of thousands of workers. Yes, they get less....but there are so many more of them....So if they get a dollar an hour raise,which is offset by increases in cost of living how does anyone benefit? And if the worker asks for more now, and more later to keep up with the increase in goods, won't the companies eventually just ship the job off to Mexico or India where labor is cheaper...and the poor guy who rightly asked for an increase in his meager salary will have nothing instead of the little he had before.....
I'm on your side in this argument, I'm simply trying to think the ideas through and arrive at a solution that is win-win....
What's needed is a comprehensive package for low-income persons that will include a minimum wage increase and a number of other public benefits.
The points you raise about outsourcing are valid and there may not be a break through until wages in China, India and Third World labor markets see a comparable rise in wages--which I suspect will not be in my lifetime!
Our society must come up with plans that value labor differently. While the number of low-income laborers is enormous, the expectations of shareholders and the commitment of citizens to do the right thing by hard working people is still a value issue to press.
What about tariffs or even import bans on products from companies whose wages are not the lesser of 1) 150% of their national average, or 2) US minimum wages? Seems like this would put upward pressure on other countries' wages without instituting our minimum wage abruptly on other countries. It would still be cheaper to outsource labor, at least for a while, but I'd rather see other countries come up to our wages rather than (eventually) our wages fall to their levels.
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