Wages

Wal-Mart Warns Of Big, Bad Democrats

Adam Doster — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 07:10:41 -0700

Wal-Mart: low prices for consumers, low wages for its workers:

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is mobilizing its store managers and department supervisors around the country to warn that if Democrats win power in November, they'll likely change federal law to make it easier for workers to unionize companies -- including Wal-Mart.

In recent weeks, thousands of Wal-Mart store managers and department heads have been summoned to mandatory meetings at which the retailer stresses the downside for workers if stores were to be unionized.

According to about a dozen Wal-Mart employees who attended such meetings in seven states, Wal-Mart executives claim that employees at unionized stores would have to pay hefty union dues while getting nothing in return, and may have to go on strike without compensation. Also, unionization could mean fewer jobs as labor costs rise.

Coming from one of the nation's leading employers, this display is particularly egregious; Wal-Mart is taking preventive measures against a political party that may make it easier for workers to join unions, not even discouraging a specific union drive. But make no mistake about it, anti-union employer intimidation is extremely common. Via Ezra Klein, 49 percent of employers openly threaten to close down a worksite when faced with a unionization drive. The number of workers whose employers tell them in private meetings that a union will cost the company jobs -- while impossible to track -- is undoubtedly higher.

And card check is supposed to be intimidating, huh?

Interfaith Worker Justice Fights Wage Theft

Adam Doster — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 13:52:05 -0700

Next Thursday, America's federal minimum wage will jump 70 cents to a total of $6.85 per hour. This boost is encouraging, especially after the wage remained at $5.15 for over nine years before the Democratic Congress initiated a raise in late 2006. But it's still well below what many consider a living wage.

According to the Living Wage Calculator, a Chicago adult working full-time as the sole provider of one child would need to earn $12.51 per hour to care for the family adequately. And two new reports released this week by the Government Accountability Office show that many minimum-wage earners have difficulty even obtaining all they are owed:

The Government Accountability Office sharply criticizes the Wage and Hour Division of the Labor Department in two reports to be issued on Tuesday, saying it mishandled many overtime and minimum-wage complaints and delayed investigating hundreds of cases for a year or more.

The G.A.O. also criticizes the division for greatly reducing the number of enforcement actions it takes each year and for not focusing on the low-wage industries where, one report said, it is most likely to find violations. [...]

The G.A.O., which will release its reports at a hearing of the House Education and Labor Committee, also faulted the wage division for reducing the number of enforcement actions it pursues each year to 29,584 in the 2007 fiscal year, down 37 percent from 46,758 10 years earlier.

The House Education and Labor Committee held a hearing Tuesday on the problem of wage theft. Testifying was Kim Bobo, the executive director of Chicago's Interfaith Worker Justice, an organization that mobilizes religious communities to improve wages, benefits, and working conditions for low-wage workers. Bobo, whose book on wage theft is set to be published this fall, says two million workers are paid less than the minimum wage, three million are mis-classified as independent contractors instead of employees, and millions more are illegally denied overtime pay. You can watch her testimony here.

(H/T TPMCafe)

Patel Responds To Tribune Wal-Mart Editorial

Josh Kalven — Fri, 09 May 2008 09:04:29 -0700

In an editorial yesterday on Wal-Mart's apparent decision to give up efforts to open a store on Chicago's South Side, the Tribune repeated the same old canard about the mega-retailer's purported benefits to the community and slammed the living wage movement as contributing to "food deserts" in the city's low-income neighborhoods:

This is all about preventing a non-union grocer from gaining a foothold in Chicago.
Remember the Big Box fight? In 2006 the City Council passed a law to force large retailers to pay a higher minimum wage and benefits than other businesses were required to pay. It was an effort to keep Wal-Mart out of Chicago. The mayor rightly vetoed the ordinance.
But the Daley administration has surrendered. It's not saying that, of course. But it doesn't want to confront labor again on this. So the Chatham Supercenter/grocery store is dead.
Wal-Mart has been allowed to open only one store in Chicago to date. That store, on North Avenue, has created 440 jobs and seeks to hire more people. Average wages for hourly employees are $12.

Here's a statement responding to the Tribune from Amisha Patel of the Grassroots Collaborative, one of the groups that led the 2006 living wage fight:

There is a crisis of poverty in urban communities of color. Those examining how to alleviate such poverty often cite lack of jobs as the primary factor. But equally devastating is that those jobs available to low-income communities of color are low-wage, no- benefit positions, with incredibly high turnover.

If Wal-Mart's average wage is indeed $12/hour, as asserted in the Tribune editorial, why such resistance to our ordinance's paltry requirement that they pay at least $10/hour by the year 2010? Perhaps because they include management salaries in that "average" figure? In that case, why don't they throw CEO Lee Scott's $29 million salary into the mix as well?

50 percent of Wal-Mart employees leave their jobs every year -- that's one of the highest turnover rates in the industry. In comparison, the profitable Costco chain offers its workers living wages and health insurance. As a result, it reports a turnover rate of about 17 percent. The fact that community residents on the South and West Sides -- most of them African-American and Latino -- organized to demand high quality jobs from billionaire mega-retailers is a testament to the powerful belief that communities demand and deserve good jobs. Jobs that they can raise families on.

To blame community and labor for demanding higher wages and benefits is like saying that civil rights marchers in the 60s should have just stayed home and kept quiet. We must address the very real need of communities on the South and West Sides having access to fresh fruits and vegetables. But we must also demand that those sources of food provide jobs and benefits that uplift workers out of poverty, not keep a foot to their throats.

Wal-Mart Reportedly Ends Quest For Chicago Store

Mose Buchele — Thu, 08 May 2008 11:58:38 -0700

Citing "people familiar with Wal-Mart's plans," the Tribune reports today that the retail giant has abandoned its longstanding project of opening up outlets in Chicago. The news comes after efforts by the chain to break into the Chicago market were consistently opposed by a coalition of community and labor groups demanding that these mega-retailers pay their workers a living wage.

Most recently Wal-Mart and its political supporters considered opening a store on the city's South Sitde. That idea appears to have been shelved as well, though new outlets may still pop up outside of the city, according to the Tribune:

Now the world's largest retailer is turning its attention to a backup plan of opening stores just outside city limits, banking that thousands of low-to-middle-income city dwellers will travel to collar suburbs to shop at the discount store. Among the suburbs Wal-Mart is looking at are Calumet Park, Cicero and McCook,

Wal-Mart has had little luck finding political support in the City Council now that Chicago has its eyes on hosting the 2016 Oympics. After all, the last thing Mayor Daley wants is another contentious big-box debate making national headlines.

For more on the Living Wage Coalition and its ongoing fight to ensure decent wages and benefits for big-box employees, see Amisha Patel's column from March.

The Tribune's Poor Wal-Mart Math

Adam Doster — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 10:23:11 -0700

In the summer of 2006, the Chicago Tribune editorial board staunchly opposed the Big Box living wage ordinance passed by the Chicago City Council and ultimately vetoed by the Daley Administration. Calling it "one of the loopiest ideas we've seen from City Hall in a long time," they addressed the city's aldermen in a July 25, 2006, editorial: "[T]hink about those workers ... and think about all the other people still waiting for their chance. They're your neighbors and your constituents. They want jobs. You can help them get to work."

Two years later, the Tribune is beating the same drum, this time after "driving by" a vacant lot on 83rd Street that would have ostensibly housed the city's second Wal-Mart location had the big box fight never occurred. Thinking wistfully about Chicago's lone branch in the Austin neighborhood, they wonder how the South Side community of Chatham could have been transformed:

This thriving Wal-Mart is on the site of what had been a virtually abandoned building. The store provides jobs for more than 440 employees—it's currently hiring more—at average wages for hourly workers of about $12 an hour. In the 18 months the store has been open (through February), it has collected nearly $7.3 million in sales taxes alone—$1.9 million for the city, $3.9 million for the state, $917,000 for the RTA and $583,000 for Cook County. And it's a convenient shopping mecca for Chicagoans.
You would think the City of Chicago would want more of all of this: More jobs. More sales and property tax revenues. More convenient shopping opportunities. You would think the city would want fewer vacant lots.

Now, I didn't major in statistics, but something here just doesn't add up. If the average hourly wage at the Austin location is over $12, why on earth would the Daley Administration put up such a stink over an ordinance that would have raised wages and benefits to $10.75 an hour?

What's more likely is that this average is highly inflated, taking into account a few well-compensated higher ups. In fact, Simon Head of the Workplace at the Century Foundation found that "the average pay of a sales clerk at Wal-Mart was $8.50 an hour, or about $14,000 a year," a job that often comes with few-to-no benefits and little overtime. Another 2007 study from the UC-Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education reports (pdf) that 58 percent of all Wal-Mart part-time employees make less then $8 per hour nationally. The Tribune itself wrote on June 13, 2006, that the entry-level wage at Wal-Mart in Chicago starts at about $7.25 an hour.

The editorial goes on to trumpet the loss of sales tax revenue, but makes no mention of the loss in state funds stemming from Wal-Mart employees who -- because they lack decent wages and adequate benefits -- become reliant on public assistance. A 2006 University of Illinois at Chicago study pegged the cost to Illinois taxpayers at $40 million annually.

More after the jump ...

But most egregiously, in assuming that the citizens of Chicago should simply want "more jobs," the editorial sets up a false dichotomy. In a recent column published here, Amisha Patel explained:

The idea that “any job is better than no job” has been advanced among the working poor for centuries. But it’s a false choice – one that only serves to keep those on the edges of social margins grateful for whatever those in power decide to hand out. It is an argument that the vast majority of Chicagoans rejected in 2006, with over 80 percent voting in support of referenda on the living wage in 300 precincts across the city.

And as the UC-Berkeley study finds, if Wal-Mart set their minimum wage at $10/hour, 46.3 percent of the pay increase would go to workers in families with total incomes below 200 percent of the federal poverty level. In other words, such a raise could change people's lives. The bump would not be pushed onto the consumer either; the study found that if Wal-Mart were to pass 100 percent of the wage increase on to consumers, it would only cost shoppers an extra $0.36 per trip.

A word to the Tribune: Don't blame the unions or the aldermen for supporting valuable jobs in communities that have been abandoned by capital for far too long. Blame Mayor Daley for standing with these billionaire retailers and in the way of a common sense solution.

Wal-Mart And Daley Feeling The "Heat"

Josh Kalven — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 14:00:38 -0700

In a column posted here yesterday, Amisha Patel recounted the 2006 effort to pass a City Council ordinance requiring Chicago's "big box" retailers to pay a living wage. The measure was ultimately vetoed by Mayor Daley, but as Patel notes, the widespread mobilization around the issue nonetheless spurred "tremendous change," including a statewide minimum wage hike and an electoral backlash against many aldermen who had opposed the ordinance.

Now we have more evidence of the living wage movement's ongoing effect on local policy.

Last Friday, City of Chicago Planning and Development Commissioner Arnold Randall rejected Wal-Mart's request for approval of a second store in the Chatham neighborhood on the South Side. Because of special zoning laws written in 2004, Wal-Mart-sized retailers require city approval before development can begin. In his statement criticizing Randall's decision, 21st Ward Alderman Howard Brookins helpfully spelled out the subtext of this decision: the city doesn't want another fight with the living wage movement. From the Sun-Times:

Brookins accused Mayor Daley of ducking the issue to avoid alienating unions that spent millions to elect a City Council more independent of the mayor.

“You would think that, given the state of the economy, we would welcome 500 new jobs to Chicago. Instead, we’re pushing ’em away because nobody wants to take the heat from certain unions that still have issues with Wal-Mart,” he said.

Following Randall's decision, Brookins and Wal-Mart must decide whether they want to take the proposal to the City Council, where they'll now face even stronger opposition.

But having reached this point, perhaps they'll realize there's another option: to simply raise their wages.

A Living Wage Is A Right -- Not A Luxury

Amisha Patel — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 14:41:50 -0700

Decent wages. Filling a prescription for your sick child. Not having to choose between paying the rent and buying groceries. Sound like luxuries to you? Well, they don’t to a majority of Chicagoans. Nonetheless, retailers like Wal-Mart, Target, and Lowe’s apparently think that their employees can go without. And thousands of retail workers do go without, at great cost to themselves, their families, and neighborhoods across the city.

The Big Box Living Wage Ordinance sought to improve this situation. But despite a supermajority of residents supporting the ordinance, and despite a majority of alderman voting to pass it, Mayor Daley issued his first veto in 19 years in office against this legislation in September 2006. Today, that veto and the resulting lack of living wages in Chicago continue to reverberate across the city.

The Big Box Living Wage Ordinance would have required certain-sized billion-dollar retailers to pay their workers a wage of $10 per hour, with an additional $3 per hour worth of benefits. The wages and benefits were to reach that mark in 2010, and thereafter increase by the cost of living. Community organizations and labor unions organized for its passage in an effort to hold these wealthy corporations accountable to their low-wage employees.

The Living Wage Ordinance worked to address the lack of quality jobs in communities of color. The crisis of unemployment, especially in the African-American community, exists and is an issue many are familiar with. Much less talked about, but just as devastating, is the crisis of job quality – the jobs that are available to black workers are disproportionately low-wage and without benefits, and do little to resolve the crisis of poverty with which many working black families struggle on a daily basis.

Jhatyn Travis, Executive Director of the Kenwood Oakland Community Organization, has seen the impact of this lack of opportunity in the South Side communities in which she organizes. She explains that “not having living wage salaries means people can’t afford a place to live. The city as a whole is seeing an outflux of working people who can’t afford to live here anymore. The issues go hand in hand.” Jamiko Rose, Executive Director of Organization of the NorthEast, states that “when the formerly incarcerated return to our communities, trying to start their lives over and reintegrate, the biggest barrier they face is the lack of living wage jobs. This increases recidivism, because people aren’t given the opportunity to make an honest living.” Bryan Echols of MAGIC, puts it pretty simply: “The necessity for a living wage exists so parents can parent, and families can be families. Nowadays, teens are working out of necessity, not for independence.” What’s clear is that poverty-wage jobs work to perpetuate the struggles of many Chicago families.

Let’s be real: The fact that mega-retailers are now clamoring to get into urban America is not because they suddenly care about poor black and brown folk – it is because there is huge untapped buying power in the inner-city that they previously because they could. Any portrayal of these poverty-wage stores or their backers in Chicago as being fighters for racial justice is a slick attempt to pull an “okey doke” on communities of color. The stores are coming now because they have no choice – Wal-Mart stock has been sluggish over the last two years because the company has not reached their targeted expansion in the U.S. Those who run the company, however, continue to make some of the highest salaries in the world – at stark contrast to their workers who struggle to make ends meet.

The idea that “any job is better than no job” has been advanced among the working poor for centuries. But it’s a false choice – one that only serves to keep those on the edges of social margins grateful for whatever those in power decide to hand out. It is an argument that the vast majority of Chicagoans rejected in 2006, with over 80 percent voting in support of referenda on the living wage in 300 precincts across the city.

The campaign to secure a living wage for big box workers exemplified Chicago-style community-labor collaboration. The Living Wage Coalition, consisting of 35 community, labor, academic, policy, and faith-based organizations, was spearheaded by the Grassroots Collaborative, a coalition whose mission is to organize around the issue. The Collaborative unites diverse constituencies to work across barriers to fight for systemic change that benefits everyone. Our member organizations are our strength – Action Now, American Friends Service Committee, Brighton Park Neighborhood Council, Chicago Coalition for the Homeless, Illinois Hunger Coalition, Metro Seniors in Action, Metropolitan Alliance of Congregations, and Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Locals 73 and 880. Key labor partners in the Living Wage Coalition included the SEIU State Council, Chicago Federation of Labor, United Food and Commercial Workers 881, and Chicago Jobs with Justice. Key partners in the faith community included Protestants for the Common Good, St. Sabina, Trinity United Church of Christ, and Chicago Interfaith Committee.

Despite Daley’s veto, our organizing has resulted in tremendous change, both statewide and in Chicago. The campaign to win a living wage for big box employees ignited the successful effort to increase the statewide minimum wage. Passed shortly after our veto, the minimum wage increase had huge economic impact for hundreds of thousands of low-wage workers in Illinois. In Chicago, our organizing sparked an electoral change in the City Council not seen in years, with nine new alderman taking office in 2007, many of whom had campaigned in support of the living wage against anti-living wage incumbents.

The lack of living wage jobs in Chicago impacts education, housing, and crime. Poverty touches every part of family life. By not demanding quality jobs with decent wages from those who can provide them, we continue to privilege oppressive politics by saying that those who can don't have to, and in so doing, telling ourselves and each other that we should be happy for the crumbs we got.

Medicine. Rent. Groceries. Being able to provide for family with the wages earned from a full-time job is a right, not a luxury.

Amisha Patel is the Director of the Grassroots Collaborative.