The Right to a Living Wage - Follow This Washington D.C. vs. Wal-Mart Saga

Finally! Some city somewhere with the stones to stand up to Wal-Mart! According to the Washington Post, the Washington, D.C., city council has passed a living wage measure called the Large Retailer Accountability Act. 

"D.C. lawmakers gave final approval Wednesday to a bill requiring some large retailers to pay their employees a 50 percent premium over the city’s minimum wage, a day after Wal-Mart warned that the law would jeopardize its plans in the city. 

The retail giant had linked the future of at least three planned stores in the District to the proposal. But its ultimatum did not change any legislators’ minds. The 8 to 5 roll call matched the outcome of an earlier vote on the matter, taken before Wal-Mart’s warning.

'The question here is a living wage; it’s not whether Wal-Mart comes or stays,” said council member Vincent B. Orange (D-At Large), a lead backer of the legislation, who added that the city did not need to kowtow to threats. “We’re at a point where we don’t need retailers. Retailers need us.'” 

Details include:

"...Wage and benefit provisions represent a 50 percent premium over the city’s minimum wage of $8.25 [to $12.50/hr]. The requirement would be applicable to retailers with yearly corporate sales of $1 billion or more operating out of spaces of 75,000 square feet or more, with an exception for companies with unionized workforces."

So naturally, the Mayor is being lobbied to veto it at the behest of:

"...Republican Party, the National Retail Federation and the American Antitrust Institute, all of which released letters or statements urging [Mayor] Gray to exercise his veto."

And Wal-Mart, of course, is painting itself as the victim. Doesn't everyone know by now that profits matter more than people being able to make ends meet?:

"Wal-Mart is adamant that it can’t pay a minimum wage of $12.50 but also says that it pays an average retail employee wage of $12.67 nationwide. Also, under the bill, it’s actually a wage rate, which means benefits would be included, and the wage would likely be lower. It seems Wal-Mart didn’t want to set a precedent for jurisdictions nationwide that might consider doing something similar. After all, if this thing metastasized, it could end up costing the company billions in profit."

And of course, the naysayers claim that minimum wage is better than unemployment. Of course, they ALWAYS say stupid things like that, because they don't have to live on minimum wage (like many people do) to survive. That race to the bottom is so complete these days it's sick. This opinion piece on the D.C. Wal-Mart matter shows how truly awful the race for the few crumbs available has become.

Ralph Nader, ever on the side of workers, wrote an excellent commentary on the matter for Huffington Post that demolishes the claims against paying the workers a living wage.

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UPDATE 7/16/13 - Lest anyone think I'm just bashing Wal-Mart, here's a sad-but-true article from the Atlantic about how "McDonald's Can't Figure Out How Its Workers Survive On Minimum Wage." It shows a financial planning guide McDonald's made for its workers, in which the company accidentally illustrates precisely how impossible it is to scrape by making minimum wage. The final paragraph of the very brief article is most telling:

"Of course, minimum wage workers aren't really entirely on their own, especially if they have children. There are programs like food stamps, Medicaid, and the earned income tax credit to help them along. But that's sort of the point. When large companies make profits by paying their workers unlivable wages, we end up subsidizing their bottom lines."

Sad But True: The Very People Who Benefit from Unions Hate Unions

In the "for me but not for thee" times we live in, where "I got mine--screw you" is the mantra of not the wealthy, but the middle class toward the poor, there are people who hate unions while reaping the very benefits of them. The public employees who have generous benefits contractors and private sector workers can only dream of, are all too quick and happy to tell you how corrupt, greedy and unnecessary unions are.

What I always say to these people is, "Well, if you don't like unions, feel free to work weekends, 20-hour workdays, and for .25 cents an hour, because that's what you'd be doing if it weren't for unions." Vacation, sick leave, and a living wage or higher than living wage are all hallmarks of unions, not employer generosity.

So let's look at those lovely non-union, right-to-work states (mostly Republican strongholds--surprise!):

And now lets look at the amazing benefits of those right-to-work states:

Source: http://educationvotes.nea.org/2013/01/07/right-to-work-rumblings-surface-in-the-states/

Or in harder numbers, the telltalechart.com website has sortable graphs by state (see below). It tells the story succinctly, using the name "Lowroadistan" to show what third-world status the right-to-work states have become:

"And six states have sub-poverty shares at or near a third of their workforces–all of these in the deep south.  I call this group “Lowroadistan.”  Indeed the 10 states with the highest low-wage shares are all “right-to-work” states; and Virginia is the only “right-to-work” state to crack the top 10 in the  over 300 percent category."

Oh, but wait, you say. That's all biased information from left-wing think tanks. Nay so. Here's the data from the U.S. Census Bureau, hardly a bastion of rabid, commie pinkos:

The over-$100K people with Masters degrees in Public Administration (especially who hail from Southern states) are the most belligerent in their contempt of unions. Kick them off their pedestals, and force them to live like their constituents (a.k.a. everybody else), and they'd be singing a far different tune. As Herman Melville once said, "Of all the preposterous assumptions of humanity over humanity, nothing exceeds most of the criticisms made on the habits of the poor by the well-housed, well- warmed, and well-fed.”