"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."
