Wal-Mart is pitting its Senior Director of Communications Steve Restivo and its multi-million dollar PR team against Georgetown University junor and student op-ed columnist Erin Riordan in a media counter-attack. It’s part of Wal-Mart’s effort to get Washington, D.C.’s living-wage bill derailed.
In March, Walmart aggressively opposed the bill under the
coalition label of Don’t Block Progress, which has Wal-Mart as its only self-identified
public member.
Most Wal-Mart employees with children live below the
poverty line, and qualify for food stamps, thus dumping Wal-Mart workers onto
the taxpayers to supplement their Wal-Mart wages.
The average Wal-Mart take-home pay is less than $250 a
week. In Massachussetts alone, Wal-Mart employees, by being under the $15,000 a year poverty level for a single person, cost the taxpayers $14.6 million annually.
Nationwide, the average Wal-Mart employee costs taxpayers $3,000 a year in public assistance, which comes out to about $900,000 a year per supercenter and $4 billion annually in national cost to taxpayers for Wal-Mart workers.
70% leave Wal-Mart within a year so the high turnover makes organizing a union almost impossible.
Nationwide, the average Wal-Mart employee costs taxpayers $3,000 a year in public assistance, which comes out to about $900,000 a year per supercenter and $4 billion annually in national cost to taxpayers for Wal-Mart workers.
70% leave Wal-Mart within a year so the high turnover makes organizing a union almost impossible.
Increasing minimum wage would affect the employees, and Wal-Mart,
dramatically.
Wal-Mart is the leading employer of people of color in
the United States. More than 125,000 African-Americans and more than 74,000
Latinos work at Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club stores nationwide.
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