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25-11-2013, 02:00 AM
An honorable member of the Coffee Shop Has Just Posted the Following:
“We now have 26 per cent of the U.S. workforce earning $10.50 or less an hour. And that translates into a staggering number of families directly affected by years of stagnant wages, in the Walmart economy, sliding toward poverty,” - Jobs With Justice
http://www.thestar.com/news/world/20...king_poor.html (http://www.thestar.com/news/world/2013/11/24/black_friday_and_the_digital_rumble_of_americas_wo rking_poor.html)
WASHINGTON—Deals, deals, deals. They can be had in the hypercompetitive United States any day of the year — but never quite like the deals of Black Friday, the around-the-clock retail frenzy that begins the moment Americans push their chairs back from the Thanksgiving table.
Yet dark clouds are gathering over this Nov. 29, with the deepest discount race of the year running up against a new appreciation of what economic critics call the impoverished social bargain that lies within.
Walmart, long the target of worker’s rights advocates by dint of its sheer size, faces protests at as many as 1,500 locations in what organizers call the single largest act of civil disobedience in the retailer’s history.
And not for the first time. Last Black Friday, hundreds of Walmart workers walked off the job in 46 states, aiming to draw attention to what they regard as “poverty wages” and the company’s silence-inducing threat against those who speak out.
But that was before this past week, when Walmart sustained a fresh reputational black eye with the news that store management in Canton, Ohio, were asking staff to contribute to a holiday food drive — for fellow workers.
The Cleveland Plain Dealer led the outcry, running a photo of backroom collection bins under the sign, “Please donate food items here so associates in need can enjoy Thanksgiving dinner.” The paper ran the photo, asking its readers whether this was “proof of low wages.”
The episode spread like digital wildfire, becoming fodder for late-night television satire and excoriating attacks on social media.
And then, an outright public relations disaster, when Ashton Kutcher, the Hollywood actor/producer, faced-off with Walmart on Twitter, telling his 15 million followers, “Walmart is your profit so important you can’t pay your employees enough to be above the poverty line?”
Walmart’s online news team launched into damage control, answering with pride for workers who simply cared for each other: “It’s unfortunate that an act of human kindness has been taken so out of context.”
Kutcher shot back, pointing to the company’s $17-billion profit in 2012. Eventually Walmart disengaged, leaving Kutcher with the last word — “Walmart should be the leaders not the low-water mark.”
Other digital haranguers added to Walmart’s grief under the hashtag #WalmartElves, asking to be freed of their misery as the company’s lawyers scrambled throughout the week to cancel critical accounts on Twitter and Tumblr, citing brand infringement.
What should we make of Kutcher and the online mischief makers? A few clicks of the keyboard hardly constitute a revolution. But here in Washington, labour rights groups welcome the digital activism as turning point in a collective campaign already well underway.
“What we’re seeing on social media — and especially, the response to Walmart in Ohio — is huge,” said Sarita Gupta, executive director of Jobs With Justice, a national network of labour coalitions in 46 U.S. cities. “But also incredibly timely, as we fight for improvements in the minimum wage.”
“Whether it’s Walmart workers posing as elves on Twitter or celebrities with huge followings like Ashton Kutcher, the basic story is getting told in a whole new way — and it’s a harsh story.
“We now have 26 per cent of the U.S. workforce earning $10.50 or less an hour. And that translates into a staggering number of families directly affected by years of stagnant wages, in the Walmart economy, sliding toward poverty,” said Gupta.
“There comes a breaking point where the country has to ask itself, ‘What is the true cost of these low-prices?’ I believe we are now at that point, given the sheer number of people involved.”
Such high social hopes were once ascribed to the now-fragmented Occupy movement, whose fixation upon America’s richest 1 per cent all but collapsed upon its leaderless self.
But the gathering fight against Walmart — and, more broadly, the Walmart business model — suggests U.S. anti-poverty and labour activists are organizing differently this time. This week’s Walmart protests are coming together under the umbrella of OUR Walmart, an ostensibly independent organization with ties to the powerful United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW).
A similar arm’s-length pattern of labour activism is emerging in the restive fast-food industry, where workers staged a 60-city walkout in late August organized by a series of groups — and all backed by the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). The so-called “Fight For 15” campaign saw close SEIU supervision and organization aimed at building a core of militant workers in New York, Milwaukee and Chicago, according to an investigation by In These Times.
Taken together, these retail and fast-food campaigns seem almost like the dying labour movement’s last gasp. Private-sector unionism, which held sway over 35 per cent of the U.S. workforce in the 1950s, now barely registers in the single digits, at 6.6 per cent. In its wake, today’s do-you-want-fries-with-that economy involves more than four million U.S. fast-food workers earning an average of less than $9 an hour.
On the retail side, Walmart argues that its compensation far exceeds the accusations of its worst critics, with employees earning an average of $12.87 an hour. OUR Walmart disagrees, saying that factoring in all staff, not-just front-line retail but also warehousing and supply-chain workers, lowers the average to well under $10.
The OUR Walmart campaign is calling for a “living wage” of $25,000 — about $13/hour for full-time staff. But the traction it hopes for goes far behind Walmart, extending to the company’s competitors.
“All retailers tell us the same thing — if you want change it has to begin with Walmart, simply because of their size,” said Gupta. “As the most profitable and largest single private-sector employer, they are the pacesetter, all the way down the supply chain.
“And the key point is they can afford to pay a higher wage — they just choose not to. The business model is there to turn the tide. The economy handled it before. It can handle it again.”
But the issue is also fuelling talk in Washington of the first minimum wage hike since 2009. Congress is preparing to consider a bill that would gradually raise the minimum wage — currently $7.25 an hour — to $10.10 over the next three years. Adjusted for inflation, $7.25 in 2009 dollars equals $7.89 today, according to the U.S. Consumer Price Index. Thus, any such hike would represent a measurable lift for America’s bottom-rung workers.
Though the bill has the blessing of U.S. President Barack Obama, it faces resistance from powerful lobbies like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which want to see any wage hikes appended to business tax breaks.
And the sheer scarcity of work also factors in Walmart’s favour, as the city of Washington learned recently, when it was forced to back down on a “living-wage bill” demanding businesses pay a minimum of $12.50 an hour.
Walmart responded to the bill by threatening to cancel the launch of two new stores in the city. And when D.C. officials acquiesced, the company was deluged by more than 23,000 applications for the 600 new jobs, making Walmart, even at its present-day wages, harder to get into than Harvard, according to Business Insider.
“The lesson in all of this is that things aren’t going to change in one single Black Friday. But there is hope — huge hope, now — for the longer term, as public pressure mounts on individual companies and in Washington,” said Gupta.
“There is a higher road available. Companies like Costco, to name just one, are showing us that they can profitably compensate workers. The more people realize this, the better.”
Click here to view the whole thread at www.sammyboy.com (http://singsupplies.com/showthread.php?169017-Competition-kills-not-builds-community&goto=newpost).
“We now have 26 per cent of the U.S. workforce earning $10.50 or less an hour. And that translates into a staggering number of families directly affected by years of stagnant wages, in the Walmart economy, sliding toward poverty,” - Jobs With Justice
http://www.thestar.com/news/world/20...king_poor.html (http://www.thestar.com/news/world/2013/11/24/black_friday_and_the_digital_rumble_of_americas_wo rking_poor.html)
WASHINGTON—Deals, deals, deals. They can be had in the hypercompetitive United States any day of the year — but never quite like the deals of Black Friday, the around-the-clock retail frenzy that begins the moment Americans push their chairs back from the Thanksgiving table.
Yet dark clouds are gathering over this Nov. 29, with the deepest discount race of the year running up against a new appreciation of what economic critics call the impoverished social bargain that lies within.
Walmart, long the target of worker’s rights advocates by dint of its sheer size, faces protests at as many as 1,500 locations in what organizers call the single largest act of civil disobedience in the retailer’s history.
And not for the first time. Last Black Friday, hundreds of Walmart workers walked off the job in 46 states, aiming to draw attention to what they regard as “poverty wages” and the company’s silence-inducing threat against those who speak out.
But that was before this past week, when Walmart sustained a fresh reputational black eye with the news that store management in Canton, Ohio, were asking staff to contribute to a holiday food drive — for fellow workers.
The Cleveland Plain Dealer led the outcry, running a photo of backroom collection bins under the sign, “Please donate food items here so associates in need can enjoy Thanksgiving dinner.” The paper ran the photo, asking its readers whether this was “proof of low wages.”
The episode spread like digital wildfire, becoming fodder for late-night television satire and excoriating attacks on social media.
And then, an outright public relations disaster, when Ashton Kutcher, the Hollywood actor/producer, faced-off with Walmart on Twitter, telling his 15 million followers, “Walmart is your profit so important you can’t pay your employees enough to be above the poverty line?”
Walmart’s online news team launched into damage control, answering with pride for workers who simply cared for each other: “It’s unfortunate that an act of human kindness has been taken so out of context.”
Kutcher shot back, pointing to the company’s $17-billion profit in 2012. Eventually Walmart disengaged, leaving Kutcher with the last word — “Walmart should be the leaders not the low-water mark.”
Other digital haranguers added to Walmart’s grief under the hashtag #WalmartElves, asking to be freed of their misery as the company’s lawyers scrambled throughout the week to cancel critical accounts on Twitter and Tumblr, citing brand infringement.
What should we make of Kutcher and the online mischief makers? A few clicks of the keyboard hardly constitute a revolution. But here in Washington, labour rights groups welcome the digital activism as turning point in a collective campaign already well underway.
“What we’re seeing on social media — and especially, the response to Walmart in Ohio — is huge,” said Sarita Gupta, executive director of Jobs With Justice, a national network of labour coalitions in 46 U.S. cities. “But also incredibly timely, as we fight for improvements in the minimum wage.”
“Whether it’s Walmart workers posing as elves on Twitter or celebrities with huge followings like Ashton Kutcher, the basic story is getting told in a whole new way — and it’s a harsh story.
“We now have 26 per cent of the U.S. workforce earning $10.50 or less an hour. And that translates into a staggering number of families directly affected by years of stagnant wages, in the Walmart economy, sliding toward poverty,” said Gupta.
“There comes a breaking point where the country has to ask itself, ‘What is the true cost of these low-prices?’ I believe we are now at that point, given the sheer number of people involved.”
Such high social hopes were once ascribed to the now-fragmented Occupy movement, whose fixation upon America’s richest 1 per cent all but collapsed upon its leaderless self.
But the gathering fight against Walmart — and, more broadly, the Walmart business model — suggests U.S. anti-poverty and labour activists are organizing differently this time. This week’s Walmart protests are coming together under the umbrella of OUR Walmart, an ostensibly independent organization with ties to the powerful United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW).
A similar arm’s-length pattern of labour activism is emerging in the restive fast-food industry, where workers staged a 60-city walkout in late August organized by a series of groups — and all backed by the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). The so-called “Fight For 15” campaign saw close SEIU supervision and organization aimed at building a core of militant workers in New York, Milwaukee and Chicago, according to an investigation by In These Times.
Taken together, these retail and fast-food campaigns seem almost like the dying labour movement’s last gasp. Private-sector unionism, which held sway over 35 per cent of the U.S. workforce in the 1950s, now barely registers in the single digits, at 6.6 per cent. In its wake, today’s do-you-want-fries-with-that economy involves more than four million U.S. fast-food workers earning an average of less than $9 an hour.
On the retail side, Walmart argues that its compensation far exceeds the accusations of its worst critics, with employees earning an average of $12.87 an hour. OUR Walmart disagrees, saying that factoring in all staff, not-just front-line retail but also warehousing and supply-chain workers, lowers the average to well under $10.
The OUR Walmart campaign is calling for a “living wage” of $25,000 — about $13/hour for full-time staff. But the traction it hopes for goes far behind Walmart, extending to the company’s competitors.
“All retailers tell us the same thing — if you want change it has to begin with Walmart, simply because of their size,” said Gupta. “As the most profitable and largest single private-sector employer, they are the pacesetter, all the way down the supply chain.
“And the key point is they can afford to pay a higher wage — they just choose not to. The business model is there to turn the tide. The economy handled it before. It can handle it again.”
But the issue is also fuelling talk in Washington of the first minimum wage hike since 2009. Congress is preparing to consider a bill that would gradually raise the minimum wage — currently $7.25 an hour — to $10.10 over the next three years. Adjusted for inflation, $7.25 in 2009 dollars equals $7.89 today, according to the U.S. Consumer Price Index. Thus, any such hike would represent a measurable lift for America’s bottom-rung workers.
Though the bill has the blessing of U.S. President Barack Obama, it faces resistance from powerful lobbies like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which want to see any wage hikes appended to business tax breaks.
And the sheer scarcity of work also factors in Walmart’s favour, as the city of Washington learned recently, when it was forced to back down on a “living-wage bill” demanding businesses pay a minimum of $12.50 an hour.
Walmart responded to the bill by threatening to cancel the launch of two new stores in the city. And when D.C. officials acquiesced, the company was deluged by more than 23,000 applications for the 600 new jobs, making Walmart, even at its present-day wages, harder to get into than Harvard, according to Business Insider.
“The lesson in all of this is that things aren’t going to change in one single Black Friday. But there is hope — huge hope, now — for the longer term, as public pressure mounts on individual companies and in Washington,” said Gupta.
“There is a higher road available. Companies like Costco, to name just one, are showing us that they can profitably compensate workers. The more people realize this, the better.”
Click here to view the whole thread at www.sammyboy.com (http://singsupplies.com/showthread.php?169017-Competition-kills-not-builds-community&goto=newpost).