Hundreds of participants in the Jobs with Justice (JwJ) national conference in Washington, D.C., this week will join with members of the Making Change at Walmart campaign, Wal-Mart employees, faith leaders and community activists to rally Friday, Aug. 5, and deliver a message to the world’s largest retailer: “Pay what you say.”
If you’re in the Washington, D.C., area on Friday, join the rally at 4:30 p.m. outside Wal-Mart’s corporate lobbying office at 701 Eighth St., N.W., in Chinatown.
According to the campaign, Wal-Mart has a track record of paying poverty wages, disrespecting employees and making verbal promises it doesn’t intend to keep. Ralliers will demand that the company pay its associates the hourly wages it promises.
Wal-Mart is planning to open four stores in Washington, D.C., but the retailer hasn’t met with community members to talk about standards for respecting workers and the neighborhoods, said D.C. JwJ and the coalition Respect DC.
Instead of building good jobs, Wal-Mart drives down standards and wages, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka and United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) President Joe Hansen said recently.
When Walmart opens in a community, it regularly displaces existing jobs with poverty-level jobs. Tens of thousands of Walmart associates qualify for and utilize food stamps, Medicare and Medicaid. In this time of budgetary stress, Walmart’s business model is subsidized on the backs of American taxpayers
Even with the company’s health care plan, many workers–whose average hourly wage is $8.81 an hour—can’t afford it and a significant number of Wal-Mart workers rely on taxpayer-subsidized health care. In Massachusetts for example, 42 percent of Wal-Mart associates in 2009 relied on public health care.
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