Workers celebrated a victorious moment in Chicago last week, as its City Council passed an ordinance requiring retailers with more than $1 billion in annual sales and with stores of at least 90,000 square feet, such as Wal-Mart and Target, to pay employees at least $10 per hour and $3 per hour worth of benefits.
The measure is a step in the right direction for lower-middle class Americans, as a message is has been sent to greedy corporations that workers are no longer going to put up with poor wages that keep employees of big stores too close to the poverty line.
Wal-Mart and some economists decry the ordinance, saying that being forced to raise wages will deter economic growth and cut off access to cheap goods. They also complain that the measure will make it more difficult for stores to keep prices low.
Unfortunately, the reason why that claim is true is simply that executives will pass the pay increases onto consumers refusing to take any cuts in their often exorbitant salaries. It is very possible to compensates employees adequately for their time while keeping costs low. Costco Wholesale is a perfect example: The CEO of Costco earns $350,000 annually while the company pays its employees roughly $17 per hour on average and gives health care coverage to 90 percent of its workers. The CEO of Wal-Mart reportedly is paid more than $5 million per year, while Wal-Mart employees start out earning minimum wage, and can eventually earn up to $11 per hour.
Oddly enough, Wal-Mart spokesman John Simley was quoted by the New York Times as calling the mandate that workers be paid more “sad,” saying it “puts politics ahead of working men and women.”
Although it is unsurprising that Simley disagrees with the Chicago decision given his position, his stance should not be shared by others. Chicago should be applauded for its stand. Finally, within its limits, big companies will have to pay decent wages to those who make the company run on the most basic level, helping exactly those “working men and women” who struggle to provide for their families while earning only minimum wage.
Wal-Mart consistently garners criticism and protests when new stores are built in small towns because of the company’s track
record for shutting down smaller, locally owned stores that can’t compete with the store’s selection and prices. If this measure were to be adopted by the small towns that are often hit hard by the opening of a Wal-Mart, and someday it should, at least those who are put out of business could make a living working at Wal-Mart.
It’s a welcoming and quite rare site to see a city government truly standing up for its people in the face of wealthy corporations attempting to get richer for the benefit of a very few. We hope policy makers in other cities around the nation will mimic the bravery shown in Chicago and pass similar ordinances to help the great wealth contained in very successful corporations to be more equitably distributed among their workers.