not make enough money to buy thanksgiving dinner on their own, and what s their solution? lord knows, it s not to pay those associates more. the average walmart employee makes only $8.81 per hour, which works out to be about $17,000 per year in take-home pay for a full-time employee, well below the federal poverty line of $23,000. their solution is certainly not to allow their workers to organize so that maybe they could have a voice in telling management what sort of working conditions, would help their families and help the productivity of the stores. and despite the fact that walmart is not only a seller of crappy chinese-made goods but also the largest grocery store in the country, there s no way that they would provide their associates with thanksgiving trimmings for turkey day. let s not be crazy. no, their solution is to ask their poorly paid associates to give food to other poorly paid associates. well, i guess that s better than nothing. spokesman for walmart says the food dri
in profit. and pays the average worker $8.81 an hour. so walmart s argument is that everyone has the opportunity to build the kind of career they want. and many associates advance to salaries much higher than $25,000. so why do organizations like our walmart even exist? well, the reason that the organizations exist in making change at walmart exists is because they re fundamentally not paying people for their work. one of the biggest subsidies that you and every taxpayer is paying for is the number of things walmart need because company won t pay them. food stamps and home savings and all kinds of things. so the notion that we are paying so that the walton family worth over $144 billion can have more profit is really an obscenity. what do you say when they say
they re trying to get their jobs back by labor day. walmart didn t respond. they deny that they fired employees as a result of the walkout. they say that s against their policies. they say that employees may be disciplined but they certainly wouldn t be fired. the real issue here among those who are going to gather out here today and at other locations, 15 different locations across the country, is that they believe that wages should be higher. this falls on the heels of what we most recently saw of fast food workers saying they need to have an increase in the wages. the effort will be out here to try to draw attention to what they say are low wages at approximately an average of $8.81 an hour. those hearsay they believe wages should be raised up to about $13 an hour. again, walmart has not responded. in fact, they say that this is a very small individual 15
president. there s different messages. we re looking at it from a the ceo of walmart makes $36 different perspective. congressman, if you look at what the republicans are saying, million this year, and the it s very similar to what some workers averaging $8.81 an hour. democrats are saying. aren t they in somewhat of a political box here, the politics of all of this this? mr. greenwald, do you think this is the start of something bigger when it comes to workers for some of them, they in america? we saw the fast-food workers, represent districts, they ve now we re seeing the walmart been hawkish, but suddenly workers in proust. there s a change in opinion. what do you think it means? i think it s the beginning of i can tell you, i ve gone to the something, but i think we all classified briefings, i spent an have work to do to support these hour and a quarter on the phone folks, so support our walmart, with the progressive caucus and to support the fast-food white house chief of
has no right. they are just stirring up nothing for nothing. this is a made-up contrived situation. when you start working here, you know it s a minimum wage job, number one. you know that there s no benefits. no health benefits. that s why they have the low price. if you want them to have health benefits, than the price of everything is going to go up. who is that going to hurt? the consumer like me. i m on a fixed income, retired. it s going to hurt me. according to a study done by the uc berkeley center, if every single walmart worker were paid a living wage of $12 an hour, up from an average of $8.81 an hour, the cost would increase prices about 1%. if they passed the entire cost on to consumers, it would add $12.50 to a customer s annual bill, a an average of 46 cents a trip. that may not seem like a lot. to some consumers, a small increase is big. the perception of consumer is hard to overcome and these companies want to keep it that