His Washington Post column is titled D.C. Council stands for fair wages and against Wal-Mart and it provides lots of ammunition on the matter of Living Wages and Walmart.
Meyerson 2nd paragraph set the frame:
On average, Wal-Mart pays its workers $12.67 an hour — which means that a huge number of its 1.4 million U.S. employees make a good deal less than that. By paying so little, the Bentonville behemoth compels thousands of its employees to use food stamps to feed their families and Medicaid to pay their doctor bills. It compels taxpayers to pick up a tab that wouldn’t even exist if the company paid its workers enough to get them out of poverty.
And in the next paragraph we read that a
2009 Ohio survey
found that 15,246 Wal-Mart workers were Medicaid recipients and 12,731 were on food stamps. (McDonald’s came in second in each category.)
Meyerson cites another survey that shows where Walmart has opened up it has tended to drive down the wages of employees in other supermarkets, and in Los Angeles, just the threat that Walmart MIGHT open there
compelled that city’s supermarket employee union to accept a management demand to establish a markedly lower pay scale for new hires. When subsequent public opposition to Wal-Mart’s entry kept the chain largely out of L.A., the lower pay scale was eliminated the next time the union’s contract was renegotiated.
Meyerson reminds us of how over the years manufacturers move from the unionized North to right-to-work states in the South to cut their labor costs (although it is worth remembering that some have since moved on to low-wage countries where even with transportation costs it is cheaper still to manufacture because wages are so low). Meyerson describes this as "Southern regionalism" and says that many manufacturers have come to depend on this, and then offers this observation:
Wal-Mart’s goal is to erase that North-South difference by making every place the South. It commands such a large share of the nation’s retail sector that it has compelled its suppliers to lower their own pay scales all along its supply chain to provide lower-cost products.
A bit earlier this morning I posted a reflection I called
Profits in which I explored what capitalism is becoming and the impact of allowing the profit motivation to be the primary or sole basis on which economic entities are allowed to operate.
The driving down of wages is one clear example.
It also tends to destroy the communities where it is allowed to happen, because it reduces the tax base, shifts costs that should belong to the employers onto the employees and taxpayers, at the same time allowing the employers to avoid paying taxes for the benefits they receive and the costs they impose.
Oh and as a reminder, when Walmart and other big box employers open up, the result is rarely a net-increase in jobs, as smaller companies (often with stronger ties to the community) are forced out of business.
Read the Meyerson piece.
It is well worth your while.