NOT THAT YOU ASKED
In the nine years that I worked for Walmart, and in all of the years since, I haven't had a lot of good things to say about the company. While it is a well run company, and not a bad place to work, one of the things that always irked me was that its leaders had such a need to keep reminding us of how good they were to us, and how it was such a great company to work for. I always figured that if a company was really treating its people right, and was such a great place to work, it would be readily apparent to us and they wouldn't need to keep telling us.
That said I have to applaud Walmart for its recent decision to raise its base pay to nine dollars an hour. That's still not a living wage, but it's a start. That's also a significant raise over what I was making after those nine years. I wonder if they need a greeter. Then again, someone who would greet customers with "Hello suckers!" might not last long.
I don't know why Walmart is doing this, but I suspect it has something to do with the fact that for the first time the man running the company literally worked his way up from the bottom. He knows what it's like to unload a truck trailer in the summer heat. He knows what it's like to get shopping carts off of the parking lot in the rain or snow. He knows what it's like to clean the bathrooms and sweep the floors. He also knows what it's like to keep his mouth shut while a customer cusses him out, even if the customer is wrong, because rule #1 is The Customer is Always Right. He not only knows these things, he also can have an appreciation of the associates who do them more than his fellow executives, because he's been there himself.
Raising worker pay to a living wage is the right thing to do for two reasons. The first is just about fairness. A person that works a full time job should be paid enough to live on. A person doesn't have a right to a lavish lifestyle, but he or she should be able to afford food and shelter.
It's also a matter of fairness to the general public. Right now a lot of low wage workers, some at Walmart, have to use Food Stamps and public housing to get by. That means that every taxpayer subsidizes Walmart associates. I don't know about you, but I think that Walmart can afford to pay its associates a living wage better than you or I can. Do you think the Food Stamp program should be cut? Well, if Walmart pays its associates better, maybe we can.
It's also the right thing to do because it is good for business. You don't have to take my word for it, take Henry Ford's. In 1914 he doubled his workers' pay. As a result absenteeism and employee turnover dropped to almost zero. He also started selling a lot more cars. Look for Walmart's sales to start going up. Those associates will be spending some of those extra dollars in the stores. At a time when online shopping is growing, anything that increases in-store sales is a good thing for Walmart.
Unfortunately, Wall Street doesn't see it that way. As a result of Walmart's announcement of a wage hike, the price of its stock fell, but that wasn't very unexpected. Wall Street is controlled by the captains of industry and business. Their twin obsessions are increasing profits and cutting costs. They see payroll as a cost.
Regardless of Wall Street, look for other companies to follow Walmart's lead. They don't really have a choice, but that's OK. As I have written repeatedly lately, the best way to build and maintain a strong economy is to build a strong middle class. They do most of the buying and selling. The Walmart wage hike might just be the first step in doing that.
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