On July 26, Chicago passed a living wage law that would force large “big-box” retail stores like Wal-Mart and Target to pay workers $9.25 per hour and $1.50 per hour in additional benefits by July 2007. Under the law, wages at these mega-stores would rise to $10 per hour by 2010.
Unions and community groups canvassed neighborhoods and staged multiple demonstrations to back the much-needed raise in wages. They staged an all-night vigil on the steps of city hall the day before the city council vote.
Wal-Mart and the Illinois Retail Merchants Association bitterly oppose the legislation. Mayor Richard Daley also
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Wal-Mart is the world’s largest retail corporation with over 6,000 stores in the United States, Canada, Mexico, South America, Asia and Europe. In 2005, Wal-Mart made $11.5 billion in profit in the United States alone. Its owners, the Walton family, are among the richest people in the world.
Wal-Mart is also the largest private employer in the country. More than 1.8 million workers are employed at Wal-Mart in the United States. Instead of paying workers what they deserve, the transnational corporation pays workers poverty wages. Starting pay at Wal-Mart is a meager $7.25 per hour. This is only 75 cents above the Illinois state minimum wage.
Wal-Mart is a notorious abuser of workers and viscously opposed to a unionized workforce. In 2003, 31 lawsuits in 30 states were filed against Wal-Mart, claiming tens of millions in back pay for hundreds of thousands of workers forced to work “off the clock” or denied breaks. In some cases, managers locked the doors and would not let employees go home at the end of their shifts.
Wal-Mart also discriminates against women. Over 800,000 women work at Wal-Mart. Current and former women employees recently sued the corporate giant for discriminating against them in promotions, job assignments, training and pay.
In June 2004, a federal court in San Francisco granted class-action status to the lawsuit. Approximately 1.6 million women could be eligible to recover damages for Wal-Mart’s unlawful practices. It is the largest certified class-action lawsuit in U.S. history.
Powerful non-union retail chains like Wal-Mart and Target pose very formidable obstacles in the fight to turn around the current economic decline and crisis in workers’ living conditions. But despite the obstacles, workers all over the country are organizing to stop Wal-Mart from bringing its low wage jobs to their town. In the last couple of years, Wal-Mart superstores have been turned away in Los Angeles, Chicago, New York and elsewhere.
Though the wage increases and other victories against Wal-Mart are important advances, much more is needed to defeat Wal-Mart and assert workers’ rights to the wealth they create. A militant drive to organize Wal-Mart’s 1.8 million workers would be a good first step to revive the class struggle against increasingly brazen and emboldened U.S. corporations.
