By
Robert Reich
I spent several days in New
York with students from around the country who were preparing to head into the
heartland to help organize Walmart workers for better jobs and wages. (Full
familial disclosure: My son Adam is one of the leaders.)
Almost exactly fifty years ago
a similar group headed to Mississippi to register African-Americans to vote, in
what came to be known as Freedom Summer.
Call this Freedom Summer II.
Call this Freedom Summer II.
The current struggle of
low-wage workers across America echoes the civil rights struggle of the 1960s.
Today, just as then, powerful forces are threatening and intimidating
vulnerable people for exercising their legal rights. Today, just like fifty
years ago, people who have been treated as voiceless and disposable are
standing up and demanding change.
Although Walmart is no Bull
Connor, it’s the poster child for keeping low-wage workers down.
America’s
largest employer, with 1.4 million workers, refuses to provide most of them
with an income they can live on. The vast majority earns under $25,000 a
year, with an average hourly wage of about $8.80.
You and I and other taxpayers
shell out for these workers’ Medicaid and food stamps because they and their
families can’t stay afloat on what Walmart pays. (I’ve often thought Walmart
and other big employers should have to pay a tax equal to the public assistance
their workers receive because the companies don’t pay them enough to stay out
of poverty.)
Walmart won’t even allow
workers to organize for better jobs and wages. In January, the National Labor
Relations Board issued a complaint accusing
it of unlawfully threatening or retaliating against workers who have taken part
in strikes and protests.
The firm says it can’t afford
to give its workers a raise or better hours and working conditions. Baloney.
Walmart is America’s biggest retailer. Its policies are pulling every other
major retailer into the same race to the bottom. If Walmart halted the race,
the race would stop.
Don’t worry about its
investors. Its largest is the Walton family, whose combined wealth is greater
than the combined wealth of the bottom 42 percent of
the entire American population.
This week, Walmart employees
will go on strike in dozens of cities. A group of “Walmart Moms” is also
marching for better hours and better treatment of pregnant women employees. Andan
employee group has sent a letter and
voting guide to shareholders asking that they vote against Rob Walton’s
re-election as chair.
Walmart isn’t the only
place where low-wage workers are on the move. Two weeks ago, 2,000 protesters
gathered at McDonald’s corporate headquarters in suburban Chicago to demand a
hike in the minimum wage and the right to form a union without retaliation. More
than 100 were arrested.
Giant fast-food companies have the largest gap between the
pay of CEOs and workers of any industry, with a CEO-to-worker compensation
ratio of more than 1,000-to-one.
Meanwhile, across America, low-wage workers are demanding – and in
many cases getting –
increases in the minimum wage. Despite Washington’s gridlock, seven states have
raised their own minimums so far this year. A number of cities have also voted
in minimum-wage increases.
On Monday, Seattle’s city council approved a minimum wage hike to
$15 an hour, the highest in the nation, to take effect over the next few years.
The movement of low-wage workers for decent pay and working
conditions is partly a reflection of America’s emerging low-wage economy. While
low-wage industries such as retail and restaurant accounted for 22 percent of
the jobs lost in the Great Recession, they’ve generated 44 percent of the jobs
added since then, according to a recent report from the National Employment Law
Project.
But the movement is
also a moral struggle for decency and respect, and full participation in our
economy and society. In these ways, it’s the civil rights struggle of our time.
It took guts to take on the power structure of Mississippi a
half-century ago. It takes guts to take on the power structure of giant
companies like Walmart and McDonalds now.
But confronting such powerful
bastions is a vital step toward fundamental social change. Freedom Summer II is
just the start.
ROBERT B. REICH, Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy at
the University of California at Berkeley and Senior Fellow at the Blum Center
for Developing Economies, was Secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration.
Time Magazine named him one of the ten most effective cabinet secretaries of
the twentieth century. He has written thirteen books, including the best
sellers “Aftershock" and “The Work of Nations." His latest,
"Beyond Outrage," is now out in paperback. He is also a founding
editor of the American Prospect magazine and chairman of Common Cause. His new
film, "Inequality for All," is now available on Netflix, iTunes, DVD,
and On Demand.