Wal-Mart claims it creates jobs across America, but a new report shows a much different reality.

The giant retailer’s reliance on cheap goods made in China has cost this country nearly 200,000 jobs since 2001, says the report, The Wal-Mart Effect, by the nonprofit Economic Policy Institute (EPI).

The report shows Wal-Mart has played a major role in creating a record trade deficit with China that has eliminated some 1.8 million jobs, mainly in manufacturing.   

Despite giving themselves $31,600 in pay raises over the past 10 years, the U.S. Senate refuses to pass a minimum wage bill free of amendments. Senate Republicans banded together and filibustered the original bill. Now talk of a bill laden with amendments providing billions in tax breaks for business may be enough to get the minimum wage increase through the Senate. The last time a minimum wage bill was granted--$300 billion in tax breaks were also doled out.

What a shame. America's working families deserve better than this.

Tell your Senator to raise the minimum wage without a tax break!

Watch Ted Kennedy go off on the lack of courage of his colleagues to not raise the minimum wage.

Last week, the House passed by 299-128 legislation (H.R.1) to implement many of the
remaining 9/11 Commission recommendations. This vital security measure included a monumental advancement in the long-fought struggle to grant
Transportation Security Officers (TSO) the right to organize.

Since the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) was created in 2001, a
footnote to the Aviation and Transportation Security Act gave the TSA Administrator
the authority to "employ, appoint, discipline, terminate...[and] establish levels of
compensation and other benefits" for TSOs. It effectively blocked the right of
airport screeners to join a union and paved the way for an inequity in pay and
benefits of TSA employees. H.R. 1 repealed this footnote, giving airport screeners
the same basic rights as other TSA employees.

H.R. 1 also included, among other international initiatives:

• Distributing state homeland security funding based on risk;

For 10 years, Republican leaders have blocked a minimum wage increase by tying it to unacceptable anti-worker proposals--everything from doing away with the 40-hour workweek to massive tax cuts for the rich. Now we have a Congress controlled by people we elected to improve life for working families--not just corporate special interests and the wealthy.

The U.S. House of Representatives responded by approving Democratic-written legislation that would gradually raise the federal minimum wage to $7.25 an hour, the first such hike in 10 years.

In one of the Democrats' first victories since taking control of Congress last week, House members voted 315 to 116 to raise the federal wage floor by $2.10 over two years. The bill calls for the current $5.15 minimum wage to move to $5.85 an hour 60 days after President Bush signs it into law, to $6.55 an hour a year later and to $7.25 an hour a year later.

Last week Chicago passed a living wage ordinance that will make Chicago the nation's largest city to mandate wage and benefit standards for retailing giants like Wal-Mart. The ordinance will be phased in, beginning with mandatory pay of $9.25 an hour and $1.50 in benefits on July 1, 2007, and ending July 1, 2010, with $10 an hour and $3 in benefits. After that, the "living wage" would be raised annually to match the rate of inflation.

The average Wal-Mart employee is paid $7.70 an hour and $16,016 a year, while Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott rakes in $16,826 an hour (based on a 40-hour week) and $34.9 million a year  Wal-Mart and Target threatened to not expand or leave Chicago alltogether, but a veto-proof majority of the Chicago aldermen voted with organized labor and worker’s rights groups.

America In Solidarity co-founder Todd Iverson recently addressed the City Club of Tacoma about responsible companies and living wages. Read his speech here...

City Club Speech

November 10, 2005

Living Wages, Responsible Companies and Sustainable Communities

A living wage is more than a minimum wage; it could be defined as the minimum wage one needs to earn to escape poverty. In 2003, 36 million Americans were living below the established poverty line of $18,810 for a family of four. Included in those totals were 18 million children.