Who else besides Wal-Mart needs to wake up...

Yes, I know, Wal-Mart is supposed to be this big huge evil thing that anyone who is liberal is against. I read the title linked Toledo Blade article about the Wake Up Wal-Mart campaign coming into Toledo. Yet I wondered...who else needs to wake up?

"There is a growing disparity and something fundamentally wrong when a company that employs a majority of Americans says that its workers should not enjoy a healthy standard of living," said Mr. Kofinis, a former campaign adviser to Gen. Wesley Clark during the 2004 presidential campaign.

Meijer's starting wage is $6.00 an hour, according to this. (Yes, that's less than Wal-Mart and is not a living wage. It can take years to get to the living wage.)

REAP states:

Over the past three decades – 1980 to the present, the wage differential between the mainly non-union retail industry compared to the more unionized grocery store sector has been closing. According to the U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics average hourly earnings in the grocery store sector in 1980 were $1.57 an hour above the rest of the retail highly non-union industry. As the following chart shows the grocery store wage advantage has largely disappeared. (The average wage for retail in 2003 was $10.27, the average wage for a grocery store worker was $10.41.)

It is widely believed that the 2003 UFCW retail strike/lockout in Southern California involving 70,000 Kroger, Albertsons and Safeway workers was the beginning of the decline of decent wages and benefits in the retail grocery store industry and certainly in Southern California . It is also widely believed that UFCW completely failed in its overall bargaining/strike strategy and in the challenge of waging an effective struggle against the employer greed.

For sure, the worker concessions in Southern California amounts to hundreds of millions of dollars. But across the country the substantial erosion of UFCW wages and benefits had been taking place for two decades prior to the Southern California clash. Even in Southern and Northern California the retail chain companies had been for years siphoning hundreds of millions of dollars from the workers' pension fund to pay for health care benefits that clearly was the employer's obligation to pay for. Given such a national erosion of UFCW wages and benefits over such a long period of time, it was not surprising that any strategy could avert what amounted to a mop up operation in Southern California to a successful national employer strategy to bludgeon workers into concessions around the country for some two decades.

In North Carolina, Kroger workers are ready to go on strike.

While Target would like you to believe that Wal-Mart is the "Evil Empire":

For years, Target has cultivated an image of itself as the "anti-Wal-Mart," a retailer that refuses to sacrifice workplace standards in the pursuit of higher sales and stock prices.

But now, after a decade of meteoric growth at both Target Corp. and Wal-Mart Stores Inc., labor groups say the two retailers are no longer very different in the way they treat their workers.

Entry-level hourly workers in Target stores earn roughly the same pay and have more difficulty qualifying for healthcare coverage than their peers at Wal-Mart. Both retailers oppose unions and have taken steps to prevent organizing efforts in stores. And both have outsourced jobs overseas to save costs.

Target pays between $6.25 an hour and $8 an hour for entry-level, hourly positions in its Twin Cities stores, according to a recent survey of local Target workers by the Food and Commercial Workers union. That’s in line with what Wal-Mart pays in that market, though some starting-level Wal-Mart workers can earn $9 to $10 an hour, the union said.

Both companies offer healthcare insurance to employees, but Target’s is considered more restrictive. Two years ago, Target dropped health-care insurance coverage for all part-time workers. By contrast, Wal-Mart makes its medical plan available to all workers, full- and part-time.

Now let's do some simple math. If employee A earns $6.25 at a union store and employee B earns $6.25 at a non-union store, who actually takes home more money?

Employee B...because there is no union initiation fee and no monthly dues.

I realize the logic behind demanding Wal-Mart pay more, it's felt that if they can get them to then when contracts are negiotiated for union workers they can demand a higher wage. It's the same principal behind raising the minimum wage, some union contracts have their hourly rate tied to a certain amount above the minimum wage. Those that don't will still use a minimum wage increase to justify a higher hourly rate. Yet if prices increase to cover the raises which is a real possibility, in the end are you really making more money? What about the workers who will not get these automatic or negotiated raises? They actually will have less spendable cash.

So, while people are shaking their fists at Wal-Mart, Target is hoping you won't notice them the same as the local union grocery stores that pay a lower starting wage than Wal-Mart. While all of them would love to "bring the Giant down", very few stop to consider those who pay a lower starting wage. The grocery store market is a competitive one, just ask any former Farmer Jack employee...