Progressive Breakfast: Walmart Worker Victory Shows What We Can Win If We Keep Fighting

MORNING MESSAGE

There are more innings to play and more runs that must be scored, but it’s worth cheering the advance made by Walmart workers this week when it announced that it would give its workers an increase in its base wage to $9 an hour starting in April and $10 an hour starting next February. That will mean raises for about 500,000 full- and part-time workers, according to the company. Credit goes to the campaigns launched by a number of grassroots organizations that for years have shone a light on the anti-worker policies that are endemic in big-box retailing but where Walmart, the largest bricks-and-mortar chain, was a pacesetter.

Walmart Goes To $10 An Hour

Walmart raising its wages. NYT: “…all of its United States workers would earn at least $9 an hour by April and at least $10 by next February. Some labor advocates, however, who are demanding $15 an hour for service workers, called the plan inadequate.”
The Atlantic’s Joe Pinsker explains why Walmart budged: “First, the company is giving in to mounting criticisms about its pay practices. ‘Walmart’s move shows the success of continued pressure by wage campaign groups that have been pressuring the company for many years,’ says Nicholas Bloom, a professor of economics at Stanford University … The second reason [is the] recovery in the past few years [means] companies will have to start paying their employees more in order to get them to stick around. From this perspective, Walmart’s decision is a selfish one…”
Unions flexing more muscle. Bloomberg: “Oil workers have walked off the job … Dock workers have snarled West Coast ports. Personnel staffing oil terminals at the Port of Long Beach, California, are threatening to strike. In Detroit, union leaders … will push for the first raise veteran autoworkers have received in a decade. Union leaders are taking advantage of a tightening labor market and favorable political environment.”

Youth Need Student Debt Forgiveness

“Wage Gains Reach Millennials” finds Bloomberg: “The share of 25 to 34 year-olds employed or looking for work was 81.4 percent last month, up from a 32-year low of 80.5 percent in October 2013 … the four-quarter moving average of median weekly earnings for 16 to 24-year-olds was 4.8 percent higher in the final three months of 2014 than a year earlier, the strongest advance of any age group.”
But millennials still need student debt forgiveness, argues Bloomberg’s Noah Smith: “…to smooth the transition from youth to middle age, young people need to borrow … [But if] the labor market tanks, and interest rates or inflation soars, people who borrowed a lot of money could be stuck with an unbearable debt burden … The government now can borrow at very low interest rates … So the government could write down some of the millennials’ debt [and] replace those obligations with its own, cheaper debt.”

Breakfast Sides

Sen. Rand Paul may complicate upcoming debt limit increase. The Hill: “[He] is mulling attaching his Audit the Fed legislation to a vote to raise the debt ceiling … The move is a clear signal of how serious Paul is about getting a vote on the legislation that has garnered political blowback from top Fed officials … Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) … have come out against the bill.”

Progressive Breakfast is a daily morning email highlighting news stories of interest to activists. Progressive Breakfast is a project of the Campaign for America's Future. more »