Why is Wal-Mart Whining?

America’s workers need a raise, and across the United States, they have been taking this fight into their own hands. Why? Because the federal government isn’t going to give working families a raise anytime soon.

Just last week, Congress failed to produce decent legislation on the minimum wage, offering pennies to working people in the United States through a minimum wage increase that was couched in a “grab bag” bill that would have passed on billions to America’s wealthiest families through an estate tax cut.

Indeed, the living wage movement is being waged by people like you and me, acting in coalition with other community-based actors such as local clergy, workers, affordable housing organizations, women’s rights groups, and union locals.

Increasingly, businesses, both small and large, are emerging as a vital new ally in these coalitions. Consider this:

• Allied businesses were a key member of the Santa Fe Living Wage Network, which achieved a victory resulting in the United States' highest local living wage ever. The story of the Santa Fe living wage coalition is told in La Marcha: Working for Economic Justice, available through the UUSC website.

• UUSC’s partner, Let Justice Roll is taking a lead on lifting up the growing chorus of corporate voices that are sounding out as allies for the right to a living wage. "Business Support for a Just Minimum Wage" is one component of LJR’s strategy to demonstrate that there is a widening base of public support for a raise for working families -- and this includes endorsement from businesses and corporations throughout the United States.

• Just last week, more than 30 CEOs, agency presidents, and business owners signed a statement, which was prompted by local members of three national business organizations, including Responsible Wealth of Boston, Social Venture Network of San Francisco, and the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies of San Francisco.

This reflects a shift in understanding by business leaders, from seeing workers as just another cost of doing business -- like rent, electricity, or raw materials – to seeing workers as human beings with inherent dignity and a human right to a living wage that can provide food, shelter, and health care.

In light of all of this, perhaps Wal-Mart should stop whining.

Just last week, a Chicago coalition helped provide support for a city-wide living wage ordinance that would require employees of big box retailers to pay a living wage. Wal-Mart demonstrated its displeasure at the passing of Chicago’s new living wage ordinance, saying, "This vote sends a message that Chicago is closed for business, closed for development, and closed for job creation."

The fact is, big box retailers like Wal-Mart routinely receive billions of public tax dollars in the form of “development subsidies” -- cash grants, tax breaks, cheap loans, and in-kind benefits -- as incentives to set up shop in local communities and run the mom-and-pop shops out of town. Clearly, public officials in cities and towns like Chicago are starting to wake up to the reality.

Then consider that recent economic analysis shows that better compensation for workers won't hurt Wal-Mart’s competitive edge .

Yet the number of workers whose lives would be improved would be immense: Wal-Mart is the largest employer in the world that is not a government -- and employs more workers than the U.S. military has soldiers.

Business allies for a living wage are growing.

It’s time for Wal-Mart to quit whining, and start living up to the statement of Chairman Lee Scott, whose recent letter to shareholders, associates, and customers claimed "We at Wal-Mart are optimistic -- or smiling, if you will -- about our ability to continue to grow and touch the lives of millions more working families around the world."