Posted on 07/10/2013 9:12:11 AM PDT by servo1969
C. is really a tale of two cities in one. There are the touristy/wealthy neighborhoods and then there are, for want of a better term, slums.
Wal-Mart has proposed to build three stores, one in the city's 5th Ward and two in the 7th Ward. These are two of the poorest areas in the city (pdf).
The highest poverty rates in DC are found in an area largely made up of Wards 7 and 8. Nearly one in three residents in this area living below poverty in 2010, an increase of one-sixth since 2007.
...
The largest jumps in poverty rates were found largely in Wards 4, 5 and 6.
So naturally D.C. is welcoming this type of corporate commitment to lousy areas desperately in need of jobs, right? Er, no.
The D.C. Council bill would require retailers with corporate sales of $1 billion or more and operating in spaces 75,000 square feet or larger to pay their employees no less than $12.50 an hour. The city’s minimum wage is $8.25.
While the bill would apply to some other retailers — such as Home Depot, Costco and Macy’s — a grandfather period and an exception for those with unionized workforces made it clear that the bill targets Wal-Mart, which has said it would open six stores, employing up to 1,800 people.
...
But [Ken Jacobs, chairman of the University of California at Berkeley’s Center for Labor Research and Education] said that has long been Wal-Mart’s way in taking on these types of proposals: “There’s good reason to believe they could actually compete quite well under these rules, but it is not a proposition they have wanted to test.”
I love that last quote. I mean I'm shocked that one of the most successful companies in the world isn't interested in the economic theories of some left wing professor at Cal Berkeley.
At some point you'd think liberals would learn a basic fact: wages are a reflection of how much an employer has to pay to get workers of a certain level of quality. Wages are not charity handed out to enable workers to live at a certain level. You want to make more money? Great, make yourself more valuable to an employer. But that's too hard for too many hardcore Democratic voters so they want the state to impose an acceptable wage level on employers unrelated to their actual worth.
Wal-Mart has said f the bill passes they will reconsider building the stores (hint: reconsider means "will not").
It's absolutely outrageous that a government would single out a company for punishment simply to make some sort of political point. That they would do so to a company willing to bring investment, jobs and services to areas most other people are unwilling to touch is beyond stupid.
These idiot liberals would really rather just make a point (what it is I haven't a clue) than to see "their people" have a chance to get ahead a bit.
Remind me again why people think Democrats care about the poor.
It's disgusting.
My goodness, can you imagine how awful it would be to work in a DC Walmart and deal with the local clientele?
Liberal elites don’t shop at Walmart anyhow - so they won’t care. And the little people? Liberal elites don’t care about them either...
Cost of living in D.C. is so high I doubt you could hire someone with functioning brain cells for much less than $12.50 an hour anyway.
Be that as it may, this move by the City Council is outrageous.
Be that as it may, this move by the City Council is outrageous.
The District of Columbia used to be the nation's capital. It's degenerated into the capital of the looter class.
I went to a Walmart in Detroit the lasr time I was forced to go there, and the atmosphere was terrifying. There were armed guards all over the place and walking the parking lot. It was horrendous.
When I had to be in DC, I did everything in my power to stay off public transportation. You could cut the tension with a knife. Literally.
-——Liberal elites don’t shop at Walmart -——
conservative elites don’t either. they fear being seen there
So.....John Roberts was blackmailed with NSA surveillance photos of him shopping at Walmart?
All you have to know is, this is the city that re elected Marion Barry ... how many times?
just say no to graft
I personally would love to see Wal-mart tell the DC leaders to go to hell. Are we going to have a local or for that matter Federal regime tell a business what to pay employees? Go to a Wal-Mart in the Fracking states and they might have to pay 12.00 per hour to get employees. But jobs are a market driven scale and wal-mart will pay based on what they need to in any given market.
I am a shareholder of Wal-mart stock and don’t think this will have any major impact on it.
You are absolutely right.
This isn’t just your typical Democrat city. This is Marion Barry’s city. The home of shadow Congressperson and militant racist Eleonor Holmes Norton. The city that gets a large percentage of it’s revenue from the Federal Government and still has high taxes.
I was recently in a Walmart on the Florida Gulf Coast. It was like night and day compared to some of the Walmarts in the DC area.
When I had to be in DC, I did everything in my power to stay off public transportation.
It's always a good idea to avoid any public transportation, parks, schools, libraries, etc. You can be assured of encountering only the "finest" elements of society.
Go to a Wal-Mart in the Fracking states and they might have to pay 12.00 per hour to get employees....
Last I saw, Walmart was hiring at $17.50 an hour in Williston ND. No Experience Required... More if you were willing to work nights... They were short over 100 employees at the time... One of the TOP VOLUME Walmarts in the United States... Town of 15,000 people...
Wages should be market driven.
This applies most anywhere; ask the locals. Some parts safe, while others are simply bad. Doesn't matter if it's San Diego or Detroit. I've been in Philadelphia, some nice areas where you go a few blocks and it becomes a ghetto. Same for D.C. About 20 years ago in San Francisco, local government put out maps for tourists showing directions to attractions at the beach. A straight path put tourists thru a ghetto where punks would throw rocks at cars, worse things happened to walkers. (The ghetto is since gone and things got better.) D.C. is scary, the last time I was there I learned the hard way not to stay at a cheap hotel (couldn't go out at night).
Yep. And they aren’t even paying them to stock the shelves or rotate stock. They just drop a pallet of whatever in an aisle and by the next shift it is usually gone.
The disease that infects DC has spread beyond the DC Beltway. It has gone past once quiet areas like Waldorf and Bowie and even has gone as far south as La Plata MD.
LIBs are today’s termites. They manage to spread without you ever noticing until the damage is done.
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