Lee Scott Defiant On Higher Wages For Wal-Mart Employees
For Immediate Release
Tuesday, October 25, 2005
Washington, D.C., October 25, 2005 – In a speech yesterday to Wal-Mart employees, CEO Lee Scott acknowledged that the company can afford to pay higher wages but defiantly argues that “even slight overall adjustments to wages eliminate our thin profit margin.”
In response, Wal-Mart Watch Communications Director Tracy Sefl issues the following statement:
By digging in their heels and refusing to raise wages, Wal-Mart stands at a crossroads of making their proudest moment their greatest failure. Without paying their workers more, which they can well afford to, Wal-Mart is blocking new avenues of economic mobility for Americans. And that should be the truest marker of a company dedicated to doing greater good for this country.
Any support for a minimum wage increase would contradict recent statements and actions by Wal-Mart and its lobbyists:
• Wal-Mart Opposed Minimum Wage Increase As Recently as October 2004. Wal-Mart's PAC has ballooned since 2000, when the company spent $ 667,805, with the majority going to Republican candidates… Wal-Mart is… opposing a federal minimum-wage increase. [Women’s Wear Daily, 10/28/04]
• Lee Culpepper, Now Wal-Mart’s Head Lobbyist, Lead the Fight Against Minimum Wage Increases; Promised to Be “Vigilant” in Opposition. In June 2006, Wal-Mart hired Lee Culpepper to be its head lobbyist. Culpepper much of his prior career lobbying against minimum wage increases. According to Roll Call, “Lee Culpepper, of the National Restaurant Association, cites his group's leadership of coalitions designed to fight minimum-wage increases and push for changes to overtime regulations.” In October 2005, Culpepper said, “We're going to be vigilant in opposition to any wage hike.” [Roll Call, 6/6/05, 1/18/05; Fortune, 10/15/01]
• Wal-Mart Sales Clerk Pay Cannot Support a Family of Three. According to the Century Foundation’s Simon Head, at the end of 2004, “the average pay of a sales clerk at Wal-Mart was $8.50 per hour or about $14,000 per year – $1,000 below the government’s definition of the poverty level for a family of three.” [New York Review of Books, Head, “Inside the Leviathan,” 12/16/04]
