While Walmart “associates” are so poorly compensated that in many states they are the largest number of Medicaid and food stamp recipients (i.e., taxpayer-subsidized low wages), the compensation of the company’s CEO, Michael Duke, rose by 41 percent from around $20 million in 2011 to just under $28.5 million in 2012.
And lest I be accused of bashing the free enterprise system (which of course hardly operates in the case of Walmart), let me also point out that another “big box” retail chain, Costco, manages to pay their employees decent wages while making a profit.
Update: Daily Kos Labor reports:
Hundreds of Chicago fast food and retail workers walked out for a one-day strike Wednesday, following similar one-day strikes among New York City fast food workers earlier in April and in November. As in New York, the Chicago workers are calling for a wage of $15 an hour rather than the near-minimum wages most of them make, and the right to join together in unions.
Further update: Republicans sometimes tweet the darnedest things.
Steve Kush, the chairman of Bernalillo County Republican Party in New Mexico, called a 19-year-old Working America volunteer a “radical bitch” on Twitter Tuesday night after she testified before the county commission in favor of raising the minimum wage.
“Nice hat Working America chick but damn you are a radical bitch,” Kush tweeted.