'I’m writing to you because it hurts to see the pain in my younger brothers’ eyes when we can’t afford food to fill their stomachs. Sure, they see that I’m working hard, taking the bus an hour each way to get to work at Walmart. Even though they know that things are tight right now, that our mom is often too sick to work, they just can’t understand why last year on Thanksgiving they didn’t get turkey and gravy like other kids their age...'
That letter came from LaRanda Jackson, a 20-year-old Wal-Mart worker from Cincinnati, Ohio. Her story is a sad reality for many Wal-Mart workers in this country. About 800,000 of Wal-Mart’s 1.4 million workers earn below $25,000 annually. For the last two years Wal-Mart workers at some stores organized food drives to help their fellow associates who couldn’t afford to buy food for the holidays. In New York City a giant food bin was seen chained outside Alice Walton’s home, a $25 million Park Avenue penthouse.
The 800,000 Wal-Mart workers can have a better life if the Waltons choose to share their wealth. OURWalmart, a nonprofit organization that “works to ensure that every associate … is respected at Wal-Mart” launched a video narrated by Robert Reich explaining how can the Waltons, the richest family in America, can lift their workers out of poverty.
The Wal-Mart heirs are worth fover 150 BILLION and counting. It would mean nothing for them to pay $15 and hour to their employees. The truth is it's the US tax payer who is underwriting the slave-wages Wal-Mart pays their employees. It's the US taxpayer who pays for the medicare, food stamps, and other goverment programs used by Wal-Mart employees to survive.
So, yet again the already over burdened American tax payer is the one left holding the bag as the Super-Mega-Uber Rich get richer while American workers starve and go without.
Do, the 3 Wal-Mart family members who are worth 150 BILLION combined and earn 8.3 million a day individually really need more money? They have more money then they can spend in 10 life times. This is money that they earn by paying slave wages and by putting the American tax payer on the hook for their shady businesses practices.
If the Wal-Mart employees stood up, unionized and went on strike the Wal-Mart family would have to listen.
