The Associated Press reported this week that Wal-Mart has taken yet another step to ensure that its employees avoid entering the middle-class. The world’s largest retailer announced that it will cap workers wages at certain levels, meaning that employees who have reached the highest level will never again get a raise no matter how much longer they work for the company. The article notes that under the caps, a father of two who works as an assistant produce manager at a Tulsa, Oklahoma supercenter cannot earn more than $15.54 per hour. In many case the caps are less than workers currently earn. Wages for non-managers are so abysmal that an employee who has worked for ten years in the meat department at a Missouri Wal-Mart earns only $8.60 an hour—or less than is required under San Francisco’s minimum wage law. This is Wal-Mart’s idea of “making work pay” in America. In other Wal-Mart news, former civil rights leader and UN Ambassador Andrew Young resigned from his public relations stint on behalf of Wal-mart after publicly attacking corner groceries owned by Jews, Asians, and Muslims. In the late 1990’s, Young was paid by Nike to defend its use of sweatshop labor—a stint that also ended badly for both Young and his corporate ally.
