Living wages

Did you know that you can still pay employees a livable wage and make a decent profit?  Many of us may be familiar with the Costco story, and how they're treating their employees well, and doing very well as a business. WinCoFoods is a discount supermarket in the western United States that is employee owned and generating enough in revenues that many of their workers now have retirement plans with company stock worth over a million dollars.  What a wonderful contrast to Walmart, where instead of sharing the profits with employees, the Walton family, who owns much of Walmart, has wealth equal to the bottom 42 percent of Americans combined.  The Waltons take in $8.6 million a day in dividends, while many of their workers struggle mightily to make ends meet. In fact, it is reported in a Forbes article that  Walmart employees cost the tax payers an estimated $6.2 billion in public assistance.

You can read more about the WinCo Foods company in a Forbes article, Millionaire Grocery Clerks: The amazing WinCo Foods story.

Dignified wages

It is pretty sad when workers at Walmart have to put out boxes to collect food for their fellow employees, while the owners, the Waltons, have a combined wealth equal to that of the bottom 42 percent of American households.  Wow, hard to fathom isn't it?

Seems to me a modern day Christmas Carol could be written with the Ghost of Christmas past/present/future visiting the Walton family. In a Forbes article, Walmart health insurance could leave a really sick worker broke, it is noted how thousands of full-time employees could become broke given one serious illness.

You can read more about this sad situation from Moyers and Company, Tax-Dodging Wal-Mart holds another food drive for its impoverished workers.