In a Tuesday column originally appearing at RealClearMarkets.com (found in more readable form at Economics21.org), the Manhattan Institute's Diana Furchtgott-Roth tore into the hypocrites at OUR Walmart, the union-backed effort to intimidate the nation's largest retailer into paying all employees at least $15 per hour.
In the process, Furchtgott-Roth noted a particularly important fact which I have yet to see reported elsewhere in the organized labor-sympathetic establishment press about the United Food and Commerical Workers (UFCW), one of the primary backers of today's OUR Walmart Black Friday protests. While UFCW demands $15 per hour for Walmart employees, many of its own members at other grocery chains often earn nowhere near that, and, under current contracts, never will (bolds are mine):
OUR Walmart Is 100% Union, 0% WMT
This Black Friday, the start of the Christmas holiday shopping season, the United Food and Commercial Workers will be leading demonstrations at 1,600 Walmarts all over the country, demanding that Walmart pay an hourly minimum wage of $15.
... the union pretends to represent workers. In reality, Walmart's 1.3 million employees have not elected the union or OUR Walmart to represent them, and in January, the National Labor Relations Board forbade the union from claiming to represent WalMart employees. Most of the workers "on strike" at Walmarts on Friday will be bused in from other locations.
If past form holds, at least some of the "protesters" will be paid for their presence — even Walmart employees who walk off the job, a practice the National Labor Relations Board ruled acceptable a year ago — but at an effective hourly rate of far less than $15 per hour. Additionally, again if form holds, at least some will have little to no idea of what they are protesting.
Continuing (links are in original):
... This time last year, when ... two (new) D.C. stores opened, 23,000 people applied for 800 job openings. Walmart had an acceptance rate of less than 3.5 percent for its new associates, more exclusive that acceptance rates for Princeton (8.5 percent), Yale (6.8 percent), and Harvard (5.9 percent). In Washington this Black Friday protests will not come primarily from the lucky 800 employees who got jobs, but from people who responded to instigations from the AFL-CIO and the UFCW.
Walmart employees are paid about $12 to $13 an hour, or about $27,000 for a full-time position, and have the opportunity of promotion to management positions. Walmart has not opposed President Obama's call for a $10.10 hourly federal minimum wage.
Even though the UFCW is asking Walmart to pay $15 an hour, my examination of UFCW contracts with the Kroger Company show that entry-level workers represented by the UFCW are paid close to the current minimum wage, never reaching $15 an hour. Even senior workers do not earn $15 an hour.
Consider meat or bakery clerks at Kroger's union shop in Dayton, Ohio. They earn a maximum rate of $14.25, even after over half a decade on the job. Those working in the salad bar, drug counter, or floral shop can earn a maximum of $10.95 after gaining years of experience. This amount is 27 percent below the $15.00 an hour "living wage" that the UFCW claims Walmart employees should be paid. UFCW-negotiated hourly rates for cashiers, grocery baggers, or in-store food demonstrators start at $7.70 and are capped at $8.25-45 percent below the $15.00 advocated by the UFCW.
These wages are no secret. Walmart employees who might consider joining the UFCW can browse its helpful easy-to-read handout to its members in West Virginia, Kentucky, and Ohio. Three sample part-time workers, named George, Cindy, and Gregory, will reach top earnings of $11.40 an hour after 8 years on the job, according to the UFCW. The sample full-time worker, named Laney, will reach a peak of $14.51 after 6 years of work.
I have one additional point to make about part-timers. I have been told that the UFCW pulls an initiation fee of $50 out of a part-time worker's first paycheck, and that the worker can get half of it back — but only if they're willing go to some kind of UFCW-presented orientation meeting. Attendance at such a meeting is, I believe, on the employee's own time.
It also wouldn't surprise me if the part-timers' union dues, compared to that of long-term union members earning far more, constitute a higher percentage of their gross pay.
Here is the Associated Press's brief mention of the Walmart protests in a roundup story late this morning:
It seems safe to predict that the protest participation level will involve nowhere near 1,600 stores, and that Ms. Buchanan's take will be far more accurate.
It took mere seconds to find two longer reports, one at NJ.com and another at Vox, which both mentioned the UFCW and failed to note many members' sub-$15 wages at Kroger.
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
