This past Sunday, June 1, my parish (Our Lady Queen of Peace in Arlington) hosted a presentation on pay and working conditions at Wal-Mart by a 14-year veteran associate at Wal-Mart and a founder of “Our Walmart” along with a union supporter. Cindy told her personal story, including years of being disrespected despite having an impeccable work record. She described how family leave policies passed by Congress (the Family Medical Leave Act, or FMLA) are routinely ignored; how new associates are not given a Policy Handbook, so they are unaware of the thinking behind certain policies as well as not understanding their employee rights; and most disconcertingly, how only part-time associates are hired today with no benefits. Cindy reported that fear is endemic among the 1.4 million U.S. workers at Wal-Mart. She described how “Our Walmart,” was launched after more than a decade of attempts to unionize in the face of intimidation by Wal-Mart officials.

“Our Walmart,” which stands for Organization United for Respect at Wal-Mart, is composed of hourly associates who work from within to try to bring about change. “Our Walmart” maintains their independence by clearly stating that their organization is not affiliated with Wal-Mart. They have had some recent nationwide successes: after a campaign they led for pregnant women’s rights, Wal-Mart changed its policies to allow pregnant women to be given less physically-demanding duties.

Besides cultivating awareness of the issues facing Wal-Mart employees, one of the key purposes of the presentation on June 1 was to encourage our parishioners to join the march from Union Station in D.C. to the rally being held at the Wal-Mart on H Street, NE on June 6. Rallies like this are being held in more than 20 U.S. cities across the country starting on May 29 and culminating on June 6, the day of the Wal-Mart annual shareholders’ meeting. Hundreds of “Wal-Mart Moms” (a large group of Wal-Mart associates) and others will converge on the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville where the shareholders’ meeting will be held to provide a visual presence to shareholders. The rallies are demanding wages of at least $25,000 per year, more full-time openings and an end to retaliation against workers who speak out against their conditions.

As a matter of fact, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) filed a complaint against Wal-Mart earlier this year, according to The Guardian, for illegally retaliating against 60 workers who had engaged in legally-protected strikes and protests.

Let’s look at some of the conditions within Wal-Mart. The Teamsters’ Union points out that Wal-Mart wages and benefits are so low that it forces workers to go on Medicaid and receive housing assistance, child care subsidies, food stamps and more — to the tune of $6,000 per employee. In other words, like other companies that pay minimum wage or slightly more per hour, taxpayers are subsidizing the managers and shareholders of these companies!

The Guardian reports that Wal-Mart made a $16 billion profit in 2013 and the Walton family, which owns more than half of Wal-Mart stock, is worth $145 billion. Yet, the company pays 825,000 associates, around 2/3 of its workforce, less than $25,000 per year.

In a Reuter’s “Breakingviews” video in late May, the editor Rob Cox says, “Wal-Mart has been vilified for its low wages. This (referring to his suggestion that Wal-Mart throw its weight behind raising the minimum wage) could be Wal-Mart’s Henry Ford moment.” (Henry Ford revolutionized industries world-wide when he doubled his employee’s wages to $5 a day in 1914. The pay increase allowed his employees to purchase the cars they assembled each day and in the process helped give rise to the American middle-class and also doubled Ford’s profits).

Because so many of Wal-Mart’s customers work in minimum wage jobs, Wal-Mart’s support in raising the minimum wage would mean, according to “Breakingviews,” that the company would net an additional $13 billion, far more than it would cost.

“Wal-Mart Moms” are especially upset over the failure of the company to provide fixed schedules. Wal-Mart (and many retail employers) use “just-in time” software to set employees’ schedules, which give workers fewer work hours and less notice. Unpredictable work schedules make it nearly impossible for women to make time for other important responsibilities, such as getting the education and training they need to help them get a better job, attending a meeting at school, arranging for child care and taking care of their families. It’s one thing to demand “just-in-time” delivery from suppliers, which has been used in the best-managed companies since the 1980s, and quite another to schedule employees’ work in the same way. At least in the first instance, the company’s employees expected to make suppliers’ deliveries are already at work.

Sarah Jaffe summarizes the evolution of female workers at Wal-Mart in a May 29th article for In These Times. In the early days of the company, she says, many women worked part-time at Wal-Mart to supplement the income of their husbands, many of whom also worked at Wal-Mart. Now, however, the company is the largest employer of women who largely depend on these low-wage jobs to support their families. Many of these women are single moms or have husbands or partners who also earn low wages. Many of them work part-time through no fault of their own. They have requested full-time work but have been spurned by the company.

Retail is one of the top industries employing women and one projected to add substantial numbers of jobs over the coming decades. The choice that major retailers make regarding wages will play a crucial role in determining not only the welfare of its workers, but also the nation’s economic future.

A June 2 study, released by the research organization Demos, found that if the nation’s largest retailers (including Wal-Mart) raised wages to the equivalent of $25,000 a year for full-time workers, it would cost consumers only about $17.73 annually. The author of the study, Amy Traub, cites numerous convincing studies to show that companies could easily afford to pay workers more because such an action would a) improve employee productivity, and b) give workers more money to spend in those very stores. This improvement alone would advantageously impact nearly 6 million employees and their families and be a source of greater stability to families and to the national economy.

Traub warns that if present trends continue, by 2022 more than 100,000 additional women will be added to the ranks of the working poor or near-poor, meaning that the 2.5 million family members they help to support will be living in or near poverty in 2022. And if present trends continue, public costs for safety-net programs will continue to grow.

Wal-Mart’s actions reflect a loss of purpose of business, which is not at all the maximization of short-term profit or shareholder value. While including profit and shareholder value, its purpose also includes two other significant stakeholders – employees and customers. The delivery of goods and services to customers is largely accomplished through employees who interact with them, thereby assuring a mutually beneficial transaction. This transaction will never be beneficial if employees are browbeat and disgruntled.

Are there any actual models out there that retailers could follow? Bloomberg Businessweek points out that the retail giant Costco has never had significant labor troubles and has witnessed its stock price doubling since 2009. Costco pays its hourly workers an average of $20.89 an hour, not including overtime, and 88% of its employees have company-sponsored health insurance. Only about 4% of its workers are part-time and employed by contractors, including those who give away samples and sell mobile phones. Maybe part of the answer lies in the fact that in 2012, Costco’s CEO made $650,000, plus a $200,000 bonus and stock options worth about $4 million, compared to Wal-Mart’s CEO, who had a base salary that year of $1.3 million, plus a $4.4 million bonus and $13.6 million in stock options.

Over the last few years, Nordstrom, the Container Store, Sephora, REI and Whole Foods, all of which are known for treating employees well, have outpaced rivals. “This is the lesson Costco teaches,” says Doug Stephens, author of The Retail Revival. “You don’t have to be Nordstrom selling $1200 suits in order to pay people a living wage. That is what Wal-Mart has lost sight of. A lot of people working at Wal-Mart go home and live below the poverty line. You expect that person to come in and develop a rapport with customers who may be spending more than that person is making in a week? You expect them to be civil and happy about that?”

Ellen Bravo, executive director of “Family Values @ Work” has accused Wal-Mart of creating a crisis for many families in America because of its pay practices and policies regarding family leave, among others.

We, at NETWORK agree, but would add that Wal-Mart’s pay and policies regarding employees are not at all in sync with Catholic Social Teaching. If we look only at Pope Francis’ Evangelii Gaudium, we see that the joy of the gospel is for all people: no one can be excluded (and that includes all minimum-wage workers living below the poverty line). Wal-Mart would do well to heed the admonitions in chapters three and four. In the latter, Pope Francis proclaims that “solidarity” presumes a new mindset which thinks in terms of community and the priority of all over the appropriation of goods by a few. He goes on to say that above all everyone must have access to employment, “for it is through free, creative, participatory and mutually supportive labor that human beings express and enhance the dignity of their lives. A just wage enables them to have adequate access to all other goods which are destined for our common use.”(Italics added).    

“As long as the problems of the poor are not radically resolved by rejecting the absolute autonomy of markets and financial speculation and by attacking the structural causes of inequality, no solution will be found for the world’s problems or, for that matter, to any problems. Inequality is the root of social ills.” Evangelii Gaudium, chapter four.

If you are not already familiar with the CDF’s nationwide campaign, launched back in 2007, we urge you to check out the its website for national and state-level information — as well as CDF President Marian Wright Edelman’s weekly Child Watch column in the Huffington Post. Not only do I support this ongoing campaign for social justice, but I notice how it dovetails with so many of NETWORK’s own initiatives, primarily our efforts to reduce inequality in this country.

The statistics presented at the CDF website are devastating. CDF says that “[n]ationally, 1 in 3 Black and 1 in 6 Latino boys born in 2001 are at risk of imprisonment during their lifetime.” This horrifying trajectory is endangering children at younger and younger ages, which not only leads to marginalized lives but also premature deaths. One of the many reasons for this outcome is that states spend three times as much money per prisoner as per public school student. What does that say about our country’s priorities?

CDF says that its vision is to “reduce detention and incarceration by increasing preventive supports and services children need, such as access to quality early childhood development and education services and accessible, comprehensive health and mental health coverage.” If the universal preschool proposal, one of the president’s key initiatives in his 2015 Budget is passed (not likely, say most), that should serve as a major response to CDF’s vision.

Of course, access to comprehensive healthcare is extended through the Affordable Care Act, which NETWORK strongly supported and continues to work on, especially in the 24 states that have not chosen to extend Medicaid to all its citizens. In this context, it is important to remember that access to coverage does not guarantee enrollment in coverage. Lack of effective healthcare jeopardizes both children’s education and their future.

Campaign summits have been held in numerous states since 2007 during which participants formulate action plans that focus on issues that are contributing to the crisis in their respective states. For example, several states, including Massachusetts, have addressed the problem of zero tolerance and other school discipline policies that tend to funnel children into the states’ criminal justice system. Recently (2013-14) schools have been watching new school discipline policies in Buffalo, NY and Denver, CO as “best practices.” The summits help the states to share promising approaches from other areas of the country.

CDF reminds us of the cruel facts of child poverty, a leading contributor to pervasive inequality.

• More than 16 million children were poor in 2012 — more than 1 in 5 — and the youngest (under age 6) were the poorest. Yet these are the same years that child psychologists and pediatricians tell us are the years of the most rapid cognitive development.
• Children of color are disproportionately poor and half the states had Black child poverty rates of 40% or more.
• Child poverty leads to unacceptable child homelessness and hunger. More than 1.1 million public school students were homeless in the 2011-12 school year (the latest for which data is available), a 73% increase since before the recession. (Excuse the personal note at this juncture, but I have been involved in tutoring homeless children and have found in my personal experience that many homeless students are not only embarrassed by their circumstances and therefore have low self-esteem, but also typically fall behind in their studies often due more to moving around than to a lack of native intelligence).
• More than 1 in 5 children lived in households that lacked access to adequate food in 2012 and 1 in 4 relied on food stamps (SNAP) to meet the nutritional needs on an average month. This amount of homelessness and hunger is partially explained by the fact that in 2014, it took about 3 full-time minimum-wage jobs on average to afford a fair-market rent for a two bedroom apartment and still have some funds left for food, utilities and other necessities.
• Government safety net programs — the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), the Child Tax Credit and SNAP — lifted 9 million children from poverty in 2012.
• Child poverty would have been 57% higher in 2012 without these programs and extreme child poverty would have been 240% higher.

Another major problem that CDF describes is rampant substance abuse. As we can see from the preceding facts as well as those listed below, we are dealing with disconnected youth who often lack a decent education or high school degree, lack job skills and have no social support systems or mentors. These are the youth who often resort to self-destructive acts, abusing drugs, tobacco and alcohol. Even when they seek help it is often not forthcoming because treatment is in short supply. Only about 10% of youth who seek help for a disorder receive treatment.

Lack of investments deprives children of critical support during their formative years. We already noted the disparity between funds spent on prisoners vs. children in schools. CDF provides us with additional significant facts:

• Early Head Start funding served only 4% of the 2.9 million eligible poor infants and toddlers in 2012 and regular Head Start funding served only 41% of the eligible poor 3-4 year-olds.
• In 2011, the average annual cost of center-based child care for a 4-year-old was $7,705, the same as the cost of in-state college tuition.
• The nation’s schools fail to educate all children, closing off a crucial pathway out of poverty. In 2013 66% of fourth graders in public schools were unable to read at grade level and that figure masked the fact that 81% of Latinos and 83% of Blacks also read below grade level. Also, 59% of these students were unable to compute at grade level and that percent includes 74% of Latinos and 82% of Blacks who were unable to compute at grade level.
• In 2013 only 68% of Blacks graduated from high school in four years compared to 74% of Latinos and 85% of Whites.
• Students who are suspended or expelled from school are more likely to drop out of school completely, thus helping to form that pipeline to prison, especially if they have encountered the criminal justice system during that process. Unfortunately, more than 17% of Blacks were suspended in the 2010-11 school year and more recent school publications indicate that the problem of suspensions has been exacerbated, not resolved in most jurisdictions.

Many vulnerable children face special risks. Among those risks are the following:

• Almost 342,000 children were either abused or neglected in 2012, while almost 400,000 were in foster care.
• Over 4,000 children are arrested each day and almost 2,000 are serving sentences in adult prisons.
• Almost 2,700 children and teens were killed by guns in 2010 — a rate of 3.2 out of 100,000 children and teens.
• U.S. children and teens are 17 times more likely to die from gun violence than their peers in 25 high-income countries. Since 1963, three times as many children and teens have died from guns on American soil than U.S. soldiers killed in action in the Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq wars. Every year American companies manufacture enough bullets to fire 31 rounds into every American citizen.
• Gun violence disproportionately affects children of color. Black children and teens were nearly 5 times (and Latino 3 times) more likely to be killed by guns than their White peers.

We can readily see how the few facts listed above (there are many more on the CDF website as well as photos, multimedia presentations and personal stories) impinge on so many areas where we at NETWORK are working in earnest:

• increasing the minimum wage
• reducing gun violence
• saving safety-net programs
• improving school nutrition
• increasing employment opportunities and extending long-term UI
• reducing inequality in all its dimensions.

And many more! The foregoing information from CDF should give everyone some new data to help in the ongoing effort to influence legislation and should also provide you with some new social justice friends in CDF’s nationwide network.

Perhaps the ultimate killer fact (on a global level) was produced by the charitable NGO, Oxfam, a few weeks ago (and quoted by the IMF), whereby the organization estimates that the 85 richest people in the world own as much wealth as the bottom half (3.5 billion people) of the global population. What an unsettling contrast! How can such a heavily skewed distribution of wealth be morally justified? And based on its own calculations, the magazine Forbes concluded that only 67 billionaires owned as much as the world’s poorest half. As it happens, neither Oxfam nor CDF nor NETWORK call for a global equalization of wealth – Oxfam may be more concerned about plutocracy than CDF, but since the Supreme Court’s 2010 decision in Citizen’s United v. FEC, NETWORK is also concerned about this issue. But for CDF and NETWORK, a strengthening of social protection through an improved safety-net; an acknowledgement of and an end to racism; and critical investments, supports and services needed for the most vulnerable populations are the sine qua non of access to equal opportunity.

As CDF says in one of its policy priorities, “too many children live in poverty and suffer from preventable illnesses, neglect, abuse inadequate education and violence.” I agree with CDF and one of the famous lines of Mahatma Gandhi: “Poverty is the worst form of violence.”