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Saturday, November 21, 2020

State Subsidizes Low Pay Corporations

 A new report by the non­par­ti­san Gov­ern­ment Account­abil­i­ty Office (GAO), commissioned by Bernie Sanders, shows that corporations are soaking up profits—while paying workers so little they depend on government assistance to survive.

The report ana­lyzed data from 15 agen­cies admin­is­ter­ing Med­ic­aid and the Sup­ple­men­tal Nutri­tion Assis­tance Pro­gram (SNAP, or food stamps”) across 11 dif­fer­ent states. For all 15 agen­cies, Wal­mart was in the top four employ­ers of Med­ic­aid enrollees and SNAP ben­e­fi­cia­ries, while McDonald’s was in the top five for 13 of the 15 agencies.

Oth­er major retail­ers and fast-food com­pa­nies were found to be among the most com­mon employ­ers of work­ers receiv­ing Med­ic­aid and SNAP, includ­ing Dol­lar Tree, Dol­lar Gen­er­al, Tar­get, Ama­zon, Burg­er King, Wendy’s, Taco Bell, Home Depot, Lowe’s, Wal­greens and CVS. Rideshare ser­vice Uber — which recent­ly spent mil­lions of dol­lars suc­cess­ful­ly defeat­ing a Cal­i­for­nia law that would have made its dri­vers eli­gi­ble for basic work­er pro­tec­tions and ben­e­fits — was also ranked among the top 15 employ­ers of work­ers on pub­lic assistance.

The new GAO report echoes the con­clu­sions of sim­i­lar stud­ies by the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, Berke­ley Labor Cen­ter in 2013 and 2015, which found that U.S. tax­pay­ers are sub­si­diz­ing large cor­po­ra­tions to the tune of $153 bil­lion per year in the form of pub­lic assis­tance pro­grams to sup­port their low-wage employees.

At a time when huge cor­po­ra­tions like Wal­mart and McDonald’s are mak­ing bil­lions in prof­its and giv­ing their CEOs tens of mil­lions of dol­lars a year, they’re rely­ing on cor­po­rate wel­fare from the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment by pay­ing their work­ers star­va­tion wages,” Sanders said of the report. That is moral­ly obscene.” Sanders added,   It is time for the own­ers of Wal­mart, McDonald’s and oth­er large cor­po­ra­tions to get off of wel­fare and pay their work­ers a liv­ing wage.”

The fed­er­al min­i­mum wage has been stuck at $7.25 an hour since 2009. While a major­i­ty of states have raised their respec­tive min­i­mum wages above the fed­er­al floor in the past decade, 21 states have not. Thanks to union-dri­ven cam­paigns like the Fight for $15 and Unit­ed for Respect (for­mer­ly OUR Wal­mart), eight states and mul­ti­ple cities have enact­ed grad­ual increas­es to a $15-per-hour min­i­mum wage in recent years. And on Novem­ber 3, vot­ers in Flori­da over­whelm­ing­ly approved a mea­sure to raise their state’s hourly min­i­mum wage to $15 by 2026.

In Geor­gia — where vot­ers will soon deter­mine the short-term fate of the $15 fed­er­al min­i­mum wage — the offi­cial state min­i­mum wage is a mere $5.15 an hour, with employ­ers only required to pay $7.25 because of the fed­er­al leg­is­la­tion passed over a decade ago. Accord­ing to the new GAO report, over 143,000 work­ing adults in Geor­gia depend on SNAP ben­e­fits and over 208,000 rely on Medicaid. 

The ral­ly­ing cry of fast-food and retail work­ers in recent years has been “$15 and a union.” Because they are orga­nized and can bar­gain with their employ­ers, union work­ers on aver­age earn high­er wages and have greater ben­e­fits than their nonunion counterparts. 

 Food inse­cu­ri­ty has more than dou­bled from 8.5 per­cent of all U.S. house­holds before the pan­dem­ic to 23 per­cent, and at least 8 mil­lion more Amer­i­cans have fall­en into pover­ty since May. More than 12 mil­lion U.S. work­ers and their fam­i­ly mem­bers have lost their employ­er-spon­sored health insur­ance in the midst of the pan­dem­ic.

No one in this coun­try should live in pover­ty. No one should go hun­gry. No one should be unable to get the med­ical care they need,” Sanders said. 

Millions of U.S Workers for Walmart, McDonald’s and Other Corporate Giants Rely on Food Stamps and Medicaid - In These Times

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