CLEVELAND, Ohio — The storage containers are attractively displayed at the Walmart on Atlantic Boulevard in Canton. The bins are lined up in alternating colors of purple and orange. Some sit on tables covered with golden yellow tablecloths. Others peer out from under the tables.
This isn’t a merchandise display. It’s a food drive – not for the community, but for needy workers.
“Please Donate Food Items Here, so Associates in Need Can Enjoy Thanksgiving Dinner,” read signs affixed to the tablecloths.
The food drive tables are tucked away in an employees-only area. They are another element in the backdrop of the public debate about salaries for cashiers, stock clerks and other low-wage positions at Walmart, as workers in Cincinnati and Dayton are scheduled to go on strike Monday.
So this is a de facto admission by Walmart that they don’t pay their employees a living wage. They are asking other low paid workers to help those who are even lower paid.
Is the food drive proof the retailer pays so little that many employees can’t afford Thanksgiving dinner?
Norma Mills of Canton, who lives near the store, saw the photo circulating showing the food drive bins, and felt both “outrage” and “anger.”
“Then I went through the emotion of compassion for the employees, working for the largest food chain in America, making low wages, and who can’t afford to provide their families with a good Thanksgiving holiday,” said Mills, an organizer with Stand Up for Ohio, which is active in foreclosure issues in Canton. “That Walmart would have the audacity to ask low-wage workers to donate food to other low-wage workers — to me, it is a moral outrage.”
Moral outrage works for me. On top of this the taxpayers are subsidizing Walmart in the form of food stamps, medicaid and in some cases housing support for the underpaid employees. I have never been in a Walmart but I do go to COSTCO which pays their employees a living wage with benefits. If this is not an argument for a massive increase in the minimum wage I don’t know what is.
