After about two years of workers’ protests for safer working conditions and higher wages, including a mass strike on Black Friday that spanned across 1,600 stores in 2014, Wal-Mart has announced a raise to its base wages to employees by 2016. The average full-time wage will rise to $13 an hour, and part-time to at least $10, well above the $7.25 federal minimum wage.
To be able to provide for the essential needs of oneself and one’s family with full-time work is a human right. The varied interests represented by student activist groups on campus should be united on this front and expand efforts toward this end beyond the boundaries of our campus community.
This grassroots success with Wal-Mart is reminiscent of protests at Lenoir Hall, in the late 1960s. Food workers teamed up with the Black Student Movement to strike for higher pay and better treatment. Their efforts eventually succeeded after negotiations with the University and SAGA Food Service.
In the declaration released by the organizing force partly responsible for this most recent pay raise, workers demanded wages and benefits that cover their basic needs without having to rely on government assistance, or a “living wage.” While the lower end of hourly wages at $10 is short of Chapel Hill’s living wage of $12.53 per hour, a base pay raise for half a million workers is a significant positive step forward for Wal-Mart and a victory for protesters.
We should support Wal-Mart workers, fast food workers and others who continue struggling to live on pay that falls short of living wages.
