Wal*mart needs to pay fair wages

When Walmart moved into a small town near us with one of their Super Centers, they wiped out about 75% of all of the local businesses. There isn't a competing grocery store within 15 miles.
From Forbes

To Wal-Mart: Enough! No More Taxpayer Subsidized Profits For You

For years, Wal-Mart and other large retail operators-have been piling up huge profits by controlling their labor costs through paying employees sub-poverty level wages. As a result, it has long been left to the taxpayer to provide healthcare and other subsidized benefits to the many Wal-Mart employees who are dependent on Medicaid, food stamp programs and subsidized housing in order to keep their families from going under.

With Medicaid eligibility about to be expanded in some 30 states, as a result of the Affordable Care Act, Wal-Mart has responded by cutting employee hours-and thereby wages-even further in order to push more of their workers into state Medicaid programs and increase Wal-Mart profits. Good news for Wal-Mart shareholders and senior management earning the big bucks-not so good for the taxpayers who will now be expected to contribute even larger amounts of money to subsidize Wal-Mart's burgeoning profits.

But, at long last and in a move gaining popularity around the nation, the State of California is attempting to say 'enough' to Wal-Mart and the other large retailers who are looking to the taxpayers to take on the responsibility for the company's employees-a responsibility Wal-Mart has long refused to accept.
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It's about time.

Legislation is now making its way through the California legislature-with the support of consumer groups, unions and, interestingly, physicians-that would levy a fine of up to $6,000 on employers like Wal-Mart for every full-time employee that ends up on the state's Medi-Cal program-the California incarnation of Medicaid.

The amount of the fine is no coincidence.

A report released last week by the Democratic staff of the U.S. House Committee on Education and the Workforce, estimates that the cost of Wal-Mart's failure to adequately pay its employees could total about $5,815 per employee each and every year of employment.