Wal-Mart, Make Dr. King’s Dream a Reality
Our Weekly - January 11 2007
By Rev. Eric P. Lee

As we stand on the eve of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday, his legacy of fighting for civil rights, social justice and equality still stands as a beacon of hope for the downtrodden. However, nearly four decades after Dr. King’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech, tens of millions of Americans still cannot lay claim to that dream.

The middle class is shrinking rapidly, while high-quality jobs that many Americans once depended on to take care of their families are being shipped overseas. Companies are replacing full-time positions with part-time employment, leaving far too many workers without benefits and forcing them to piece together a living through multiple jobs.

Declining pay and benefits translate into less hope. In the drive for higher profits, much of corporate America has abdicated its responsibility to uphold one of our society’s fundamental values—the dignity of work.

This disheartening trend is exemplified by Wal-Mart, the world’s largest retailer. Wal-Mart employees are paid 20 percent less than the average retail worker, leaving them $10,000 short of what the average two-person family needs to meet its basic needs. The retailer’s expensive health plan covers less than half of its employees, compared with 67 percent for the average large company (200 or more employees), leaving taxpayers to pick up tens of millions in medical costs.

Even after enduring a barrage of criticism, Wal-Mart is now pushing to slash the number of full-time jobs, impose wage caps on hourly jobs and apply scheduling rules that push out older employees.

If Wal-Mart has played a big part in perpetuating working poverty and keeping Dr. King’s dream out of reach for many Americans, it must have a central role in alleviating this crisis. This is particularly true in urban communities, where Wal-Mart is aggressively seeking to expand.

That’s why urban leaders across the country have joined together to call on Wal-Mart to change its business practices. We know that there is no distinction between racial and economic justice, that poverty-wage jobs are an affront to everything Dr. King stood for.

People of color have always had to deal with unequal treatment in the workplace, struggling mightily to get on the same social and financial footing as their white peers. During the era of the civil rights movement, blacks and other people of color marched, held sit-ins and sometimes risked their lives to denounce this unfairness.

Although people of color today do not confront nearly the same kind of overt racism, they now must contend with a more subtle form of discrimination. Large corporations like Wal-Mart throw money at hand-picked charities in communities of color, then expect these communities to accept with gratitude the poverty-wage jobs they generate.

By any measure of Dr. King’s dream, that’s not good enough. If Dr. King were alive today, he would demand accountability from corporations like Wal-Mart.

Dr. King knew that any job is not a good job. And today we are sending the same message: our communities want quality jobs. We want corporations like Wal-Mart to make a commitment to providing good jobs that promote the health of our families and our neighborhoods.

Fancy advertisement and media campaigns won’t convince urban communities to embrace Wal-Mart. If Wal-Mart wants to win our respect, it must pay wages that enable its workers to escape poverty and move into the middle class. It must allow its workers a chance to have access to affordable healthcare, as opposed to exposing them to skyrocketing medical premiums they cannot afford to pay. It must stop downsizing full-time jobs and squeezing out older employees.

Dr. King would demand better for our communities. In his eyes, there were no second-class citizens. His vision for a better America was one of inclusion, fairness, equality and justice for all.

It’s time for Wal-Mart to help realize the dream.