Erin’s piece on July 24 pointed out the reasons that many of us want the LRAA to become law: to establish a living wage for a notoriously underpaid retail workers in one of the most expensive cities in the world. She also points to Walmart’s enormous revenue and their previous promises to pay $13 an hour. Perhaps most importantly, she points to the LRAA’s ability to lift DC families out of poverty. The current minimum wage creates a cycle of poverty where even full-time workers struggle to make a living, then transferring the burden of paying for necessities to the taxpayer through welfare and food stamps. In his July 29 response, Steven Restivo, who we’ll mention again is a senior director of communications at Walmart responding to a student op-ed in a college newspaper, says LRAA is bad policy because it doesn’t apply to all residents. Workers at places like Starbucks, McDonalds, Exxon, Giant, Applebee’s, Safeway, Nike, Banana Republic, Five Guys, and the Apple Store, and hundreds more businesses like them aren’t covered by the LRAA. The legislation does not create a level playing field and imposes arbitrary costs on only a handful of businesses in D.C...that’s bad public policy. Restivo is referring in part section of the LRAA that states that "employees are not barred from entering into a written valid collective bargaining agreement waiving provisions of this act if such waiver is set forth in clear and unambiguous terms."
Posted on: Wed, 31 Jul 2013 22:30:58 +0000
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