Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) blasted Walmart on Sunday after the company announced its plan to begin raising wages for workers, calling the wage hike “not enough” and claiming it should be paying “a living wage.”
Sanders told MSNBC’s Ali Velshi that Walmart raised wages out of “their own self interest” because of worker shortages.
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The retail company announced in a memo Tuesday to employees that it is increasing minimum wages for store workers from $14 to $19 an hour, up from $12 to $18 an hour. The move would help about 340,000 of the company’s 1.3 million hourly workers, taking effect in March.
Walmart has plans to shorten pharmacy hours by closing two hours earlier in March due to staffing shortages and consumer demand.
The Vermont senator took aim at the Walton family for not paying their workers enough.
“Walmart is owned by the Walton family, the wealthiest family in America. You’ve got a lot of their workers, who are earning wages so low they have to go on food stamps, and they have to go on Medicaid. So in other words, you have the taxpayers of this country subsidizing the wealthiest family in America, instead of a living wage,” he said on MSNBC.
In 2019, the former presidential candidate crashed an annual shareholder meeting for Walmart and pushed the company to raise their minimum wage to $15 an hour, calling their worker pay “starvation wages.”
“A couple years ago, we fought to raise the minimum wage to $15, as a result of inflation. That should be at least $17 right now,” Sanders said Sunday.
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The new increase would provide an average wage of roughly $17.50 an hour from about $17 in Walmart stores.
Sanders has a forthcoming book called It’s OK to Be Angry About Capitalism coming out in February.
