Dozens of labor scholars, women’s groups, and Walmart activists issued a letter today asking Hillary Clinton to use her deep Walmart ties to urge the mega-retailer to raise wages for their predominantly-female workforce. The Walmart Corporation is the largest employer in the United States, employing about one in every hundred Americans. Walmart pays hundreds of thousands of their workers less per hour, adjusted for inflation, than minimum wage workers made 46 years ago. Seventy percent of the positions subject to Walmart’s hourly poverty wage regime are held by women. Walmart could empower hundreds of thousands of female workers by paying all of their workers at least $10.92, which is the inflation-adjusted wage that the lowest paid Walmart workers -- under the leadership of their founder, Sam Walton -- earned in the late 1960’s. In 1986, Hillary Clinton became Walmart’s first female director. During her six years as a Walmart board member from 1986-1992, she pushed for women’s empowerment in management, but did not publicly champion the wage plight of Walmart’s predominantly-female hourly workers.

1. Hillary Clinton
15 Old House Lane,
Chappaqua, NY 10514
April 22, 2014
Dear Hillary Clinton,
As First Lady, Senator, Secretary of State, and in your recent work with the Clinton Global Initiative,
you have advocated for the cause of women’s empowerment around the world. Today we write to ask
you to also join us in an important women’s empowerment initiative here at home. It involves an area to
which you have a special connection and thus presents you, specifically, with an important responsibility
to make a direct difference in the lives of hundreds of thousands of American women and an indirect
difference in millions more.
The Walmart Corporation is the largest employer in the United States, employing about one in every
hundred Americans. Unfortunately, America’s largest employer sets a horrible example with its miserly
wage policy. Walmart pays hundreds of thousands of their workers less per hour, adjusted for
inflation, than minimum wage workers made 46 years ago. With rising housing, health and
transportation costs, Walmart workers cannot make ends meet on less than $10, $9 or even, for some,
$8 an hour. The cashiers and hourly sales associates at the White Plains Walmart close to your house,
for example, live in a city with a living wage of -­-­ as estimated by the MIT Living Wage Calculator -­-­
$13.05, but most hourly Walmart workers are paid thousands of dollars per year below that standard.
It’s no surprise that one Walmart manager even admitted this disconnect between Walmart pay and fair
pay by placing a bin out last holiday season to solicit donations from customers for his own needy
workers.
Seventy percent of the positions subject to Walmart’s hourly poverty wage regime are held by
women. Most of these women are managed by men, who -­-­ despite making up a minority of the
company’s employees -­-­ make up a majority of Walmart’s managers and officials. Irregular schedules
and a miserly sick day policy make Walmart a difficult place for mothers to work. Take as an example
one 33-­year-­old mother of two featured on ABC News a few years ago: she had to leave her daughter
at home with a 103-­degree fever because she was worried about her three sick day “demerits” issued
by her Walmart manager. Worse over, Walmart’s poverty wage regime drives down the wages and
benefits of neighboring stores, again disproportionately hurting women, who make up the majority of the
low-­wage workforce in America.
Walmart could end this assault on their female “associates” by paying all their workers at
least $10.92, which is the inflation-­adjusted wage that the lowest paid Walmart workers -­-­ under their

2. founder, Sam Walton -­-­ earned in the late 1960’s. Before Walton’s billionaire heirs cry ‘Impossible!’,
remember: (1) Walmart pays all their workers in Ontario, Canada and Santa Fe, New Mexico over
$10 an hour and still remains quite profitable;; (2) Walmart had enough funds to issue $51 billion in stock
buybacks over the past five years, which could have given every American Walmart worker a $3.50
per hour raise over the past five years;; and (3) a 2011 U.C. Berkeley economic study showed that even
if Walmart raised its starting wage to $12 and passed all the costs onto customers, it would only cost
Walmart shoppers 46 cents more per shopping trip.
In 1986, when Bill Clinton was governor of Arkansas, you reflected a single case of women’s
empowerment at Walmart by becoming Walmart’s first female director. During your six years as a
Walmart board member, you honorably pushed for women’s empowerment. Twenty eight years later,
we are asking you to make far broader history again for women at Walmart by publicly
pressuring your former board to end its poverty wage regime and restore the wages of
hundreds of thousands of its female associates.
Here are four ways you can immediately activate your deep Walmart ties to help this important feminist
cause:
1. Publicly encourage former Walmart CEO H. Lee Scott, who had dinner at your home in
2006, to build on his minimum wage raise support from nine years ago by urging his successor
C. Douglas McMillon to follow in his footsteps by endorsing a minimum wage raise this year.
2. Publicly encourage Alice Walton, the Walmart heiress who donated $25,000 to Ready for
Hillary last year, to use her power as a major shareholder to force a raise in the wages of the
hundreds of thousands of Walmart associates who make less in a year of work than Walton
does in 10 minutes from interest on her inheritance.
3. Publicly encourage Clinton administration advisor Leslie Dach, who you have worked
with on labor issues recently, to leverage his role as a former Walmart executive vice president
to pressure his successors to end Walmart’s poverty wage regime.
4. Publicly encourage Walmart director Aida Alvarez, who campaigned for you and was
your husband’s final Small Business Administration leader, to coordinate with other social
justice-­minded Walmart directors -­-­ such as former Detroit mayor Dennis Archer and civil
rights activist Vilma Martinez -­-­ to end Walmart’s poverty wage regime.
Campaign funders like Alice Walton might be ‘Ready for Hillary’ to run for President in 2016, but
Walmart’s women have been ‘Ready for Hillary’ to stand up for the wages they deserve this year. It
would be a shame to have your trailblazing legacy of Walmart women empowerment rolled back. We

3. hope you can keep it alive by pressuring your former Walmart colleagues to raise the wages of its
predominantly-­female hourly workforce to $11, their inflation-­adjusted 1968 level. This is no big deal:
the workers have more than earned an $11 per hour wage, had it taken from them by inflation year after
year, and will continue to until they can catch up with 1968, inflation adjusted.
Sincerely,
Ralph Nader
Consumer and Labor Advocate
Washington, DC
Pete Davis
Time for a Raise Campaign
Washington, DC
The Southern Labor Studies Association
Williamsburg, VA
Al Norman
Director, Sprawl-­Busters
Georgia Women for a Change
Atlanta, GA
Maine Women’s Lobby
Augusta, ME
Adolph Reed
Professor of Political Science
University of Pennsylvania
Bethany Moreton
Author of To Serve God and Wal-­Mart
University of Georgia
Eileen Boris
Chair, Department of Feminist Studies
University of California, Santa Barbara
Michael Pierce
Professor of History
University of Arkansas
C. Robert McDevitt
President
UNITE HERE Local 54, Atlantic City
Jana Lipman
Associate Professor of History
Tulane University
Ken Fones-­Wolf
Professor of History
West Virginia University
Elizabeth Fones-­Wolf
Professor of History
West Virginia University
Stephanie Davis Eliza Townsend

4. Executive Director
Georgia Women for Change, Inc.
Executive Director
Maine Women’s Lobby
Scott Nelson
Professor of History
President, Southern Labor Studies Association
William and Mary
Nancy MacLean
President, The Center for the Study of Class,
Labor, and Social Sustainability
Duke University
Nelson Lichtenstein
Director, Center for the Study of Work, Labor and
Democracy
University of California, Santa Barbara
Jacob Remes
Lecturer on History
Harvard University
Leisa Meyer
Chair, Department of History
William and Mary
Anthony DeStefanis
Assistant Professor of History
Otterbein University
Rosalyn Baxandall
City University of New York
Labor School
Margaret Nelson
Professor of Sociology
Middlebury College
Andrew Zimmerman
Professor of History and International Affairs
George Washington University
Alan Derickson,
Professor of Labor Studies and History
Penn State
Joseph Zanoni
University of Illinois at Chicago
Karen Senaga
Mississippi State
Jamie McCallum
Professor of Sociology
Middlebury College
Alan Draper
Professor of Government
St. Lawrence University
Chang Kwan Lee Bill Roy

5. Professor of Sociology
UCLA
Professor of Sociology
UCLA
Cindy Hahamovitch
Professor of History
William and Mary
David Zonderman
Professor of History
NC State University
Judith Wittner
Professor of Sociology
Loyola University, Chicago
Tom Juravich
Professor of Labor Studies and Sociology
University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Joey Fink
Professor of History
University of North Carolina
Lou Martin
Professor of History
Chatham University
Paula Peinovich
National Labor College
Benjamin Kreider
DC Jobs with Justice Exec. Committee
Washington, D.C.
Naomi Williams
University of Wisconsin-­Madison
Gillet Rosenblith
University of Virginia
Mark Fowler
Professor of Philosophy
William and Mary
Thea Michailides
Director of Strategic Research
International Union of Painters and Allied
Trades
Walakewon Blegay
Labor Attorney
Ellen Dannin
Penn State Law
National Writers Union
Liz Kofman
UCLA
Marsha Love
Oak Park, IL

6. John McKiernan-­Gonzalez
Assistant Professor History
Texas State University
Steve Striffler
Professor of Anthropology
University of New Orleans
Jay Driskell
Assistant Professor of History
Hood College
Nikol Alexander-­Floyd
Associate Professor of Women and Gender
Studies
Rutgers University