Senator Bernie Sanders has proposed a new bill, called the “Stop Walmart Act,” that would force WalMart and other large employers like them to pay a minimum wage of $15 an hour to their employees if they wish to buy back their company’s stock. They would also have to provide seven days of paid sick leave and limit CEO compensation to 150 times their median employee pay.
This new act, on the heels of the Senator’s pressure campaign to force Amazon to raise their minimum wage, doesn’t take into account varying cost-of-living averages or the complexities of running a large, multi-national corporation. Many employees at Amazon are now receiving a lower overall compensation now that Amazon has raised their minimum wage to $15 an hour, cutting bonus structures to do so.
It’s also worth noting that Sen. Sanders has not called for unions to follow these higher pay minimums. “Working America,” for instance, an arm of the AFL-CIO, recently paid $12.25 an hour for job advocating a national $15/hr. minimum wage.
Read more about the bill here.
