Subject: Re: Letter
From: Cheryl Mills <[email-masked]>
To: Huma Abedin <[email-masked]>
Cc: "[email-masked]" <[email-masked]>, "[email-masked]" <[email-masked]>, leslie dach <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 1 May 2014 14:37:24 -0400

Huma

Adding Leslie to whom I just spoke who is happy to be helpful both in
content and strategy.

He noted that Walmart is not opposed to the minimum wage law - which we can
discuss when we are all on a call after reviewing the draft response.

best.

cdm

On Thu, May 1, 2014 at 2:32 PM, Huma Abedin <[email-masked]> wrote:

> Here is actual letter we are responding to:
> 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 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 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
>
> Deborah Burger
>
> President
>
> National Nurses United
>
> Ken Fones-Wolf
>
> Professor of History
>
> West Virginia University
>
> Elizabeth Fones-Wolf
>
> Professor of History
>
> West Virginia University
>
> Stephanie Davis
>
> Executive Director
>
> Georgia Women for Change, Inc.
>
> Eliza Townsend
>
> 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