Subject: Re: Letter
From: Cheryl Mills <[email-masked]>
To: Huma Abedin <[email-masked]>
Cc: "[email-masked]" <[email-masked]>, "[email-masked]" <[email-masked]>, "[email-masked]" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 1 May 2014 17:26:50 -0400

we should also figure out if answer is a letter or if there is a different
strategy so we don't get copy cat issue people posting letters and then
saying they sent a letter to her with their issue as a test of her
commitment to it

On Thu, May 1, 2014 at 3:18 PM, Huma Abedin <[email-masked]> wrote:

>  Thanks Cheryl.
> Hi leslie, we will circulate letter as soon as we have something and
> appreciate all comments/feedback.
> Best,
> Huma
>
>  *From*: Cheryl Mills [mailto:[email-masked]]
> *Sent*: Thursday, May 01, 2014 02:37 PM Eastern Standard Time
> *To*: Huma Abedin
> *Cc*: [email-masked] <[email-masked]>;
> [email-masked] <[email-masked]>; leslie dach <
> [email-masked]>
> *Subject*: Re: Letter
>
>  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
>
>
>