Options – EFC 3

Union Contracts

Companies and unions must negotiate in good faith to create a fair contract when a union is formed. The current starting pay is $5 less than what a “living wage” is in Baltimore County. Honestly, publicly traded companies have somewhat of a legal obligation to not voluntarily increase wages. This is because their duty is to maximize profits so they can then give that money to the shareholders. In their eyes, employees are seen as an expense. When Kohl’s gives us a 50¢ pay raise, they say it is to pay us the “market rate” and to be “competitive”.

We can either just accept that we are making less than what a “living wage” is in Baltimore County, and be okay with it because we’re being paid the market rate. Or we can form a union and allow them to look over the Kohl’s financial documents for us, so they can help us to create a work contract with Kohl’s that would increase our pay and other benefits.

"Labor markets are not perfectly competitive, meaning that workers don't always get paid what is equal to what they contribute to their workplace. That means that unions can help serve as a balance of power to employer power by giving workers a better ability to bargain for higher wages and other outcomes"

Joelle Gamble

Chief Economist at U.S Department of Labor

The Math

Kohl's has six EFCs that handle the online orders.
There are about 500 material handlers that work at EFC 3.
A $5 wage increase would give us an additional income of $10,000/year based on a 40 hour week.
That would cost Kohl's $5 million a year to increase the wages at EFC 3.
This would be $30 million a year to increase wages by $5/hr for all six EFCs.

Kohl's paid $60 million in compensation to the former CEO Michelle Gass from 2017-2021.
This is $12 million a year, which is 300x the amount someone making $20/hour would earn.
Michelle Gass was ranked 71st on a list of the Top 100 Most Overpaid CEOs in 2020.
Kohl's spends an average of $521 million a year on stock buybacks (over the past 5 years)

We are so used to getting pay raises of 20¢ or 50¢ that getting a pay increase of $5 sounds almost unrealistic. But the truth is that we have just been being underpaid and overworked for so long that we have just accepted it the way that it is. But it doesn’t need to be that way. Giving a $5 pay raise to all six EFCs would only cost $30 million/year. This is only 5% of the amount that Kohl’s wastes/spends on CEO compensation and stock buybacks. Kohls.com is much more profitable than $30 million/year. According to a 2022 report on the SEC, 30% of Kohl’s sales are ecommerce.