Good wages is good 21st century business

Remember how Henry Ford doubled his workers' wages and was villified as a traitor to his (the business) class?  Jim Sinegal could be that 21st century man.

While WalMart and Target are griping about paying their workers $10 an hour (see my August 11 post), Costco pays its employees 60% more than Walmart and still makes a profit.  The average non-management employee at Costco, including part-timers, make $17 an hour plus benefits including health care. 

Robyn Blumner (photo) a St. Petersburg Times columnist, writes a great column about it. She says Jim Sinegal, Costco's chief executive, founded this huge company yet makes only $450,000 a year. He's rich, of course, but not obscenely rich, and  still only owns less than 1% of the company, almost unheard of for a founder. Blumner writes: "As he has explained it, part of his philosophy is to maintain a reasonable relationship between his compensation and that of average workers."

Restoring some balance in the pay equity between managers and workers has to happen (NineShift predicts it will happen) to regaining a middle class and prosperous society for the 21st century.