Now Bernie Sanders wants Amazon to pay up.
By Abha Bhattarai, Business Reporter
August 23 at 11:23 PM
Excerpt:
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) will soon introduce legislation that would require large employers like Amazon, Walmart and McDonalds to fully cover the cost of food stamps, public housing, Medicaid and other federal assistance received by their employees. The goal, he says, is to force corporations to pay a living wage and curb roughly $150 billion in taxpayer dollars that currently go to funding federal assistance programs for low-wage workers each year.
The bill, which Sanders plans to introduce in the Senate on Sept. 5, would impose a 100 percent tax on government benefits received by workers at companies with 500 or more employees. For example, if an Amazon employee receives $300 in food stamps, Amazon would be taxed $300.
At a time of massive wealth and income inequality, the gap between the very rich and everyone else continues to grow wider," Sanders said.
Sanders' bill would be an extension of a petition he started on Tuesday calling on the worlds richest man, Amazon founder Jeffrey P. Bezos, to pay workers a living wage and to improve working conditions at Amazon warehouses. As of Thursday morning, it had 105,000 signatures.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2018/08/24/thousands-amazon-workers-receive-food-stamps-now-bernie-sanders-wants-amazon-pay-up/?