Rendering of the proposed Fort Totten Square Walmart. (Courtesy Walmart.)The second big piece of Walmart-related news to be revealed in the last few days, courtesy of Michael Neibauer: the retailer and the District have come to terms on a citywide community benefits agreement which outlines several conditions regarding Walmart’s six proposed D.C. stores.
According to Neibauer, the agreement falls well short of meeting the lengthy list of demands from a variety of pro-labor and anti-Walmart sources, like a minimum wage for hundreds of workers pegged at a few dollars higher than the city’s minimum wage. (The CBA includes a provision requiring Walmart to pay its workers “competitive market salaries.”) Given that five of the planned Walmarts will be located on private land, there was only so much leverage that Mayor Vince Gray and the District were going to be able to exert on the retailer. (Employment activists had worried last week that this would be the case.) Local contractors should be pleased with the deal, though — according to Neibauer’s sources, the deal will force Walmart to engage “small, local, minority owned contractors” during construction the six stores. The retailer has previously estimated that store construction will involve the creation of approximately 600 jobs.
Among some of the other conditions of the agreement: Walmart will create a “workforce development program” and open hiring centers in Wards 4, 5, 6 and 7; D.C. Walmarts will not sell guns or ammunition; and Walmart will work with Metro on bus routing and install Capital Bikeshare docks “near its stores.”
Five of the six planned Walmarts are expected to open in 2013.
UPDATE: The Post’s Jonathan O’Connell kindly passes along the actual text of the agreement:
