Its success stems from its focus on its customers -- and workers

By Will Ashworth
Investor Place, October 11, 2012

Discount retailer Costco announced its fiscal fourth-quarter earnings Oct. 10, the third quarterly report since the retirement of long-time CEO and co-founder Jim Sinegal. As is most often the case, Costco’s results were better than expected.
…

However, when we do go, we always notice (my wife has 20 years retail experience) how genuinely happy the employees are to be working there. Costco’s starting wage for those working on the floor is $11 per hour...

By Peter S. Green
Bloomberg BusinessWeek, September 13, 2012

In election years, Democrats and Republicans talk about small businesses as the epitome of America’s can-do spirit and the foundation of the nation’s economy. President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney have seen no reason to deviate from the script. But while they profess to have entrepreneurs’ best interests at heart, flattery is no sure route to winning their votes. One reason is that small business owners are not a monolithic interest group. …

Many policies, including those covering taxes, banking, health care, trade, and the environment, favor...

By Tom Watson
Forbes, September 3, 2012

On Labor Day 1978, I started my first minimum wage job, making $2.65 an hour at the local supermarket stocking shelves and bagging groceries, and driving a battered Buick Skylark to work after school that fall with Darkness on the Edge of Town in permanent residence on the 8-track. That $2.65 is worth roughly $9.31 today, if calculated against inflation – or more than two dollars above the Federally-mandated $7.25 minimum wage. ...

The last time the Federal minimum wage rose was in 2009, in the teeth of...

By Colin Gordon and Donald Cohen
Huffington Post, Sep 3, 2012

Excerpt: As organizations such as the Chamber and National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) have become more partisan and strident in their attack on labor standards, new organizations -- including the Main Street Alliance, Business for Shared Prosperity and the Small Business Majority -- are speaking out for a renewed social contract that recognizes the importance of wages to purchasing power.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/colin-gordon/living-wage_b_1846706.html 

By Karen E. Klein
Bloomberg BusinessWeek, August 17, 2012

Excerpt:

... Historically, efforts to raise minimum wages have drawn staunch opposition from small business advocacy groups. But as U.S. income inequality has widened and economic studies have challenged the long-held notion that minimum wage increases suppress employment, small business owners and lobbyists are turning up on both sides of the debate. ...

In contrast to her counterparts at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which has staunchly opposed minimum wage increases, Margot Dorfman, chief executive of the U.S. Women’s Chamber of Commerce, supports an increase. “Raising...

By Ragan Robinson
Gaston Gazette (NC), August 4, 2012 

... Reporter inboxes filled with releases from Business for a Fair Minimum Wage last week, applauding new federal legislation to raise the minimum wage to $9.80 in three years.

Minimum wage workers have less buying power than they had 50 years ago, the group said. ...

The think tanks can argue this one, but any way you slice it, the Americans who earn the least would see more income from an increase in the minimum wage.

“I know the last time we had an increase in minimum...

By Chelyen Davis
Free Lance Star (VA), Aug 4, 2012

When Sen. Jim Webb entered the Senate in 2007, one of the first bills he backed raised the federal minimum wage. ...

This week he signed on to co-sponsor another bill to raise the federal minimum wage, this time to $9.80 an hour over two years.

The minimum wage is currently $7.25 an hour, where it’s been since 2009. That rate was set in the 2007 bill, which at the time was the first increase in the federal minimum wage in a decade. ...

This...

By Carolyn M. Brown
Black Enterprise, August 1, 2012

It’s been three years now since there was a national minimum wage increase. The current federal minimum wage was raised from $6.55 to $7.25 per hour as of July 24, 2009. At $7.25 an hour, that comes to just $15,080 a year for full-time work—a figure still below the official poverty line. Small business owners, congressional leaders, and advocates across the country are calling for renewed focus on sub-poverty earnings that millions of Americans are expected to get by on. ...

Holy Sklar, director of the...

By Tim Gallen
Phoenix Business Journal, July 28, 2012 

As Washington begins to debate new legislation that would bump the federal minimum wage to $9.80 an hour within the next few years, business leaders in Arizona are weighing in on the potential benefits and negatives such an increase would have on businesses and the economy. ...

Even though an increase in the federal minimum wage would not directly affect his organization, Apollo Group’s founder and Executive Chairman John Sperling likens an increased minimum wage to the old adage that “a rising tide raises all boats.”...

By Larry Hicks
York Dispatch (PA), July 25, 2012 

Excerpt: "The Business for Shared Prosperity ... believes it's time to increase the federal minimum wage again. ...

Anyway, I'm reading this email, and I'm thinking how unusual and surprising it is for business owners to be promoting an increase in the minimum wage. Their reason? Well, they're saying they think an increase 'would be good for business and the economy.'"

Read more:

http://www.yorkdispatch.com/food/ci_21154196/hicks-businesses-push-minimum-wage-hike

Op-Ed By Margot Dorfman, CEO, U.S. Women's Chamber of Commerce
The Hill, July 24, 2012
Distributed nationally by American Forum 

The U.S. Women’s Chamber of Commerce supported the last increase in the federal minimum wage on July 24, 2009 and we believe another raise is overdue. The business owners I talk with every day say that, far from hurting their businesses, raising the minimum wage in fact helps small businesses and the broader economy.

Read more:

http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/economy-a-budget/239705-raising-minimum-wage-is-good-for-main-street-

Op-Ed By Holly Sklar
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune News Service, July 20, 2012

Time flies when you're moving backward. With the federal minimum wage stuck at $7.25 an hour since July 24, 2009, workers now have less buying power than they did in 1997 at the start of the longest period in history without a raise.

It took 10 years, from 1997 until 2007, to raise the minimum wage above $5.15. A worker would need $7.36 today to match the buying power of the $5.15 minimum wage in 1997.

If you picture raising minimum wage as...

By Ellen Freilich
Reuters, July 24, 2012

Bucking the usual tune of private sector lobbyists, a group called Business for a Fair Minimum Wage is calling for a hike in the minimum wage, saying it would boost business and the economy.

Read more:

http://blogs.reuters.com/macroscope/2012/07/24/three-years-after-last-increase-business-group-calls-for-u-s-minimum-wage-hike/

By Craig Smith
Pittsburgh Tribune Review, July 24, 2012

Excerpt: Tuesday marks the anniversary of the last federal minimum wage hike in 2009. ...

Some small business owners believe the raise is overdue.Today's minimum-wage workers have far less buying power than their counterparts in 1968 when the minimum wage was at its highest value of $10.55 adjusted for inflation, according to Business for a Fair Minimum Wage, a national network of business owners and executives. 

http://triblive.com/home/2257027-74/wage-minimum-workers-policy-increase-bill-business-institute-jobs-pittsburgh 

Alaska Business Monthly, July 2012

http://www.akbizmag.com/Alaska-Business-Monthly/July-2012/Sm-Biz-Owners-Say-Raise-Minimum-Wage-As-July-24-Marks-Anniversary-of-Last-Increase/