Business giant’s stingy pay and benefits end up costing
all of us

If you think Wal-Mart saves you money, think again. The giant retailer’s business practices, including its notoriously low pay and stingy benefits, are costing you and other American taxpayers millions of dollars every year.

A report released last year by the minority staff of the U.S. House of Representatives’ Education and the Workforce Committee, “Everyday Low Wages: The Hidden Price We All Pay for Wal-Mart,” found that each Wal-Mart store employing 200 people costs taxpayers well over $420,000 annually in public services—staples like food stamps and child healthcare—that Wal-Mart workers have to rely on because their meager pay and health insurance place most of them among the working poor.

“There’s no question that Wal-Mart imposes a huge, often hidden, cost on its workers, our communities and U.S. taxpayers,” said Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.). “And Wal-Mart is in the driver’s seat in the global race to the bottom, suppressing wage levels, workplace protections and labor laws.”

To draw attention to how Wal-Mart hurts communities and to force the retailer to mend its ways—including giving its employees the right to form a union—organized labor is mounting a concerted effort together with elected leaders and community and environmental groups. The effort is being led by several unions, including the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW).

UFCW president Joseph Hansen told the AFT executive council meeting in May that the broad-based Wake-Up Wal-Mart campaign is aimed at drawing the public’s attention to the giant retailer’s harmful business practices. “This is not just a UFCW problem or a labor problem. It’s a problem for [all] workers, and it’s a problem for our society,” Hansen said.

He also noted that Wal-Mart’s relentless efforts to drive down the costs of goods has meant many suppliers have moved their production to China, where child labor laws are not enforced and free trade unions are suppressed.

The retailer’s employee healthcare plan may provide the best example of how its business model costs taxpayers. A study by the AFL-CIO in 2003 pointed out that fewer than half of Wal-Mart’s employees are insured under the company plan. And for good reason. The relatively low participation rates by Wal-Mart employees compared to those of other big companies result from the plan’s restrictions and cost to workers, the study says.

It is not Wal-Mart employees alone, though, who pay for the company’s failure to provide decent health insurance—we all do. As the nation’s largest private employer, Wal-Mart has a huge impact on the kind of health insurance, if any, other employers provide. “Costs are passed on to other employers in the form of higher premiums they must pay in order to compensate for skimping by Wal-Mart and other large employers that shortchange their employees’ healthcare coverage,” the study says.

The AFT is urging members to find out more about how Wal-Mart’s practices impinge on their own benefits, as well as their communities. The UFCW has a new Web site, www.wakeupwalmart.com, with more information.

Here are some other things you can do:

■   Don’t buy school supplies from Wal-Mart. Shop at unionized retailers such as Costco, A&P, Stop & Shop, Albertson’s, Giant Food, Shoppers Food Warehouse, Kroger, Vons and Pathmark.

■   E-mail the Educators Pledge and Wake-Up Wal-Mart campaign information to others: www.wakeupwalmart.com/action/.

■   Organize local action committees and put together tabling, leafleting and other events during the Wake-Up Wal-Mart Back-to-School campaign in August.