Here’s some context edit
The average Walmart sale associate makes $8.81 per hour, according to the independent market research group IBISWorld. That translates into $15,576 a year if the associate works a full-time schedule of 34 hours a week. But that’s actually pegging it quite high, as many associates have highly erratic or meager work schedules that don’t allow them anywhere close to full-time status.
For a three-person household (two parents and a child, for instance), the 2013 federal poverty level is $19,530.
When their paychecks don’t cut it, many associates turn to public assistance to make up the difference. Walmart’s low wages and insufficient scheduling are behind the enormous costs to the taxpayer incurred by each store. One Walmart Supercenter costs taxpayers $900,000 in Medicaid, SNAP, housing assistance, and other forms of public assistance.
Fortune edit
But beyond the numbers are the associates themselves, juggling unpredictable schedules and light paychecks, who see the food bins (bins in employee areas used to collect food and essentials for "fellow associates) as a sign that the company sees their struggle as the rule, not the exception: An analysis by Fortune shows that Walmart can afford to give its employees a 50 percent raise without hurting its bottom line. But low wages are only one part of the widespread culture of disrespect, retaliation, and indifference Walmart shows its employees. More than ever before, associates are standing up to this culture, and we’re standing with them. On November 29, 2013, protests are planned at Walmart stores across the country, and all are welcome to stand in solidarity with associates.
Walmart is the nation’s largest private employer. They have set the standard for an entire generation of business practices. Whether or not we shop there, what they do at their company affects all of us.
July 2013 edit
All of this is happening against the backdrop of Walmart's threats to pull out of Washington, D.C., if the city follows through on instituting a $12.50 wage for workers at stores with more than $1 billion annual corporate sales and more than 75,000 square feet. The city council passed the Large Retailer Accountability Act with just short of a veto-proof majority, and Mayor Vincent Gray has hinted he might veto the ordinance.
September 2013 edit
In July, the Washington, D.C., city council passed the Large Retailer Accountability Act by eight to five, one vote short of a veto-proof majority. Now, after fierce lobbying and threats to pull out of the city from Walmart, Mayor Vincent Gray has vetoed the bill, which would require big box stores to pay workers a $12.50 living wage. Gray claims he totally wants to raise wages in the city, just not this way. Because this bill would piss off Walmart "is a job-killer, because nearly every large retailer now considering opening a store in the District has indicated that they will not come here or expand here if this bill becomes law." Never mind that Walmart is the job-killer. Minimum wage increases and living wage bills, on the other hand, have repeatedly been shown not to increase unemployment as their opponents claim. Gray is right, of course, that all D.C. workers deserve a higher minimum wage than the District's current level of $8.25. But claiming you want to raise wages but just don't like this way of doing it is weak. Especially when your staff has collaborated with Walmart in tracking the city council's progress on the bill.
6 claims edit
Claim #1 edit
- "Opportunity: That's the Real Walmart!" exults one of the ads. "Over 75 percent of store management started as hourly associates."==
The Reality: An internal Walmart document just leaked to the press this week reveals that: Hourly "associates" at Walmart start at or near the minimum wage. Performance-based pay increases can result in "promotions" in pay and title. But even the very highest level of performance will net you an annual raise of just $.60 per hour, capped for each job title. Last year, only 18 percent of hourly workers received any pay raise at all. If an employee is so industrious as to rise to the management level of, say, "check out supervisor," her pay will be $1.70 more than that of the lowest paid employee. And getting from the hourly wage ghetto to a salaried position is, as the Magic 8 Ball likes to say, "Not likely." In a typical Walmart store, there may be 200 employees and only a handful of salaried managers. Getting one of those few positions is "more like a lottery than a reliable path."
Claim #2 edit
- "When our store does well, I earn quarterly bonuses!" ===
The Reality: Those bonuses of $100 to $300, intended to make employees work harder, don't make for a living wage. If Walmart really wanted to improve workers' lives, it would allow more of them to work full time, and thus have access to health insurance and other benefits. Instead, the company keeps a tight lid on full-time work, thus denying benefits to about 70 percent of its store employees.
Claim #3 edit
- "Walmart helps customers save on prescription drugs!"===
The Reality: But at what cost to those same customers as taxpayers? Walmart's wages and benefits are so low that many of its workers have to rely on Medicaid and other social services to support their families, costing taxpayers between $900,000 and $1.75 million annually per store in the state of Wisconsin, where these costs were calculated. That's a taxpayer tab of at least $67.5 million each year for the state of Wisconsin alone.
Claim #4 edit
- "President Clinton praised which company for putting solar panels on its stores?" asks a cheerful young spokesmodel of passersby in another ad. They are surprised to learn that it's Walmart.
The Reality: The passerby's initial assumption -- that it wouldn't be Walmart -- is well taken. In fact, despite announcing in 2005 that the company would move to having 100 percent of its power supplied by renewable sources, Walmart today receives only four percent of its energy from solar and wind power.
Why would Bill Clinton say such a thing? Call me cynical, but it may have something to do with the fact that Walmart has been a major supporter of the Clintons since Bill's days as governor of Arkansas. In fact, Hillary was a member of Walmart's Board of Directors for the six years leading up to her husband's first presidential campaign in 1992. By 1993, tax returns showed the Clintons owned more than $100,000 worth of Walmart stock. In 2008, the company made substantial contributions to Hillary's presidential campaign, while Bill has maintained a close personal relationship with Walmart CEO H. Lee Scott. If Hillary runs in 2016, it will be in the post-Citizens United era of the SuperPac. These are made by billionaire contributors, and there are few billionaires as billiony as the scions of Walmart -- the six Walton heirs together own as much wealth as 40 percent of the U.S. population. The candidate who has them has the atom bomb of the SuperPac wars.
Claim #5 edit
- "Meet real Walmart shoppers!" Here we meet a businessman, a teacher, a carpenter, a mechanical engineer, a firefighter and an accountant, all of them redolent with middle class status, who proudly shop at Walmart. "Living better," the tag line says, "that's the real Walmart."
The Reality: Walmart's customers are disproportionately poor, Southern and elderly. The fact that none of these demo's made it into Walmart's ad about "Our Customers" means not only that Walmart is a fibber, but also that Walmart is a disser of its own "real" customers.
Claim #6 edit
- "We work directly with manufacturers, eliminating costly markups."
The Reality: If by "work with," the ad means "dictate to," then this claim is accurate. But again, as Charles Fishman, the business reporter who wrote The Walmart Effect asks, what is "the high cost of these low prices?" Walmart's market power is such that many of its suppliers face a stark choice: take dictation from Walmart, or lose half or more of their business. "To survive in the face of [Walmart's] pricing demands, makers of everything from bras to bicycles to blue jeans have had to lay off employees and close U.S. plants in favor of outsourcing products from overseas."
Just ask Steve Dobbins, CEO of 75-year old Carolina Mills, a company that supplies thread and yarn to textile manufacturers -- half of whom supply Walmart. His company grew steadily until 2000. Then his customers, with Walmart's gun to their heads -- began a hemhorrage of offshoring in order to find the dirt cheap labor necessary to meet Walmart's low price demands. Carolina Mills shrank from 17 factories to 7 within three years. The way Walmart "works with" its suppliers has been disastrous for American workers.
In the end, what can we learn edit
When large corporations are criticized, they squirt PR like a cuttlefish. After all, it's a lot cheaper to fix the image than to fix the problem. This summer, reports have emerged showing that Walmart's pay and promotion policies are miserly, and that as a result, taxpayers get stuck with a big tab. If "greenwashing" is hiding your environmental sins with PR, and red is the color of labor, "The Real Walmart has, in response to its critics, given us "redwashing."
2005/10/26/Fortune500 edit
CEO resigns edit
"Proud Associate" edit
- [9] Animal Farm
Is Walmart good for America edit
- [10] Frontline