Thursday, February 24, 2005
Wal-Mart and the downward spiral of labor
You might recall, if you live in the LA area, the 5-month Kroger/Safeway grocery strike: the national grocery behemoths claimed that the threat of Wal-Mart's coming' superstores, with their grocery sections and ridiculously stripped-down worker 'wages' and 'benefits', that competition required cutting benefits for their own workers. Kroger/Safeway grocery workers (including Vons, Pavilions, Safeway and Ralph's) are unionized, so they went on strike. The strike ended with a somewhat disagreeable deal for both sides: http://www.cnn.com/2004/US/West/03/01/grocery.strike.ap/
Also, last year, Wal-Mart continued to court the California market by trying to introduce one of its superstores (i.e. adding grocery facilities to its considerable retail arsenal) in Inglewood. Suffice it to say that the public was displeased. Wal-Mart's goal is to establish 40 superstores in California by 2008. I don't know how many superstores they have right now, but they do have 180 traditional stores. 180! (Number includes 120 Wal-Marts and some Sam's Clubs.)
Timothy Noah puts together what basically amounts to a fact-check of Wal-Mart CEO H. Lee Scott Jr.'s recent speech in LA. (You can read it here.) Scott claimed, among other things:
-That Wal-Mart's average wage is around $10 per hour;
-That 74% of Wal-Mart's hourly store workers are full-time, as compared to 20-40% at 'comparable retailers';
-That Wal-Mart offers health care to part-time workers, which other companies do not.
Of course, as Noah points out, citing Wal-Mart's average wage is ridiculous if you don't know how the statistic is calculated. If the statistic includes the wages of upper brass, like Scott himself (who, Noah says, pulled in a cool $29 million in 2003), the mean's a wee bit higher than if you didn't include their salaries. Maybe the median would be a better choice. Noah uses a similar approach to debunk a few others of Scott's claims (which, Noah says, Scott didn't want taken seriously anyway):
-"Full time" at Wal-Mart is 34 hours a week, not 40;
-A dude from The Century Foundation (www.tcf.org) says that fewer than half of Wal-Mart's employees can afford the company's cheapest health plan.
So excuse me if I'm a wee bit grumbly about this corporation's systematic production of working poor.
Speaking of, the internet has provided me with (a dangerous thing in these times of terr--) evidence to support an assertion I read long ago in Barbara Ehrenreich's "Nickel and Dimed": that Wal-Mart workers are likely to receive welfare. A study at the Berkeley Labor Center demonstrates this trend in California--Wal-Mart families (at least one member works at Wal-Mart) are 40% more likely to subscribe to taxpayer-funded health care than the average rate of all large retail employers in Cali. The discrepancy is similar for other public assistance programs too--like food stamps, low-income housing, and school lunches: 38%.
As for average wages, Wal-Mart workers (store, non-manager workers, not white collars) get the shaft. They make $9.70/hour to the $14.01/hour average the study finds for all other large retailers in California. Here's the study: http://laborcenter.berkeley.edu/lowwage/walmart.pdf
California isn't alone. As this story in the LA Times reports, Alabama's having the same issues right now. As the Berkeley study notes, Georgia is the prime example, where 10,000 of the 166,000 children enrolled in the state's Children's Health Insurance Plan (called PeachCare) are--you guessed it, children of Wal-Mart workers. Georgia has something like 102 stores in Georgia alone. Wal-Mart has something like 1 million workers around the country. Therefore, the fact that the company is underpaying its workers and consequently sending them to the welfare office is a problem of tremendous moral and fiscal scope.
California and some other states have resisted Wal-Martization. They cite various concerns, but among them are the consequences for smaller local merchants and the company's god-awful labor record. Today there was a story in the Christian Science Monitor about Wal-Mart's intention to set up a megastore in Queens, NY. Even I was a bit surprised when I came back to the article later in the day to find the following note at the top of the article:
[UPDATE: Since this story was written, developers have dropped plans to build a Wal-Mart at the proposed Queens site. But Wal-Mart says it still would like to open a store in New York City and will continue looking for a new site.]
Popular resistance against the establishment of Wal-Marts has been stronger in the cities--not least because worker unions are stronger there than in rural areas (like most of Arkansas, where Wal-Mart was started). So maybe Wal-Mart doesn't screw up urban labor any worse than it is. That doesn't justify the exploitation of rural labor, Red America, so to speak. (If you want to read an amazing first-hand account of work at a rurally-based Wal-Mart, read the Wal-Mart chapter in the abovementioned "Nickel and Dimed." I promise it'll be both quick and elucidating.)
Wal-Mart. They recently settled a few--ah, well, 24--child labor violations. I'll be fair: the cases involved 16 and 17 year-olds--legally "kids", but hardly the people you think of when you hear the powerful term "child labor." (I tend to think of arthritis-plagued runny-nose 8 year-olds in Cambodia sewing our jeans.) Apparently these teens were using heavy-duty equipment that they are federally forbidden to use until they are 18.
They paid $135,540 by command of the Department of Labor--the equivalent of what Wal-Mart makes in 15 seconds, says this guy who works for the Committee on Education and the Workforce.
That's not a slap on the wrist. That's a love poke on the pelvis.
Apparently such pokes aren't effective. This New York Times story reports that in 2000, the state of Maine fined Wal-Mart $205,650 for no less than 1,436 'child labor' violations. That's poor form.
The good: Wal-Mart does make some pretty hefty donations to various community causes--which claim I will try to support at a future date, since I'm bloody tired. But does any amount of charity justify the systematic economic injustices they're party to?
Also, last year, Wal-Mart continued to court the California market by trying to introduce one of its superstores (i.e. adding grocery facilities to its considerable retail arsenal) in Inglewood. Suffice it to say that the public was displeased. Wal-Mart's goal is to establish 40 superstores in California by 2008. I don't know how many superstores they have right now, but they do have 180 traditional stores. 180! (Number includes 120 Wal-Marts and some Sam's Clubs.)
Timothy Noah puts together what basically amounts to a fact-check of Wal-Mart CEO H. Lee Scott Jr.'s recent speech in LA. (You can read it here.) Scott claimed, among other things:
-That Wal-Mart's average wage is around $10 per hour;
-That 74% of Wal-Mart's hourly store workers are full-time, as compared to 20-40% at 'comparable retailers';
-That Wal-Mart offers health care to part-time workers, which other companies do not.
Of course, as Noah points out, citing Wal-Mart's average wage is ridiculous if you don't know how the statistic is calculated. If the statistic includes the wages of upper brass, like Scott himself (who, Noah says, pulled in a cool $29 million in 2003), the mean's a wee bit higher than if you didn't include their salaries. Maybe the median would be a better choice. Noah uses a similar approach to debunk a few others of Scott's claims (which, Noah says, Scott didn't want taken seriously anyway):
-"Full time" at Wal-Mart is 34 hours a week, not 40;
-A dude from The Century Foundation (www.tcf.org) says that fewer than half of Wal-Mart's employees can afford the company's cheapest health plan.
So excuse me if I'm a wee bit grumbly about this corporation's systematic production of working poor.
Speaking of, the internet has provided me with (a dangerous thing in these times of terr--) evidence to support an assertion I read long ago in Barbara Ehrenreich's "Nickel and Dimed": that Wal-Mart workers are likely to receive welfare. A study at the Berkeley Labor Center demonstrates this trend in California--Wal-Mart families (at least one member works at Wal-Mart) are 40% more likely to subscribe to taxpayer-funded health care than the average rate of all large retail employers in Cali. The discrepancy is similar for other public assistance programs too--like food stamps, low-income housing, and school lunches: 38%.
As for average wages, Wal-Mart workers (store, non-manager workers, not white collars) get the shaft. They make $9.70/hour to the $14.01/hour average the study finds for all other large retailers in California. Here's the study: http://laborcenter.berkeley.edu/lowwage/walmart.pdf
California isn't alone. As this story in the LA Times reports, Alabama's having the same issues right now. As the Berkeley study notes, Georgia is the prime example, where 10,000 of the 166,000 children enrolled in the state's Children's Health Insurance Plan (called PeachCare) are--you guessed it, children of Wal-Mart workers. Georgia has something like 102 stores in Georgia alone. Wal-Mart has something like 1 million workers around the country. Therefore, the fact that the company is underpaying its workers and consequently sending them to the welfare office is a problem of tremendous moral and fiscal scope.
California and some other states have resisted Wal-Martization. They cite various concerns, but among them are the consequences for smaller local merchants and the company's god-awful labor record. Today there was a story in the Christian Science Monitor about Wal-Mart's intention to set up a megastore in Queens, NY. Even I was a bit surprised when I came back to the article later in the day to find the following note at the top of the article:
[UPDATE: Since this story was written, developers have dropped plans to build a Wal-Mart at the proposed Queens site. But Wal-Mart says it still would like to open a store in New York City and will continue looking for a new site.]
Popular resistance against the establishment of Wal-Marts has been stronger in the cities--not least because worker unions are stronger there than in rural areas (like most of Arkansas, where Wal-Mart was started). So maybe Wal-Mart doesn't screw up urban labor any worse than it is. That doesn't justify the exploitation of rural labor, Red America, so to speak. (If you want to read an amazing first-hand account of work at a rurally-based Wal-Mart, read the Wal-Mart chapter in the abovementioned "Nickel and Dimed." I promise it'll be both quick and elucidating.)
Wal-Mart. They recently settled a few--ah, well, 24--child labor violations. I'll be fair: the cases involved 16 and 17 year-olds--legally "kids", but hardly the people you think of when you hear the powerful term "child labor." (I tend to think of arthritis-plagued runny-nose 8 year-olds in Cambodia sewing our jeans.) Apparently these teens were using heavy-duty equipment that they are federally forbidden to use until they are 18.
They paid $135,540 by command of the Department of Labor--the equivalent of what Wal-Mart makes in 15 seconds, says this guy who works for the Committee on Education and the Workforce.
That's not a slap on the wrist. That's a love poke on the pelvis.
Apparently such pokes aren't effective. This New York Times story reports that in 2000, the state of Maine fined Wal-Mart $205,650 for no less than 1,436 'child labor' violations. That's poor form.
The good: Wal-Mart does make some pretty hefty donations to various community causes--which claim I will try to support at a future date, since I'm bloody tired. But does any amount of charity justify the systematic economic injustices they're party to?
