Wal-Mart: Economic Exploitation At Its Worst
Living in Chicago and Gävle, it's fairly easy for me to take a moral stand against shopping at Wal-Mart because there aren't currently any of the mega-stores in the immediate vicinity of where I live. However, friends and family back in Nebraska, for example, shop there on a regular basis. Prices are generally lower, and it’s convenient to buy everything at one location. Nonetheless, I'd like to encourage them to read "Inside the Leviathan," an essay by Simon Head that reviews recent books and publications that analyze the ascendancy of Wal-Mart around the globe, and consider whether or not they want to continue giving their money to this particular corporation.
The conclusion reached by these publications is that Wal-Mart’s ‘success’ is based on the exploitation of the working poor. No surprise there. But Sam Walton’s managerial techniques—such as intentionally understaffing all stores so that managers will be forced to illegally require employees to work extra hours for no pay, hiring store spies to police ‘time theft’ by the employees, issuing arbitrary punishments in order to make it easier to fire employees, and practicing sex discrimination against women workers who have complained about the corporate malfeasance—don’t just violate Wal-Mart employees’ rights. In the big picture, everybody suffers (except, perhaps, the rich), as Wal-Mart pushes wages and benefits down in the communities in which it locates and forces taxpayers to subsidize the welfare needed to provide employees with the health care, housing, etc. that their meager wages can’t cover:
One of the most telling of all the criticisms of Wal-Mart is to be found in a February 2004 report by the Democratic Staff of the House Education and Workforce Committee. In analyzing Wal-Mart's success in holding employee compensation at low levels, the report assesses the costs to US taxpayers of employees who are so badly paid that they qualify for government assistance even under the less than generous rules of the federal welfare system. For a two-hundred-employee Wal-Mart store, the government is spending $108,000 a year for children's health care; $125,000 a year in tax credits and deductions for low-income families; and $42,000 a year in housing assistance. The report estimates that a two-hundred-employee Wal-Mart store costs federal taxpayers $420,000 a year, or about $2,103 per Wal-Mart employee. That translates into a total annual welfare bill of $2.5 billion for Wal-Mart's 1.2 million US employees.
Decide for yourself if, in the long run, it’s worth saving a few bucks to support a ruthless system that is wrecking havoc on the economy and degrading workers around the globe.
The conclusion reached by these publications is that Wal-Mart’s ‘success’ is based on the exploitation of the working poor. No surprise there. But Sam Walton’s managerial techniques—such as intentionally understaffing all stores so that managers will be forced to illegally require employees to work extra hours for no pay, hiring store spies to police ‘time theft’ by the employees, issuing arbitrary punishments in order to make it easier to fire employees, and practicing sex discrimination against women workers who have complained about the corporate malfeasance—don’t just violate Wal-Mart employees’ rights. In the big picture, everybody suffers (except, perhaps, the rich), as Wal-Mart pushes wages and benefits down in the communities in which it locates and forces taxpayers to subsidize the welfare needed to provide employees with the health care, housing, etc. that their meager wages can’t cover:
One of the most telling of all the criticisms of Wal-Mart is to be found in a February 2004 report by the Democratic Staff of the House Education and Workforce Committee. In analyzing Wal-Mart's success in holding employee compensation at low levels, the report assesses the costs to US taxpayers of employees who are so badly paid that they qualify for government assistance even under the less than generous rules of the federal welfare system. For a two-hundred-employee Wal-Mart store, the government is spending $108,000 a year for children's health care; $125,000 a year in tax credits and deductions for low-income families; and $42,000 a year in housing assistance. The report estimates that a two-hundred-employee Wal-Mart store costs federal taxpayers $420,000 a year, or about $2,103 per Wal-Mart employee. That translates into a total annual welfare bill of $2.5 billion for Wal-Mart's 1.2 million US employees.
Decide for yourself if, in the long run, it’s worth saving a few bucks to support a ruthless system that is wrecking havoc on the economy and degrading workers around the globe.
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