The chief executive of Wal-Mart Stores beseeched U.S. governors yesterday to help him make healthcare more affordable for his 1.3 million U.S. employees.
“We know our benefits at Wal-Mart Stores are not perfect,” Scott told the National Governors Association.
A survey by Ohio’s Department of Jobs and Family Services recently found that Wal-Mart workers represented one of the state’s biggest groups of employed Medicaid recipients–around 8% of the retail giant’s employees are enrolled, costing the state a reported $11 million, according to The Associated Press.
Wal-Mart has been criticized by labor unions for setting high premiums that keep more than half of its workers from participating in the company health plan.
Thanks to Jami we have now heard from a corporate shrill! I bet she is unaware that being female has hurt her chances of promotion, or that other companies offer medical benifits that do not require some form of assistance.
The fact is Wal-Mart costs Taxpayers $1,557,000,000,00 to Support its Employees. That 1.5 billion could be better spent retraining workers in rust belt towns.
Walmart is a model of efficiency. They computerized their inventory systems well beyond what Kmart and other retailers did and bled the waste out of the system.
Walmart’s crappy wages are no worse than the crappy wages their competitors have. My brother saw a employee who had long worked at another crappy employer working at Walmart the other day.
Don’t get tricked into thinking that the low wages Walmart offers is any different than their competitors, it isn’t.
Walmart merely employs all the computerized tracking/stocking that was supposed to be a benefit of computers while their computers oafed and fumbled around doing things the old way and went out of business in the process.
Bear in mind that Walmart is a “liberal” based corp. A classic representation of what happens when liberals run a business. Not the expected welfare for all/share the wealth example you expected. Instead, they are accused of
* preditory capitalism
* white slavery
* price gouging
* price fixing
* town killing
* funneling jobs offshore
On another note, all the liberal assistance provided through unions is done based on revenue provided by conservatives…it truely IS a balancing act!
Steve, you blew RIGHT by my point. I said *IF* you help any.
Businesses get health care subsidized every day in this country. Until you abolish it for *ALL* businesses, it’s disingenuous to single out WalMart for criticism on the issue.
Mike
I went through your comment several times trying to figure out if your were being sarcastic or sincere. I’m still not sure. If you had something like “contribute to bird flu” then I would be sure of your sincerity.
In your list, I think there is adequate evidence for all of them except I don’t know about the “white slavery” issue. I thought they went for the “brown slavery” type.
Obviously you people missed the Playboy SE of Women of Walmart. That is a good thing from Walmart. If Wally World didn’t exist, these beautiful women would have never been discovered. There is always a bright side. *shrug*
What do you have against Walmart? Do you really think the businesses it supposedly replaced in small towns provided more benefits?
I love how these *articles* are put up here. The rest of the story is quite revealing. Wal-Mart didn’t ask for subsidies, it asked for help with ideas of how to set up employee health care systens that would provide health care and not bankrupt the company. Or for that matter, ANY company. The point they tried to make was….health care costs are continually going up at a staggering rate, is there something that employers can do to stem this tide and help their employees.
The other part of the original story was that Wal-mart is always accused of underpaying it’s employees, but all studies done by every economic group in the country show that not only is Wal_Mart inline with other retail employers, it actually pays a percentage higher than they all do. And, this is the part Wal_Mart bashers love to ignore, they pay better benifits than almost all of it’s retail compitors. Wal_Mart admitted that they had a problem with females employees and promotion but they have been addressing that for the past several years.
Some of you bashers might like to go to south central Los Angeles sometime, you’ll find that all of the enlightened, unionized grocery chains pulled out that area many years ago, leaving the residents with no where to shop, but Wal-Mart has gone into that area and been very successful, providing an average of 300 jobs per store, increasing local tax revenues, and providing much needed local community projects help.
Some of you may not like it, but the store chain does something very right, it’s the largest employer in this country and the largest retail chain in the world, and it provides much needed finacial help to the poor and the working poor with it’s pricing.
Oh, and the Ohio Medicaid satistics…..when you look at the actual figures, you see something not mentioned in this article, that Wal-Mart hires a very much larger percentage of over 55′s than anyother retailer in the nation, and the reason so many Wal Mart employees are on Medicare is because they already quailified for it due to being retired or disabled. How many 65 y/o’s have you seen working at Sears lately?
Sure is some interesting ideology you have going there, Joshua. “they had a problem with females employees and promotion but they have been addressing that, blah, blah”!
Folks sued their butts off for everything from sexual harrassment to discrimination. Then, and only then, did WalMart begin to respond to court-ordered compensation and adjustment in policies. I haven’t paid much attention to suits in other states; but, two of those suits were here in New Mexico in the past ten years.
God shops at Wal-mart. He drives his SUV there to buy meat, beer and guns.
Actually, He drinks beer and talks on His cell phone while driving to Wal-Mart to buy meat and guns.
Micheal….where did you get that figure? Please show us.
Do you have any knowledge as to WHY those towns are called *rust belt*? Because they used to have steel as their primary form of employment. Do you have any idea why they aren’t there anymore?
Because between the industry not modernizing, and the unions insatiable demands they collapsed against much cheaper, more effcient European and Japenese companys.
I find it interesting that one of the few of the old line steel,copper producers still alive and making money is the one company that wasn’t unionized, Koppers Corp.
I come from a long line of union activists, but even my uncles and granfather agree, that the unions got to greedy and wiped out many of the biggest employers of the 40′s and 50′s….the steel industry, the railroads and the automakers. Not alone of course, but they made it extreamly difficult for the companies to fight off cheaper foriegn competitors.
So, please spare me and others the plight of the poor american workers. If you really want to put your money where your mouth is, stop buying products produced abroad, that is also produced here at home. Also, quit using businesses, from the Internet to Joes Tavern that use call centers in India and elsewhere. Don’t buy your kids those 200.00 dollar Nikes and all of their favorite *cool* clothes that are made in other countries and not here in American anymore. Christ, even Levi’s aren’t from America anymore. And whatever you do, throw away all the electronic goods not made in America(cell phones, blackberries etc.)
Oh, and those little American flags we like to wave, 85% of those are produced in China, and India. Maybe Wal-Mart buys it’s clothes from China because they can’t get them here, since the textile industry was wiped out in the 60′s by cheaper foreign goods.
Most, if not all of these disasters happened when the pro-union and *common people* Democrats where in power by the way.
it’s not an ideolgy Eideard. Maybe thats what confuses you. You bet Wal-Mart has been sued, and some have been successful, and rightly so. But that dosen’t mean that the company is evil incarnate. I was going to say that even the U.S.Congress has been accused of, and sued for discrimination and sexual harrassment, but THEY are evil incarnate so blows my point.
I read the original Ruetuers article about the Wal_Mart insurance thing and went after more info, and found the goverment and other stuff about their pay and benifits comparisions.
I just get a bit tired, as I’ve said several times before of the bashing of the store chain. They may have hurt some towns by coming in, but as someone said above, no one is forced to buy there. People buy there because they are cheap. And they have a good record of hiring the elderly and the disabled, one of the best. I know 15 or 16 people who have worked for them for many years and they love their jobs.
They have been trying to open 2 of their super stores(with food stuff) in the bay area, where my family lives for several years. Besides the usual anti people the big money keeping them out are from Safeway and Albertsons grocery chains. Because they know if Wal-Mart is allowed to open the grocery outlets they will have to compete or lose huge amounts of business. The bay area is one of the most overpriced areas in the country for all items, but food is just outragous. Not everyone in the bay area makes 120,000.00 dollars a year in high tech. If Wal_Mart is allowed to open they will clean clocks, especially among the working poor(lower to middle, middle class here) and the Hispanics who already have to work 2 or more jobs just to pay rent.
Smith — actually the adverts should be breaking right around now for Wal-Mart in-store clinics. Part of their legal strategy to get the clinics licensed is that this will bring minimal medical care “closer” to their employees.
The surveys for their marketing plan were completed about a month ago. The emphasis will be on “minimal” and “basic” and cheap. Mostly run by nurse-practitioners.
But, then, you shouldn’t give the surveys that WalMart paid for any credence. They were performed by some of the same people who determined that Americans finally see that Bush is a dunce.
Some folks just can not handle prosperity!
Businesses have no obligation to provide healthcare to their workers, beyond that it helps provide them with a more healthy and productive workforce to produce more revenues for their shareholders.
Businesses have no obligation to provide healthcare to their workers
Mike is right on this one. Healthcare packages are part of an overall compensation package for employees. Unions did not win healthcare like Fusion says in #21. It was widely introduced as a benefit during WWII, because the government was regulating wages, and employers had to differenciate themselves to attract workers.
60 years later we still live with this market distortion, instead of everyone’s pocketbook really feeling how expensive healthcare is. That might lead to some different consumer behavior and different pressures on the system to lower costs. It’s not that simple, and yet maybe it is a start. (There are other ways to provide comprehensive healthcare, besides a nationalized one-payer system. See Singapore and their equivalent of Health Savings Accounts plus catastrophic insurance.)
Also, Walmart does not screw it’s employees out of healthcare, or receive a healthcare subsidy from the state. It provides part-time, low skill jobs that pay the market rate. Government then provides healthcare to low income people as a social benefit. If these people could get a better job than included healthcare, surely they would. What are the chances they’d get that healthcare for a similar job at another employer? Would they rather have healthcare and lower pay, or take the cash and go to Medicaid for healthcare?
Costco jobs are actually a cut above Walmart, and employees are compensated for their higher productivity. Walmart has chosen a strategy of staffing their stores with part-time, low paid, lower skilled employees, but creates more jobs overall. You could regulate them away, and force them to offer “Costco jobs”, but that would take away some opportunities for some people. It’s a struggle to get along with a Wal-mart job, but wouldn’t it be a struggle otherwise? Walmart employees must feel it’s a better deal than the alternative.
T.C.
You are quite correct. I’m not sure that one could say “Costgo jobs are a cut above Wal-Mart”, but I don’t enough about Costgo. Though I understand that they compete head to head with Sam’s Club, which is owned by Wal-Mart and has the same pay scale, and earn a higher profit. Even with the higher wages and benefits.
You are correct about healthcare and WWII. After WW II, however, companies started dropping healthcare benefits. It wasn’t until the mid to late 1950s that unions started demanding the benefits be reinstated into contracts. Or did you forget the Steelworkers strike in 1957. Healthcare was a major demand. The other major unions followed the Steelworkers shortly after that.
Again, I believe you are correct about Wal-Mart not being LEGALLY required to give healthcare benefits. There is a MORAL obligation to though. Wal-Mart has set itself up as a good corporate citizen. They advertise their good deeds. They crave recognition of their charity. It is the hypocrisy of Wal-Mart’s stance that has offended so many people. They have even touted they are making their healthcare package better.
Wal-Mart likes to state how well they treat their employees. Yet as I noted above, in over 30 states Wal-Mart has been sued for overtime violations. Then there is the female discrimination suit(Wal-Mart lost). Locking the employees in at night(fire violations).
While strictly true, Wal-Mart doesn’t owe them and the employees should be grateful they even have a job. It is ironic that almost all (if not all) textile mills have closed in America, partly because Wal-Mart has been selling only foreign made textiles. So these people should be grateful that Wal-Mart gives them a substandard job when they contributed to the elimination of their old better paying job.
As for using a lot of part time employees, again that is true. It is even true by design, but not for the reason Wal-Mart will tell you. This is the only company I am aware of that considers a 34 hr week as full time. Yet they still like to keep the part-time people. Why? Because it keeps their employees in line when they know their hours can be cut at any time, without reason or notice. As for the alternative you mention? Ya, isn’t that a great hammer to keep ‘em in line with unemployment high and good jobs hard to find.
Isn’t it great to say I stand for the American way !!!
Mandatory over-time laws do a lot to contribute to these 30 hour a week jobs.
If an employer has a requirement for 100 hrs of low-wage unskilled labor, it might be cheaper for them to hire three people to work 33 hrs a week instead of two who can work 50 hrs.
An additional side-effect of this is that the three people working 33 hrs, probably wind up juggling a second job to make up the pay they could have had if they were allowed to work 50 hrs at their regular salary.
On the other hand, I’d like to make this point about Wal-mart.
Alex in post #9 alludes to some reporting done by a FRONTLINE episode on Wal-mart (“Is Walmart good for America?”). It details how Wal-mart has so much purchasing power, they can pursuade and almost force suppliers to move production overseas (i.e. China), or retaliate against suppliers that don’t toe their line on price reductions (Rubbermaid).
To the free marketers here, I now think this is true and a distortion of the market. Especially given some recent reading I did in “Culture and Prosperity” by John Kay (Awesome book.)
In a perfectly competitive market, products are commodities and there are enough buyers and sellers that neither have control over the price. For the most part, most items at Wal-mart and many retailers are essentially commodities (spatulas, pans) because there are so many potential substitutes. [This is actually irrelevant to my argument, but I think its interesting.]
Yet Wal-mart is so huge and purchases so much, they have overwhelming influence in the purchase of many of these goods. The wholesale market in these consumer items becomes like an oligopsony – a market with limited number of buyers: namely Walmart and everyone else. Not technically an oligopsony, but Walmart’s decision whether or not to buy can greatly affect the suppliers production decisions, and so they have strategic influence over supplies and prices.
And they use this power to enforce ever falling prices. They may switch suppliers over just a 1 penny difference in price. And if they don’t get their way, they may cut off a huge national brand like Rubbermaid, which all of a sudden loses 30-40% of its sales. That’s tough for any company to deal with, especially one with a conscience.
Jobs are moving overseas no matter what. There’s not much we can do to keep low skill manufacturing jobs here in the U.S.
But we don’t need Wal-mart exerting undue influence on the market and speeding things up. You may say “they’re doing us a favor”, but it doesn’t seem kosher that one company and its purchasing managers have such a huge influence over prices and the cost structure of its suppliers.
Prices will fall eventually. Manufacturers face facts on their own every day and move production overseas. Why should one company be speeding that up?
oligopsony
Ya just gotta love that word. I still remember it being on an Economics exam a few eons ago.