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.
If Wal-Mart was losing money, you could argue that regulations are hurting its business. On the contrary, Wal-Mart is taking advantage of the law to make a bundle of money. If Wal-Mart operated fairly, by paying its employees a fair wage with benefits, I would not have a beef with them. Instead they have a mostly part time workforce that receives little or no benefits. Wla-Mart should use some of that profit and share it with the people who make it possible for Wal-Mart to make such profits.
Alex,
If the employees believe that their wages are unfair, they can work somewhere else; and then WalMart will have to adjust accordingly to be more attractive to employees. This is how competition in the labor market works.
As long as people are willing to work part-time for $7 an hour, there is no incentive for any employer to pay more.
If the only job in town is a part time job at Wal-Mart, what are you supposed to do? Once all our jobs are outsourced to China and India, we won’t have a choice.
Just because you are paranoid it doesn’t mean that people aren’t trying to kill you. Wal-Mart employees are right, they are being exploited. When a Wal-Mart opens up smaller shops usually close or go bankrupt. Where do those people go get jobs? You think they have a lot of options? If these people had better jobs available, they would be working elsewhere. Its easy to make these arguments when you don’t have to survive on $7.00/hr with no benefits. In order to pull oneself by one’s bootsraps, one has to have boots. Wal-Mart should at least provide their employees with the boots they have earned.
I don’t understand how it is ok to reduce welfare for families while increasing it for corporations; especially for ones that make as much money as Wal-Mart. The government should not be helping subsidize Wal-Mart’s profits or it’s employees benefits.
If the local consumers didn’t abandon the local small businesses to shop at Wal-Mart, then we wouldn’t hear about so many cases of “Mom and Pop” store closing would we? People often create the circumstances they find themselves in; and retail price isn’t the sole factor to make purchasing decisions with.
And how exactly is the government subsidizing Wal-Mart’s employee benefits? I will assume you are talking about healthcare here.
As has been stated above, Wal-Mart (or any company for that matter) has no obligation to provide any health benefits to anybody. The reasons they do include: increasing productivity from healthier workers, and providing incentives to attract more qualified workers. That the government chooses to create inefficient, bureaucratically run state healthcare programs has no relation with the employee benefits Wal-Mart gives to its employees.
Maybe, instead of complaining about a company not giving unskilled part-time labor free healthcare benefits, we should spend our time determining why healthcare is so expensive that people cannot afford to obtain it themselves (because ultimately we are all responsible for our own health). Excessive regulation, inefficient and expensive approval processes, and out-of-control litigation have all helped to make our healthcare system the mess that it is today.
why are some of you actually defending the crap peddler called Walmart. It has nothing to offer anyone, except lots of cheap, poorly made, morally bankrupt trash. It’s all about MORE MORE MORE for ME ME ME, short sighted thinking, isn’t it? As long as you can have your fat-inducing food and cheap Walmart trinkets, you’ll be happy. Is that it?
Wake up folks. Walmart is a corporation that cares less about it’s workers than your credit card company cares about your finances. We are a nation of complacent idiots!
Mr Fusion,
The reason why Wal-Mart considers 34 hrs (I don’t know that number is correct or not) to be full-time is so you can work less than 40 hrs and still qualify for the extra benefits that full-time workers receive. Otherwise they could just let somebody work 39 hrs (so they don’t risk having to pay over-time), call them part-time, and just give them the very limited benefits that go along with it.
So this is actually to the employee’s benefit. Nothing onerous about it.
The united states spends more and gets less back in healthcare than any other industrialized nation. The problem is not excessive regulation, or litigation the problem is that the health care in the US is extremely inefficient. For example, why are the same drugs that are affordable in Canada are very expensive in the states? Don’t buy that excuse about the R&D costs. I suppose only the US pays those costs. We are being ripped off. We need universal insurance and a single payer system instead of the disaster we have.
So a drug company has to wait years and spend millions of dollars in order to go through the bureaucratic process of abtaining FDA approval to put a new drug on the market. And then once the government finally says the drug is OK to use, the drug company is still financially liable when the lawsuits come rolling in from side-effects the drug may or may not have caused.
Do you honestly believe that this has no significant impact on the price of medication in this country?
Also, while these great socialist healthcare systems are artificially keeping the prices below market value through price controls, the drug companies are sticking it to us for the difference of what they need to make in order to recoup the hundreds of millions it cost to develop the drug in the first place (before they even make a dime profit). Yeah, hooray for Canada!
Wow – two days spent beating on big, bad WalMart. I don’t like them either, don’t shop there and generally don’t like the low-budget atmosphere that the stores seem to radiate. In most cases though, they’re only doing things that every other business does; they’re just so large that the aggregate looks horrendous.
Fundamentally, the retailer is not the problem. The problem is the CONSUMER. If people were not willing to abandon their local small business to save a dime at WalMart, the mom-and-pops wouldn’t go out of business. If it wasn’t WalMart, it would be someone else (I still remember arguments about Kmart in years gone by).
It may be an ugly metaphore, but I see WalMart as the crack cocaine of the retail world. People are so addicted to bargain hunting and saving a dime that they’re willing to sell out the local economy to support their habit. If people truly hated WalMart and what it represents, they would go back to the small market world. But they won’t. If you could eliminate demand, you will eliminate the supply. As long as people line up with money in their hands, some company (pusher) will step up to take it.
What blog has the Dvorak Uncensored record for most comments posted?
the most comments goes to this post – GHOST-CAR – nothing else really comes close. It’s currently at 459 and still generating comments. Hunter Thompson’s obit is number two.
John, I just renewed my subscription recently to PC Magazine. Tell the publisher it was only because of you. Seriously.
Thanks for GHOST CAR. And your blog.
…my jaw is starting to hurt…
Mike
You have to be reptilian or something. You are just too cold blooded to be human.
While the “full” work week at Wal-Mart is 34 hours, less then half of the employees do that many. It is easy to say “go find another job”, but not to easy to do. The majority of Wal-Mart workers are not there to do something during retirement. They need a job. Few have reliable transportation and so must work close to public transportation or within walking distance. Few have college education and thus have fewer choices. Many have spent many years outside the workforce and through divorce are doing the best they can find. Others are not as bright as you so they are not as impressive during interviews. And not every McDonalds or Taco Bell is hiring either.
Although allowed to happen under Clinton, outsourcing has steamrolled during the Bush years. And Bush has not done anything to slow it, let alone stop it. Each new job being created today pays on average $9,000 LESS then the jobs that were lost to outsourcing and Bush conjobomics. As these are service jobs, they only spread wealth. The manufacturing jobs leaving the country created wealth. When wealth is created in an economy everyone is stronger. This lack of wealth has created the largest public debt and trade deficits in history. We don’t create enough wealth to cover this deficit anymore. We are using up our banked money. Too soon, it will be gone.
The majority of drug research takes place in public institutions. When anything shows some promise then the drug companies get involved. Most of the western world has much cheaper drugs then the US. A heck of a lot of R&D takes place outside the US too. No drug company in Canada is complaining they don’t earn enough money. The R&D costs are factored into the price they are allowed to sell their products for. Only in America do the drug companies gouge so much. Their return on investment is the highest of all manufacturing sectors.
I live in a relatively small town (16000) and a few years ago a survey was done that showed 80% of the local population had to leave town at least once a month to shop because they couldn’t find what they needed here. In the space of 18 months we gained a Target, Wal-Mart Supercenter and Menards.
You know what, now people come here to shop. That traffic has spawned a number of other construction projects for new businesses. Also, the quality of the prodcuts in the other grocery stores improved to compete. Yeah a couple of mom&pop’s have folded but overall it’s been very positive.