Wal-Mart: Set to Pay Even Lower Everyday Low Wages

by Tula Connell, Oct 2, 2006

While Wal-Mart tries to polish its image among consumers with its new plan to sell hundreds of generic prescription drugs at $4 for a month’s supply, the corporate megalith likely will be taking any financial loss out on its workers—again.

Reports today say Wal-Mart is pushing to cap wages, use more part-time workers and schedule more workers on nights and weekends. According to The New York Times:

Investment analysts and store managers say Wal-Mart executives have told them the company wants to transform its workforce to 40 percent part-time from 20 percent. Wal-Mart denies it has a goal of 40 percent part-time workers, although company officials say that part-timers now make up 25 percent to 30 percent of workers, up from 20 percent last October.

Wal-Mart’s latest move to create a “flexible workforce’’—corporate-speak parroted by The New York Times and other media when referring to the new means by which workers can be forced to work more and earn less—is just the latest insult to its workers. By Wal-Mart’s own admission, workers are forced to spend 8 percent of their salary, twice the national average, for health care.

In an August memo to managers, Wal-Mart details the hourly salary changes, which include paying employees lower wages if they transfer to another store while at the top of the new salary scale. The memo suggests that if workers aren’t pleased with reaching the new salary cap, they have the option of becoming a manager—or leaving. Yet in another section, the memo details the loss of pay involved for workers at the top of the scale who become assistant manager trainees: a nearly $2 decrease in their hourly wages.

Further, unlike most companies, Wal-Mart will not pay cost-of-living increases for workers who have reached the top of the pay scale.

Guess those salary caps apply only to the lowest-paid Wal-Mart workers. Last month, Forbes released its list of the 400 richest in the United States—and four of the top 10 screamingly wealthiest were Waltons, the family behind Wal-Mart.

Jim C. Walton, one of Sam Walton’s sons, was recently ranked by Forbes as the sixth richest in America, packing in $15.7 billion in net worth. Walton was joined by his sister-in-law, Christy Walton, who as the seventh richest in the nation holds a net worth of $15.6 billion, about the same as another Walton son, S. Robson Walton, who came in as the eighth richest. As the 10th richest in the nation, Alice Walton, daughter of Sam, is scraping the bottom of the billionaire barrel at $15.5 billion.

Bet the Waltons get better health coverage than their employees, too. Last year, the details of a confidential memo from Wal-Mart Executive Vice President Susan Chambers to Wal-Mart’s board of directors showed that by Wal-Mart’s own reckoning, 46 percent of its employees’ children are either on Medicaid or are uninsured.

According to the October 2005 memo, a Wal-Mart employee (Associate):

must spend between 74 and 150 percent of household income on healthcare (approximately $23,000 to $27,000) before insurance takes over completely. Though few Associates reach this level of spending, those who do almost certainly end up declaring personal bankruptcy. In 2004, 38 percent of enrolled Associates spent more than 16 percent of the average Wal-Mart income on health care.

Many Wal-Mart workers are forced to use hospital emergency rooms and other public services for their health care needs because they can’t afford to see a doctor on the Wal-Mart health plan. Nothing like taxpayer money subsidizing billionaires.

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