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Rollback America: Wal-Mart Undermines Workers' Rights - Page 2

© Michael J. Swogger

With the words "We Sell for Less" emblazoned on the exterior walls of every store, Wal-Mart could claim rightly "We Work You for Less" as well. As the country's leading retail employer with 1.2 million workers, Wal-Mart does everything it can to reduce its labor costs by slashing payroll and rendering company benefits too expensive to be practical. The company does offer health insurance to its employees, boasting its employee benefit program as good reason for working there. But the deduction for health benefits can be up to $85 per paycheck. For someone relying upon Wal-Mart as her chief source of income, bringing home a biweekly check of $600, $85 is not something that can be readily spared. Indeed, the average (not median) Wal-Mart employee brings home just $18,000 a year (sales clerks even less) while the company's own health benefit program deducts up to $2,800 a year, plus a deductible. Forty percent of Wal-Mart's employees, whose employer rakes in more than $6 billion a year in profits, opt out of coverage because it is simply too expensive.²

Wal-Mart also follows its founder Sam Walton's prescription for keeping payroll at a minimum. Many Wal-Mart stores are heavily understaffed. Often this necessitates employees working through breaks and working beyond forty hours a week. In the ideal world where the law is followed, this would at least bring overtime pay for the weary employee. But Wal-Mart avoids paying overtime when it can. One employee recently testified that the company pressures its managers to keep payroll low, and managers regularly deleted hours from time records and reprimanded workers who claimed overtime. Wal-Mart corporate in Bentonville, Arkansas allots hours of labor to each of its stores. Store managers must not exceed the maximum set forth by Bentonville, and supervisors often "pressure employees to work extra hours without pay." As one Wal-Mart employee who moved into an assistant manager position claimes, "working unpaid overtime equaled saving your job."³

These claims are not merely of disgruntled employees scattered throughout the nation. In Portland, Oregon, "a federal jury ruled unanimously that Wal-Mart stores, Inc. violated federal and state labor laws by forcing employees at the stores to work unpaid overtime from 1994-1999." Now, in the second phase of the trial to determine damages, a new jury is hearing testimony of altered timecards and employees locked inside the store while everyone else were finishing their jobs. Those locked in would then be encouraged to "pitch-in" in the name of "teamwork," "not necessarily an evil thing," a lawyer for Wal-Mart insists.⁴ Similar lawsuits have been popping up elsewhere over the last several years. Suits have been filed in West Virginia, New Mexico, and Colorado. Two former employees in West Virginia claimed that as managers they had participated in altering time records to reduce the amount of overtime pay. While the workers who worked overtime for free were "compensated" with "desired schedule changes, promotions, or other benefits, those who refused unpaid overtime were "threatened with write-ups, demotions, reduced work schedules or docked pay." And in 2000, Wal-Mart settled a lawsuit involving 67,000 workers, paying more than $50 million in compensation to the plaintiffs.⁵

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