Some facts on Walmart

a republican friend who reads my blog told me the other night he thought i was a 'liberal'. now i dont have any problem with this label, accept it probably doesnt apply. i'm a g-d damned independent. as i've said, neither party represents many of my views or interests.

when i asked him how he could be supportive of a government that fosters evil corporations like Walmart he took a offense. he actually tried defending them but we both realized we lacked any good facts to back up our opinions. when i told him the limited facts i did know, he said he doubted they were true but admitted that if there were, maybe my views had some merit.

i'll add to this that over thanksgiving i got into the same debate with my sister who is an ethics prof. of course, being my sister, she argued vehemently against me until we realized that we agreed on our basic principles - that a corporation should only be held to two standards. those are the law and the market. i believe Walmart is failing at on the legal front and that the market will soon catch up. the stock is probably a good short in the near future. under so much scrutiny the company will have to end its highly profitable practices of driving down labor costs and avoiding medical costs.

anyway, here are some facts i gathered from the site of the Walmart movie. now before you yell at me about presenting 'one sided' facts (??), i will provide a link here and you will be able to see the complete sources behind all of these which are incredibly well documented.

walmart and welfare...

ALABAMA: 3,864 Children of WAL-MART Employees are Enrolled in Medicaid

ARIZONA: 2,700 WAL-MART Workers on Medicaid

ARKANSAS: 3971 WAL-MART Workers on Public Assistance

FLORIDA: 12,300 WAL-MART Workers and their Dependents on Medicaid

GEORGIA: 10,261 Children of WAL-MART Employees are Enrolled in PeachCare for Kids

TENNESSEE: 9,617 WAL-MART Workers on TennCare

walmart and unions...

$7,000 ANTI-UNION CAMERA PACKAGE per store
$30,000 UNDERCOVER SPY VAN per store
$100,000 24 hour ANTI-UNION HOTLINE
$7,000,000 Rapid response team with CORPORATE JET

$50 MILLION to settle an off-the-clock class action suit in Colorado

In Texas it is estimated that Walmart cheated workers out of up to $150 million in unpaid wages

• "In a recently certified class-action suit in Texas on behalf of more than 200,000 current and former Wal-Mart workers, statisticians estimate that the company underpaid its Texas workers by $150 million over four years by not paying them for the many times they worked during their daily 15-minute breaks. That $150 million estimate does not include other types of unpaid work. The statisticians, who analyzed time records from 12 Wal-Mart stores, found that the Texas employees averaged at least one hour of unpaid work each week from working through breaks."
• Source: Steven Greenhouse, "Suits Say Wal-Mart Workers Forced To Toil Off The Clock," New York Times, June 25, 2002 [reprinted via Common Dreams]

Wal-Mart Managers delete time from workers' timecards

• In Massachusetts, "a Middlesex court judge has put his imprimatur on a suit alleging the retail giant failed to pay employees for time worked and neglected to give them meal and rest breaks, the Herald has learned. The eight-page ruling by Superior Court Judge Ernest B. Murphy cites an affidavit by a computer expert hired by the plaintiffs. The expert allegedly found 7,000 instances during a one-year period when Wal-Mart managers deleted large blocks of time from their employee payroll records."
• Source: John Strahinich, "Judge OKs Employee Lawsuit Against Wal-Mart," Boston Herald, January 7, 2005.

Wal-Mart currently faces lawsuits in thirty-one different States for wage and hour abuses potentially involving hundreds of thousand workers.

Federal Poverty Level Family of Four - $17,650

 

Average Wal-Mart Hourly Sales Employee Wages - $13,861

Wal-Mart is paying eleven million dollars to settle Federal allegations it used illegal immigrants to clean its stores.

WAL-MART SUBSIDY NATIONWIDE: $1.008 BILLION  (from cities)

Currently in the U.S. there are 26,699,678 SQUARE FEET of empty WAL-MARTS

2001: EPA orders WAL-MART to pay $1.0 MILLION fine for Clean Water Violations in: TEXAS, OKLAHOMA AND MASSACHUSETTS

2004: WAL-MART fined $3.1 MILLION by EPA, the largest ever for a retailer, for Clean Water Act violations in TEXAS, COLORADO, CALIFORNIA, DELAWARE, MICHIGAN, SOUTH DAKOTA, NEW JERSEY, TENNESSEE and UTAH

WAL-MART Imported $18 BILLION from CHINA in 2004

The WALTON FAMILY Has Given LESS THAN 1% of Their Wealth to Charity
Bill Gates has given 58%

In 2004, WAL-MART Employees gave OVER $5 MILLION to help fellow workers

The Walton Family gave $6,000

The WALTON FAMILY received a federal tax cut of: $91,500.00 per HOUR in the 2004 tax year

69 incidents of robbery, rape and murder in Walmart parking lots in first 7 months of 2005

131 communities have voted Walmarts out