Opportunity and Benefits at Walmart
Many Walmart workers are forced to utilize state subsidized benefits. Three major studies—one in Georgia, one in California, and one in Massachusetts—found that Walmart was the employer that had workers most reliant on government assistance. It is estimated that Walmart employees cost taxpayers more than $1 billion nationwide.
As of January 2012, Walmart no longer offers health benefits to employees who work less than 24 hours per week. Walmart also raised premiums for full time employees by up to 120 percent.
Walmart has a long history of denying its employees the right to organize and right to collectively bargain. The company deploys numerous anti-union tactics, including requiring workers to attend anti-union meetings and specially training supervisors in union avoidance.
“The [flexible scheduling] policy is designed to force higher-paid full-time workers to reduce their status to part-time, or quit (and be replaced with part-time workers), since this would save Walmart ‘enormous amounts of money from reduced salaries and benefits paid.’”
Between July 2005 and June 2011, Walmart settled an estimated 70 state and federal class action wage and hour lawsuits and lost one jury trial of a wage and hour case, involving a total of well over a million current and former employees and costing the company over $1 billion. The lawsuits covered wage and hour violations that occurred between the late 1990s and 2010, including unpaid wages and lack of legally required breaks.
Walmart subcontracts warehouse work to third party companies who then subcontract with temp agencies to supply workers. At one Walmart contractor, Schneider Logistics, which operates several warehouse facilities in Southern California, Illinois and other parts of the country, workers recently filed a class action lawsuit in federal court detailing a pattern of abuses leading to workers being paid below the legal minimum.
Walmart business strategy relies on a global supply chain to deliver cheaply made products to its store shelves. This system puts relentless pressure on suppliers to cut costs which often leads to workers in developing countries such as China and Bangladesh to toil for incredibly low wages, sometimes as low as $80 per month.
Our people making difference
A group of Walmart workers went on strike in Southern California Wednesday in the first set of protests leading up to the holiday shopping season.
Activists say the protests began at about 7:30 a.m. Pacific time outside some Southern California stores, and is organized by OUR Walmart, an advocacy organization with ties to the United Food and Commercial Workers Union.
Wednesday's protests are the latest in a series of worker actions this year aimed at drawing attention to what workers say are their low wages, unpredictable hours and management retaliation.
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