Southside Pride

On a blustery day in late November, demonstrators converged on Wal-Marts in Blaine, Vadnais Heights, Hastings and Oak Park. They were part of a national day of action that brought together over 300 organizations, with such groups as the National Organization for Women, the Alliance for Retired Americans, and the Buy American Campaign uniting with scores of labor and religious organizations. Their main demand: Wal-Mart should pay their “associates” a decent wage with decent benefits.

United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Union local 789 in South St. Paul spearheaded the regional action. Earlier that day, over fifty participants gathered together in the union hall talking, sipping coffee and putting labor T-shirts on over their winter jackets. They had recently received an anonymous letter from a Wal-Mart employee tipping them off to a lengthy meeting where management had warned the employees to expect bomb threats, harassment, and a chanting, sign-waving union mob parading around. This letter got a sad chuckle from the union rally group as Jennifer Christensen, union rep and organizer, explained the game plan. “We’re just going to introduce ourselves to the workers. Grab a basket and buy a small non-food item, something we can donate to a shelter. Tell the workers we’re with the union, have a happy holiday, and let them know that we think they are worth more. Shouldn’t take more than ten to twenty minutes, tops.”

The spirit of the action wasn’t so much a protest as a support-your-fellow-worker rally. In a later press release, UFCW International President Doug Dority stated, “This is not about protesting Wal-Mart. We’re here to demonstrate our support for Wal-Mart workers, our communities, and American values.”

Local 789 president Bill Pearson echoed those sentiments. “For years we talked in terms that led Wal-Mart workers to believe that we were against them. The reality is they are the victims of an employer whose sole concern is profits.”
And so it went. Some Wal-Mart employees appeared supportive, some didn’t. “We had some people who looked down at their shoes and wouldn’t talk,” said Don Seaquist, a rally participant. “Some were friendly and chatted and others looked scared by the whole thing and would say, in a monotone, that they didn’t want to lose their jobs.”

Wal-Mart is the largest private employer in the world with 1.3 million workers. Based on employee contacts across the country, non-supervisory employees get approximately $7.50 to $8.50 an hour, and on average have a “full-time” 32-hour work week. These wages and hours put the median income of a Wal-Mart employee at about $13,000 a year. Low wages and short hours mean that nearly half of Wal-Mart employees are eligible for food stamps, and that, in turn, explains why Wal-Mart has a turn-over of a whopping 500,000 workers a year, or nearly half of their workforce.

As for benefits, nearly two-thirds of Wal-Mart’s employees—about 700,000 workers—don’t have Wal-Mart insurance. They can’t afford to; the cost for comprehensive family coverage is about $192 every two weeks. This not only puts the workers and their families in real danger if they ever need medical help, but it affects you as well. Those 700,000 workers either remain uncovered, get health insurance through their spouse’s employers or go through state and federal programs courtesy of you, the tax payer.

Maybe the case could be made that Wal-Mart is so busy saving customer’s money on their merchandise that they simply can’t afford to pay their workers outrageously high wages like those darned unions do (according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, union members in retail occupations earn about 32 percent more on average). Maybe Wal-Mart’s profit margins are just too thin.

Seems doubtful. The Jobs Now Coalition has statistics showing that over the last three decades profits in the retail sector rose by 158 percent, about two-and-a-half times higher than the average for corporate profits. Incidentally, 40 percent of Minnesota’s minimum wage earners work in retail.

That being said, Wal-Mart’s fiscal year earnings for 2001 were $217.7 billion dollars, with about $7 billion of that as pure profit. According to their Web site, they have plans for 2003 to open 50 new discount stores, 185 new superstores and 50 new Sam’s Clubs in the United States. That comes to 285 new Wal-Marts in one year, popping up in a neighborhood near you. Somebody must be getting rich on this whole deal, and it certainly isn’t the workers.

Sam Walton has passed on, but his children and widow are still with us. Perhaps somebody ought to check in on the Walton kinfolk to make sure they are OK. Maybe they’ve fallen on hard times down in Arkansas and can’t afford to pay their workers better.

Or maybe not. You can find their smiling faces in Forbes magazine, ranked as the 6th,7th,8th,9th and 10th richest people in the world. Jim has $20.8 billion, John (Boy) has $20.7 billion, Alice has $20.5 billion, Rob has $20.5 billion and Helen (Sam’s widow) has $20.4 billion. Those five people have amassed fortunes of about $102 billion.

Some people will point out that less than 1 percent of that could provide affordable health care for all their workers. But that’s crazy talk. And all that wealth for five people while half a million of their workers literally can’t afford to work for their company and quit every year? That’s business as usual, pal.

Top that off with the fact that Wal-Mart—which didn’t respond when contacted for this article—faces 38 state and federal lawsuits for forcing workers to work off-the-clock, plus the largest sex discrimination lawsuit in history. Not all this flack is coming from the left, either. Who stated flat-out that “Wal-Mart, not big government, is responsible for the demise of Main Street across America”? Arch-conservative Pat Buchanan, that’s who.

Then there is the whole sweatshop thing. In his autobiography “Made in America: My Story,” founder Sam Walton preached, “Buy American.” Times have changed. USA Today, in the August 14, 2001 issue, reported, “Wal-Mart has more than 1,107 international operations... Bangladesh workers earn as little as nine cents an hour making shirts for Wal-Mart.”

Sounds like a win-win for giant retail. With manufacturing jobs here in the United States disappearing to cheap labor overseas, there will be just that many more poor Americans desperate for a job. Any job.

And the beat goes on. The Friday after Thanksgiving, Wal-Mart reported $1.43 billion in sales, an all-time one-day record.