Mark and Brian: Employees

EMPLOYEES

• In the last few years, well over 100 unfair labor practice charges have been lodged against Wal-Mart throughout the country, with 43 charges filed in 2002 alone
• Since 1995, the U.S. government has been forced to issue at least 60 complaints against Wal-Mart at the National Labor Relations Board
• Wal-Mart's labor law violations range from illegally firing workers who attempt to organize a union to unlawful surveillance, threats, and intimidation of employees who dare to speak out

Unions

• Workers have the to organize, which is protected by the National Labor Relations Act. This right is internationally recognized as a core labor standard and a basic human right.
• Labor Statistics in January 2004, union workers earn median weekly salaries of $760, compared to non-union workers' median weekly salaries of $599 – a difference of over 26 percent
• With not a single Wal-Mart store in the United States represented by a union, the company takes a pro-active role in maintaining its union-free status.
• Wal-Mart closes down stores and departments that unionize
• Wal-Mart has issued "A Manager's Toolbox to Remaining Union Free," which provides managers with lists of warning signs that workers might be organizing, including "frequent meetings at associates' homes" and "associates who are never seen together start talking or associating with each other." The "Toolbox" gives managers a hotline to call so that company specialists can respond rapidly and head off any attempt by employees to organize.
• In 2000, when a small meatcutting department successfully organized a union at a Wal-Mart store in Texas, Wal-Mart responded a week later by announcing the phase-out of its meatcutting departments entirely. Because of deficient labor laws, it took the meatcutters in Texas three years to win their jobs back with an order that Wal-Mart bargain with their union. Rather than comply, Wal-Mart is appealing this decision.
• Wal-Mart closed its store in Jonquierre, Quebec in April 2005 after its employees received union certification. The store became the first unionized Wal-Mart in North America when 51 percent of the employees at the store signed union cards
• By keeping unions at bay, Wal-Mart keeps its wages low

Low Wages

• Nation's largest private sector employer with an estimated 1.2 million employees
• The average supermarket employee makes $10.35 per hour. Sales clerks at Wal-Mart, on the other hand, made only $8.23 per hour on average, or $13,861 per year, in 2001
• Annual salary fell below the 2001 federal poverty line of $14,630 for a family of three
• The average two-person family (one parent and one child) needed $27,948 to meet basic needs in 2005, well above what Wal-Mart reports that its average full-time associate earns
• But last year Scott Lee Jr., Wal-Mart's chief executive, was paid $17.5 million. That is, every two weeks Mr. Lee was paid about as much as his average employee will earn in a lifetime
• A single parent employed full-time at Salina's Wal-Mart and raising two children aged 4 and 12 does not earn enough money to supply the family's basic needs by shopping at that same Wal-Mart
• With an average on-the-clock workweek of 32 hours, many workers take home less than $1,000 per month
• Hourly pay rises eventually, but the 2001 PBS report "Store Wars" found that most employees have left by the end of their first year - more than 40 percent of the company's workers leave every year.
• While wages are low at Wal-Mart, too often employees are not paid at all. The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), along with state wage and hour laws, requires hourly employees to be paid for all time actually worked at no less than a minimum wage and at time-and-a-half for all hours worked over 40 in a week
• In 2001, Wal-Mart forked over $50 million in unpaid wages to 69,000 workers in Colorado. These wages were paid only after the workers filed a class action lawsuit. Wal-Mart had been working the employees off-the-clock. The company also paid $500,000 to 120 workers in Gallup, New Mexico, who filed a lawsuit over unpaid work
• In a Texas class-action certified in 2002 on behalf of 200,000 former and current Wal-Mart employees, statisticians estimated that the company shortchanged its workers $150 million over four years – just based on the frequency of employees working through their daily 15 minute breaks
• In Oregon, 400 employees in 27 stores sued the company for unpaid, off-the-clock overtime. In their suit, the workers explained that managers would delete hours from their time records and tell employees to clean the store after they clocked out. In December 2002, a jury found in favor of the workers.[30] One personnel manager claimed that, for six years, she was forced to delete hours from employee time sheets
• As of December 2002, there were thirty-nine class-action lawsuits against the company in thirty states, claiming tens of millions of dollars in back pay
• Wal-Mart has attempted to offset its labor record with advertising campaigns utilizing employees (who are called "associates") to attest to Wal-Mart's employment benefits and support of local communities