Mark and Brian: Employees

EMPLOYEES

• In the past few years, more than 100 unfair labor practice charges have been lodged against Wal-Mart throughout the country, with 43 charges filed in 2002 alone.
• Since 1995, the United States 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 right to organize, which is protected by the National Labor Relations Act. This right is internationally recognized as a core labor standard, as well as a basic human right.
• In Labor Statistics from January 2004, union workers earn median weekly salaries of $760, while non-union workers' median weekly salaries were $599. This is a difference of over 26 percent.
• No Wal-Mart store in the United States is represented by a union, and the company takes a pro-active role in maintaining this union-free status.
• In the past, Wal-Mart has closed 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. These signs include "frequent meetings at associates' homes" and "associates who are never seen together start talking or associating with each other." The toolbox also gives managers a hotline to call if signs start appearing so that company specialists can respond quickly and stop 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.
• Wal-Mart closed its store in 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 is also helping itself keep employees' wages low.

Low Wages

• Wal-Mart is the nation's largest private sector employer with an estimated 1.2 million employees.
• Statistics from 2001 show that the average supermarket employee made $10.35 per hour. Sales clerks at Wal-Mart, on the other hand, made only $8.23 per hour on average, which works out to about $13,861 per year.
• This annual salary fell below the 2001 federal poverty line of $14,630 for a family of three.
• In 2005, the average two-person family (one parent and one child) needed $27,948 to meet basic needs, which was well above what Wal-Mart reports that its average full-time associate earns.
• A single parent employed full-time at Wal-Mart and raising two children does not earn enough money to supply the family's basic needs by shopping at that same Wal-Mart.
• Wal-Mart's chief executive, is paid $17.5 million. This means that every two weeks he was paid about as much as his average employee will earn in a lifetime.
• With an average on-the-clock workweek of 32 hours, many workers take home less than $1,000 per month.
• Hourly does rise eventually, but more than 40 percent of the company's workers leave every year.
• The Fair Labor Standards Act, 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. While wages are low at Wal-Mart, many times employees are not paid at all.
• In 2001, Wal-Mart had to pay 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 New Mexico, who filed a lawsuit over unpaid work as well.
• In a Texas class-action 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. This was based just 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. 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 to attest to Wal-Mart's employment benefits and support of local communities.