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Everyday Low Standards

Love those Wal-Mart bargains? What you save in that big-box store, you may be paying for in your hospital bills—and in deadly hits to public education.

By Dave Winans

And not for the better.

The world's largest corporation soon plans to open 40 general merchandise/grocery "supercenters" in the Golden State, and three of the biggest supermarket chains there are citing Wal-Mart's notoriously meager employee benefits as a reason to demand huge cuts in the health coverage of their unionized workforce—75 percent for new workers and 50 percent for current employees in their central and southern California stores. The result: a bitter strike and lockout of 70,000 members of the United Food and Commercial Workers union (UFCW), of which Tim Strobridge is a member.

These are tough times for the Strobridges, not only because Tim, a Ralphs grocery store receiving clerk, is locked out of work, but because of the potential impact of Wal-Mart on the economy around them.

So influential is this stridently anti-union corporation, says Mary, who is president of the San Miguel Teachers Association, that she fears Wal-Mart standards are exerting a downward pull on contract bargaining for educators and furthering the "erosion of the middle class" in America. "My own local and district are now stuck on the health care issue in bargaining, and only health care," she says. "Why do we have to settle for inferior benefits because minimum-wage workers do?"

That view is shared by the California Teachers Association (CTA), which has offered unwavering support to the supermarket strikers. "Teachers have been wonderful in not crossing the picket lines," says Strobridge, "and many CTA local chapters have 'adopted' struck stores by supplying picketers with water and snacks and walking the lines."

"Solidarity can't just apply to one group, like teachers," she stresses. "It has to stretch out to all unions, from retail clerks to electricians." And in the case of Wal-Mart, she and other California activists say, the more activism, the better.

In fact, they say, if you're concerned about growing out-of-pocket costs for your medical care, worried about kids who arrive in your school without health coverage, or alarmed over the power of the pro-voucher lobby in this country, you might seriously consider mouthing off every time you walk through a Wal-Mart door.

The nation's largest private sector employer, retailer, and grocer has not become the model of corporate efficiency for nothing. With nearly 3,500 U.S. stores, it racked up an $8.2 billion net profit in 2002 and rang up $1.5 billion in sales the day after last Thanksgiving by promising "Always Low Prices"—and delivering.

How? By squeezing out extra pennies from everything from vendor prices to employee compensation—and using some of those proceeds to support anti-public education causes.

For example, campaign finance records show that John Walton, son of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton, donated money for pro-voucher ballot initiatives in California in 1993 and Michigan in 2000 and for a Colorado tuition tax credit measure in 1998. More recently, Walton donated money to pro-voucher state political action committees and pro-voucher school board and legislative candidates.

And, according to tax records, the Walton Family Foundation, largely funded with proceeds from Wal-Mart stocks, funneled $28 million in 2002 to the CEO Foundation and the Children's Scholarship Fund, which promote taxpayer-funded vouchers and private tuition tax credits. Another $300,000 in grants went to the Institute for Justice, a right-wing legal group that defends voucher programs and fights state constitutional barriers to them.

A Model With Costs

As the Los Angeles Times concluded last fall in an extensive series: "The company's size and obsession with shaving costs have made it a global economic force. Its decisions affect wages, working conditions, and manufacturing practices—even the price of a yard of denim—around the world." But in the view of many, not in ways that are healthy to workers.

"As we're seeing in the California grocery strike, the mere presence of Wal-Mart is like a huge neon sign announcing the way to the low road and blocking the entrance to the high road," says Jared Bernstein, a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, which researches economic issues facing working families. "Firms that operate under a model based on higher quality jobs, unions, and low turnover—and higher prices—will be hard-pressed to compete, and thus the quality of those jobs will either deteriorate, or they could even disappear."

Why does this matter to educators? Let's start with medical care. Across the nation, the issue of decent, paid health care has become a "monster at every bargaining table," explains California high school counselor David Turner, an executive board member of the Oakland Education Association. "Time and again, we hear from school employers, 'Everybody else is giving up something; you need to accept health benefit cuts, too.'"

Wal-Mart's non-union workforce of nearly 1.2 million employees helps subsidize bargain basement store prices through pitifully low wages; a bare-bones health plan (with family coverage costing $139 to $277 a month, depending on deductibles); a six-month waiting period for full-timer health care (and a two-year wait for part-timers); and an annual turnover rate of at least 45 percent.

Wal-Mart reports that only 46 percent of its employees are covered by some part of its health plan. The rest receive either taxpayer-supported health care—which competes head-on with public education in many state budgets—or simply go without. And when their ailing, uninsured children arrive in public school classrooms, "Wal-Mart really becomes an education issue," says Turner.

No unions welcomed

It's become a union issue, too. The corporation is well-known for fighting unionization tooth and nail. The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has issued complaints—the rough equivalent of indictments—against Wal-Mart for ejecting UFCW organizers from its stores, harassing or interrogating union activists (without witnesses), conducting unlawful surveillance of union supporters, and undermining union elections with illegal promises, raises, or threats.

And a federal judge has found that Wal-Mart illegally refused to bargain over job function changes it imposed after meat department workers in a Texas store voted for UFCW in a 2000 NLRB representation election. The company demoted these skilled meatcutters to "sales associates" and eliminated meatcutting from all of its stores in favor of prepackaged meat.

Wal-Mart tries to "isolate" union supporters from other workers in its stores and "uses peer pressure to verbally intimidate them," charges Al Zack, UFCW's assistant director of strategic programs. "It's a pretty scary feeling, being all alone and swimming upstream."

So what can educators do? Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton used to say, "The customer is always right," so here's an invitation. "If NEA members who are Wal-Mart customers would tell Wal-Mart associates that they are union members and proud of it," says Zack, "and tell them they would have the support of a lot of their customers who are also union members if they formed a union, that would start to break through [the fear]."

Zack also recommends that NEA local affiliates let Wal-Mart managers know they're being watched for illegal anti-union activities. David Turner likes the sound of that. "I think as educators we should tell the managers of Wal-Mart stores that we won't shop there until their workers have the right to organize, to health care, and to a decent living wage," he says, "and I think our locals should encourage our members to shop elsewhere."

For more, go to www.walmartwatch.org