The Wal-Mart Tax
The national advocacy group Wal-Mart Watch has a useful new round-up of data on the hidden costs to the public of Wal-Mart economics. In 11 states, media and advocacy groups have analyzed how many Wal-Mart employees are forced onto Medicaid and other taxpayer-funded health programs because of the retail giant's low pay and horrible health benefits:
Consider these numbers: 2,800 in Arizona, 12,300 in Florida, 9,617 in Tennessee, 589 in New Jersey… the list goes on and on. These are actual numbers of Wal-Mart employees and dependents who rely on taxpayer assistance for their healthcare. Wal-Mart tops the list again. Far more than any other employer, Wal-Mart shifts the burden onto taxpayers rather than provide the health care benefits themselves.Visit here to see information on your state and what Wal-Mart Watch is doing about it.
We call it "The Wal-Mart Tax." Despite earning over $10 billion in profit last year, the world's largest company leaves over 53% of its employees without health care benefits. Wal-Mart's greed will cost American taxpayers more than $1.5 billion dollars per year.
1 Comments:
It stinks that such a large company with such huge profits would not repay it's employees with a living wage or with health benefits. I live in a town with a Super Wal-Mart and I know a few people who work at this facility. All of them have the same story. As an employee, you are promised benefits if you are what they consider to be a full-time employee for a certain amount of time. Usually, this means you need to work over 35 hours per week consistantly for 90 days. Even after you quailfy for health benefits, you have to keep up the 35 hours plus per week or you loose your benefits. Now, what the clever little schedule makers do is schedule people at between 30 to 34 hours per week to keep them from being considered a full-time employee, therefore preventing the employee from qulifying for health benefits and the company from paying for employee benefits. Wal-Mart is not the only company who does this, it's just the largest. Also, you might want to look into what kind of insurance Wal-Mart offers it's employees that somehow manage to qualify. Most employer funded plans are not so great. Every person I have spoken with in our area who is involved with health care tells me that in the US it is much more beneficial to have no insurance than to have little or bad insurance. It seems as though employers in general need to work on finding and funding more effective health plans for their employees rather than leave so many health care costs to taxpayers.
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