Our Community First

Wal-Mart, Low Wages & Health Care =
Public Subsidies, Medicaid and Corporate Welfare

Wal-Mart's health insurance is so costly that only 41-46% of its workers can afford it-compared to 66-72% at similar businesses (Congressional report issued by Rep. George Miller of California in February 2004).

Wal-Mart spends an average of $3,500 per employee on health care-about 40% less than the average for all U.S. corporations (Mercer Human Resources Consulting).

New employees must wait six months to get health care; coverage for many pre-existing conditions does not kick in for a year; deductibles of up to $1,000 are triple the norm; Part-time Wal-Mart workers have to wait two years to get on the health care plan, on average (Kaiser Family Foundation).

By comparison, unionized Safeway workers here in Bend get full health care coverage 60 days after hiring, provided they have worked a total of 80 hours in the past month (20 hours @ week). Moreover, Safeway pays over $400 a month @ employee into a health insurance trust that provides excellent benefits for Safeway employees. (United Food and Commercial Workers union contract with Safeway).

Many Wal-Mart workers are forced to rely on public assistance-which costs taxpayers an average of $420,750 per year for a Wal-Mart that employs at least 200 people. Combined employment at Wal-Mart's Bend and Redmond stores is 450 workers, according to Economic Development of Central Oregon. Wal-Mart workers need help for health care, food, shelter, energy assistance, education, school lunch programs, and other programs to aid low-income people. (Congressional report issued by Rep. George Miller of California in February 2004).

25 percent of Wal-Mart workers in Tennessee are enrolled in the state health care plan for the poor and uninsured. Over 10,000 children of Wal-Mart workers are in the Georgia health plan for low-income families. Almost 4,000 children from Wal-Mart families are on Medicaid in Alabama. Over 13 percent of Wal-Mart's 91,000 full and part time workers in Florida are on Medicaid. Five percent of Wal-Mart workers in Iowa are on Medicaid.

Last year, Wal-Mart spent over $2.4 million to defeat California's Proposition 72, which would have required all large employers to provide basic health insurance to their workers.

A full time Wal-Mart worker (34 or more hours a week, according to Wal-Mart) makes a poverty wage. At $7.50 an hour (starting pay at the Central Oregon Wal-Mart's), a 34-hour a week job provides a before tax annual income of just $13,260. This is $2,410 below the 2004 federal poverty level of $15,670 for a family of three (Personnel managers at two local Wal-Mart stores). A full-time job should get you out of poverty, not keep you in it. Wal-Mart wages keep people in poverty.

For a company that made $10 billion in profits last year-up a billion-Wal-Mart gets an awful lot of taxpayer-funded corporate welfare.