Stop Wal-Mart — Now!

by Dick Meister

If you work for a living, watch out. A race to take you to the economic bottom is well underway. You, too, could end up like workers at Wal-Mart, the country's largest private employer. You, too, could end up barely making a living. You, too, could be thrust out of the shrinking middle class.

Think I'm exaggerating? Consider the recently concluded strike and lockout involving 70,000 supermarket workers in Southern California.

Their working conditions had been cited widely as models by those seeking fair treatment for workers in the service trades that have supplanted manufacturing as the country's major source of employment. They were solid members of the middle class, thanks to decent, albeit modest, rates of pay that reached about $20 an hour and decent fringe benefits, notably including health insurance that was financed entirely by their multi-billion-dollar employers.

But no more. The workers, in desperate financial straits after 4 1/2 months on the picket lines, their union near bankruptcy, had little choice but to agree to a contract that goes a long way toward allowing their employers to treat them the same as Wal-Mart, the employers' role model, treats its blatantly exploited workers.

The three-year contract provides no wage increases, requires employees to eventually pay part of their health insurance premiums and cuts their pension benefits. Worst of all, it creates a two-tier system under which newly hired workers will get substantially less in pay and benefits than current employees. Because of the heavy turnover among supermarket employees and the incentive the system gives the markets to replace senior workers, they are certain to end up with a significant number of marginally compensated employees.

Supermarkets also are likely to end up dealing with a much weaker union. The two-tier system strikes at the basic union principles of solidarity and equal pay for equal work by dividing workers into two groups, those in one group paid less than the others, although they do the same work.

The Southern California employers' victory is sure to inspire employers nationwide to seek similar union concessions, beginning in Northern California, where supermarket contracts are soon to expire. Major contracts covering auto workers, teamsters, and hotel and hospital workers expiring within the next year or two also will be affected.

Although organized labor waged a major campaign in support of the Southern California workers, it obviously was not nearly enough. What's critically needed is a massive campaign by the entire labor movement to bring the benefits of unionization to the highly exploited 1.1 million employees of Wal-Mart, lest the country's other employers join Southern California's supermarkets in emulating Wal-Mart.

Rightly or wrongly, many of the other employers claim that competitive pressures caused by non-union Wal-Mart's position as the country's largest private employer and largest retailer force them to follow its lead.

They are being led to the bottom. Wal-Mart keeps the workers at its 3,500 stores in a state of virtual poverty. It pays them less than $9 an hour for their average work weeks of 32 hours — less than $15,000 a year — and does not even offer retirement benefits. It does offer health insurance, but to get it employees must pay nearly half the cost. Only about 40 percent can afford to do so and instead must rely on public health services, as do many Wal-Mart retirees. A like number of employees qualify for government food stamp programs and other public assistance.

Which means that taxpayers are subsidizing Wal-Mart's ever-increasing profits by providing aid that wouldn't be needed if the corporation provided decent compensation. Yes, customers pay less for many items at Wal-Mart. But those lower prices are possible only because of the low pay and benefits of the stores' workers and Wal-Mart's heavy reliance on goods supplied cheaply by manufacturers in developing countries where workers are treated even worse.

"In a world of Wal-Marts," notes AFL-CIO President John Sweeney, "the American middle class would disappear."

Providing Wal-Mart employees the badly needed protection of unionization undoubtedly would trigger a resurgence of union organizing nationwide. But it won't be easy. As government investigators, union organizers and many current and former employees have reported, Wal-Mart routinely disciplines those who dare seek union representation. Firings, demotions, reductions in pay and working hours and other illegal actions against union supporters are common.

Labor rarely has faced a more urgent challenge. Its future may very well depend on the outcome.

Copyright © 2004 Dick Meister, a San Francisco-based freelance columnist who has covered labor issues for four decades as a reporter, editor and commentator. (dickmeistersf@earthlink.net)