[h=3]Wages[/h] The activist group
Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy (LAANE) said "in 2006 Walmart reports that full-time hourly associates received, on average, $10.11 an hour." LAANE further calculated that working 34 hours per week an Walmart employee earns $17,874 per year which is roughly twenty percent less than the average retail worker. (The number of hours the "average retail worker" worked was not specified.) The report from LAANE further opines that this pay is "over $10,000 less than what the average two-person family needs."[SUP]
[42][/SUP] Walmart managers are judged, in part, based on their ability to control payroll costs. The wall Street journal claims this puts extra pressure on higher-paid workers to be more productive.[SUP]
[43][/SUP] Walmart insists its wages are generally in line with the current local market in retail labor.[SUP]
[44][/SUP]
Other critics have noted that in 2001, the average wage for a Walmart Sales Clerk was $8.23 per hour, or $13,861 a year, while the federal poverty line for a family of three was $14,630.[SUP]
[45][/SUP] Walmart founder
Sam Walton once said, "I pay low wages. I can take advantage of that. We're going to be successful, but the basis is a very low-wage, low-benefit model of employment."[SUP]
[46][/SUP]
In August 2006, Walmart announced that it would roll out an average pay increase of 6% for all new hires at 1,200 U.S. Walmart and Sam's Club locations, but at the same time would institute pay caps on veteran workers.[SUP]
[47][/SUP] While Walmart maintains that the measures are necessary to stay competitive, critics believe that the salary caps are primarily an effort to push higher-paid veteran workers out of the company.[SUP]
[47][/SUP]
In 2008, Walmart agreed to pay at least $352 million to settle lawsuits claiming that it forced employees to work off the clock. "Several lawyers described it as the largest settlement ever for lawsuits over wage violations."[SUP]
[48][/SUP]
Because Walmart employs part-time and relatively low paid workers, some workers may partially qualify for state welfare programs. This has led critics to claim that Walmart increases the burden on taxpayer-funded services.[SUP]
[49][/SUP][SUP]
[50][/SUP] A 2002 survey by the state of
Georgia's subsidized healthcare system,
PeachCare, found that Walmart was the largest private employer of parents of children enrolled in its program; one quarter of the employees of Georgia Walmarts qualified to enroll their children in the federal subsidized healthcare system
Medicaid.[SUP]
[51][/SUP] A 2004 study at the
University of California, Berkeley charges that Walmart's low wages and benefits are insufficient, and although decreasing the burden on the social safety net to some extent, California taxpayers still pay $86 million a year to Walmart employees.[SUP]
[52][/SUP][SUP]
[53][/SUP]
On September 4, 2008, the
Mexican Supreme Court of Justice ruled that Wal-Mart de Mexico, the Mexican subsidiary of
Walmart, must cease paying its employees in part with vouchers redeemable only at Wal-Mart stores.[SUP]
[54][/SUP]
[h=3]Working conditions[/h] Walmart has also faced accusations involving poor working conditions for its employees. For example, a 2005
class action lawsuit in
Missouri asserted approximately 160,000 to 200,000 people who were forced to work off-the-clock, were denied overtime pay, or were not allowed to take rest and lunch breaks.[SUP]
[55][/SUP] In 2000, Walmart paid $50 million to settle a class-action suit that asserted that 69,000 current and former Walmart employees in Colorado had been forced to work off-the-clock.[SUP]
[55][/SUP] The company has also faced similar lawsuits in other states, including Pennsylvania,[SUP]
[56][/SUP]
Oregon, and [SUP]
[57][/SUP]
Minnesota.[SUP]
[58][/SUP] Class-action suits were also filed in 1995 on behalf of full-time Walmart pharmacists whose base salaries and working hours were reduced as sales declined, resulting in the pharmacists being treated like hourly employees.[SUP]
[59][/SUP]
Walmart has also been accused of ethical problems. It is said that the Walmart employees are gender discriminated during the hiring process and discriminated against in the work area.
Wal-Mart v. Dukes was a discrimination case on behalf of more than 1.5 million current and former female employees of Walmart’s 3,400 stores across the United States. (9th circuit 2007) Dr. William Bliebly who evaluated Walmart’s employment policies "against what social science research shows to be factors that create and sustain bias and those that minimize bias” (Bliebly) and he finished by saying, the men and women not being created equal in the workforce is what Walmart is doing and what they should essentially not be doing.
On October 16, 2006, approximately 200 workers on the morning shift at a Walmart Super Center in
Hialeah Gardens, Florida walked out in protest against new store policies and rallied outside the store, shouting "We want justice" and criticizing the company's recent policies as "inhuman."[SUP]
[60][/SUP] This marks the first time that Walmart had faced a worker-led revolt of such scale, according to both employees and the company.[SUP]
[60][/SUP] Reasons for the revolt included cutting full-time hours, a new attendance policy, and pay caps that the company imposed in August 2006, compelling workers to be available to work any shift (day, swing or night), and that shifts would be assigned by computers at corporate headquarters and not by local managers. Walmart quickly held talks with the workers, addressing their concerns.[SUP]
[60][/SUP] Walmart asserts that its policy permits associates to air grievances without fear of retaliation.[SUP]
[61][/SUP]
A 2004 report by U.S. Representative
George Miller alleged that in ten percent of Walmart's stores, nighttime employees were locked inside, holding them prisoner.[SUP]
[62][/SUP] There has been some concern that Walmart's policy of locking its nighttime employees in the building has been implicated in a longer response time to dealing with various employee emergencies, or weather conditions such as
hurricanes in Florida.[SUP]
[63][/SUP] Walmart said this policy was to protect the workers and the store's contents in high-crime areas and acknowledges that some employees were inconvenienced in some instances for up to an hour as they had trouble locating a manager with the key. However, fire officials confirm that at no time were fire exits locked or employees blocked from escape. Walmart has advised all stores to ensure the door keys are available on site at all times.[SUP]
[63][/SUP]
In January 2004,
The New York Times reported on an internal Walmart audit, conducted in July 2000, which examined one week's time-clock records for roughly 25,000 employees.[SUP]
[64][/SUP] According to the Times, the audit, "pointed to extensive violations of child-labor laws and state regulations requiring time for breaks and meals," including 1,371 instances of minors working too late, during school hours, or for too many hours in a day.[SUP]
[64][/SUP] There were 60,767 missed breaks and 15,705 lost meal times.[SUP]
[64][/SUP] Walmart’s vice president for communications responded that company auditors had determined that the methodology used by The NY Times was flawed, and the company "did not respond to it in any way internally."[SUP]
[64][/SUP]
Walmart has been accused of allowing
undocumented workers to work in its stores. In one case, federal investigators say Walmart executives knew that contractors were using undocumented workers as they had been helping the federal government with an investigation for the previous three years.[SUP]
[65][/SUP] Some critics said that Walmart directly hired undocumented workers, while Walmart claims they were employed by contractors who won bids to work for Walmart.[SUP]
[66][/SUP]
On October 23, 2003, federal agents raided 61 Walmart stores in 21 U.S. states in a crackdown known as "Operation Rollback", resulting in the arrests of 250 nightshift janitors who were undocumented.[SUP]
[67][/SUP] Following the arrests, a grand jury convened to consider charging Walmart executives with labor racketeering crimes for knowingly allowing undocumented workers to work at their stores.[SUP]
[67][/SUP] The workers themselves were employed by agencies Walmart contracted with for cleaning services.[SUP]
[67][/SUP] Walmart blamed the contractors, but federal investigators point to wiretapped conversations showing that executives knew some workers did not have the correct
documentation.[SUP]
[67][/SUP] The October 2003 raid was not the first time Walmart was found using unauthorized workers. Earlier raids in 1998 and 2001 resulted in the arrests of 100 workers without documentation located at Walmart stores around the country.[SUP]
[68][/SUP]
In November 2005, 125 alleged undocumented workers were arrested while working on construction of a new Walmart distribution center in eastern Pennsylvania.[SUP]
[69][/SUP] According to Walmart, the workers were employees of Walmart's construction subcontractor.
[video=youtube;2wo2lcd3BaI]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2wo2lcd3BaI[/video]