Laurie Essig

Wal-Mart to add tens of thousands of jobs and we ' ll all be worse off

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Mega retailer Wal-Mart announced that they will add over 20,000 jobs this year. Break out the champagne and your resume. Employment is just around the corner. Wal-Mart expects to add 22,000 jobs at new stores in '09 - Jun. 4, 2009. Actually better put the champagne away and break out the water - the free kind out of the tap because believe me, on a Wal-Mart salary, we cannot afford to drink bottled water. Even if you yourself are not going to be working at Wal-Mart, you will have to pay for the people who do. That's because Wal-Mart wages are so low and benefits so rare, that the taxpayers end up footing the bill for their employees. A 2004 study on Wal-Mart in California that came out of the Labor Center at UC Berkeley found that

We estimate that Wal-Mart workers in California earn on average 31 percent less than workers employed in large retail as a whole,receiving an average wage of $9.70 per hour compared to the $14.01 average hourly earningsfor employees in large retail (firms with 1,000 or more employees). In addition, 23 percent fewer Wal-Mart workers are covered by employer-sponsored health insurance than large retail workers as a whole... At these low-wages, many Wal-Mart workers rely on public safety net programs—such as food stamps, Medi-Cal, and subsidized housing—to make ends meet. The presence of Wal-Mart stores in California thus creates a hidden cost to the state’s taxpayers.

Of course, this is not news to anyone who has read Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed. In that book, Ehrenreich tries to get by on a Wal-Mart salary (although she kinda tries to disguise the identity of Wal-Mart) and it is, of course, impossible - even with Ehrenreich "cheating" by having a car and a wee bit of savings. We can only imagine how difficult it is to get by without being an undercover brilliant author like Ehrenreich who works at Wal-Mart with all the benefits of her education and first and last month's rent. So while we're drinking our free water to celebrate the creation of Wal-Mart jobs at a high cost to taxpayers, the employees, local business, and the environment, maybe we should also consider resisting?  In her book, Big Box Swindle, Stacy Mitchell shows not only how companies like Wal-Mart destroy communities, but how many communities are successfully resisting allowing big-box stores in. Stopping Wal-Mart from creating these "jobs" that in fact are a form of exploitation of workers and taxpayers would be worth breaking out the champagne for.

Wal-Mart to add tens of thousands of jobs and we ' ll all be worse off

[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Image via Wikipedia"][/caption]

Mega retailer Wal-Mart announced that they will add over 20,000 jobs this year. Break out the champagne and your resume. Employment is just around the corner. Wal-Mart expects to add 22,000 jobs at new stores in '09 - Jun. 4, 2009. Actually better put the champagne away and break out the water - the free kind out of the tap because believe me, on a Wal-Mart salary, we cannot afford to drink bottled water. Even if you yourself are not going to be working at Wal-Mart, you will have to pay for the people who do. That's because Wal-Mart wages are so low and benefits so rare, that the taxpayers end up footing the bill for their employees. A 2004 study on Wal-Mart in California that came out of the Labor Center at UC Berkeley found that

We estimate that Wal-Mart workers in California earn on average 31 percent less than workers employed in large retail as a whole,receiving an average wage of $9.70 per hour compared to the $14.01 average hourly earningsfor employees in large retail (firms with 1,000 or more employees). In addition, 23 percent fewer Wal-Mart workers are covered by employer-sponsored health insurance than large retail workers as a whole... At these low-wages, many Wal-Mart workers rely on public safety net programs—such as food stamps, Medi-Cal, and subsidized housing—to make ends meet. The presence of Wal-Mart stores in California thus creates a hidden cost to the state’s taxpayers.

Of course, this is not news to anyone who has read Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed. In that book, Ehrenreich tries to get by on a Wal-Mart salary (although she kinda tries to disguise the identity of Wal-Mart) and it is, of course, impossible - even with Ehrenreich "cheating" by having a car and a wee bit of savings. We can only imagine how difficult it is to get by without being an undercover brilliant author like Ehrenreich who works at Wal-Mart with all the benefits of her education and first and last month's rent. So while we're drinking our free water to celebrate the creation of Wal-Mart jobs at a high cost to taxpayers, the employees, local business, and the environment, maybe we should also consider resisting?  In her book, Big Box Swindle, Stacy Mitchell shows not only how companies like Wal-Mart destroy communities, but how many communities are successfully resisting allowing big-box stores in. Stopping Wal-Mart from creating these "jobs" that in fact are a form of exploitation of workers and taxpayers would be worth breaking out the champagne for.