Countless words have been published about the retrograde labor practices of Wal-Mart, but none of that writing conveyed as much as the short message recentlyreported to have been taped to a bin in an employees-only area at one of the company’s stores in Ohio: “Please donate food items here so Associates in Need can enjoy Thanksgiving Dinner.”
My first reaction was that this was a stunt staged by the Yes Men to embarrass the giant retailer. Yet it was all too real. In fact, a corporate spokesperson saw nothing amiss, saying it showed how much the company’s employees care about each other. No doubt they do, but the problem is that Wal-Mart is so deliberately obtuse about its obligation to provide a decent living to those on its payroll.
Leaving it to hard-pressed workers to support their colleagues is just one of the ways Wal-Mart shifts its costs to others. The company puts a much bigger burden on taxpayers, who end up paying for the healthcare coverage that so many of its employees must get from public programs such as Medicaid.
In the early 2000s some states began to disclose which employers accounted for the most low-wage workers and their dependents in these programs. Wal-Mart was invariably at or near the top of these lists. (See the Good Jobs First compilation here.)
Unfortunately, fewer of these lists are being released (and the Affordable Care Act will apparently do nothing to help). Yet the few recent disclosures show Wal-Mart is still creating more of these hidden taxpayer costs than any other company. For example, in July the Dayton Daily News obtained data from the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services indicating that Wal-Mart had more employees or household members on Medicaid or food stamps than any other employer in the state. The most recent compilation of employers accounting for the largest number of recipients in Connecticut’s Husky program (its version of Medicaid) also had Wal-Mart as number one.