That Union Thing
Wal-Mart...Good or Bad for America?
At the turn of the last century, Henry Ford became a success by paying his workers enough so that they could afford to buy his cars. Reversing a 100-year trend, Wal-Mart pays its workers so little that they can only afford to shop at its stores. Wal-Mart has also reversed history by becoming more powerful than its manufacturers, able to dictate business plans, including price, packaging, and quality, in exchange for shelf space at its stores. Manufacturers such as Kentucky Derby Hosiery have been forced to eliminate U.S. jobs and open plants in low-cost countries such as China in order to hang on to their Wal-Mart accounts. According to the Economic Policy Institute, this has undercut the ability of many workers to earn decent wages and benefits.
Legal Action Against Wal-Mart
Wal-Mart has been found guilty of failing to pay overtime to workers who were told to work “off the clock” and of using illegal immigrants. They have also been accused of discriminating against female employees (this is now a class-action lawsuit) and locking workers in stores at night.
The Montana legislature has debated a bill that would levy a 1-2% tax on stores with more than $20 million in sales to help pay for public assistance. A recent study concluded that each Wal-Mart store with 200 or more employees costs taxpayers $421,000 annually, to provide support to the stores low-income workers.
Wal-Mart Numbers:
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$256 billion: sales for 2003 (8% of U.S. retail sales excluding autos; 2% of the U.S. gross domestic product)
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$102 billion: net worth of the five Walton heirs
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$15-30 Billion: goods imported from China each year
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100 million: customers each week
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1.2 million: employees (the largest employer in the U.S.)
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3400: stores
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44%: employee turnover rate each year
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$9.98: average full-time hourly wage
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6: months before new full-time employees will be eligible for health care coverage
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<1/2: employees with health care coverage
Wear Your Union Shirts at Work
A Federal Appeals Court in St. Louis ruled this month that Wal-Mart violated federal labor law when it disciplined a worker for wearing a pro-union t-shirt in its store. The ruling confirms that employees can wear union insignia and encourage others to join the union while at work, all under the protection of federal law, as long as they do not disrupt the workplace.
From AFL-CIO Work In Progress
DELIVERING THE GOODS—Workers at Silver Ink Inc.—a Jacksonville contractor that delivers packages for DHL—voted to join Teamsters Local 512.
ACTORS REACH RECORD DEAL—The Screen Actors and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists reached a historic tentative agreement Jan. 20 with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers. The new three-year deal, worth about $200 million, is the most lucrative pact in the history of actor–producer collective bargaining, the unions said. The agreement includes gains across-the-board for every category of performer in television and motion picture productions, with the most significant advances coming for performers working at scale who rely most heavily on the union contracts. For more information, visit www.sag.org.
WAL-MART’S TOP 10 OF THE WORST—The Multinational Monitor, which tracks corporate activity, has named Wal-Mart one of the 10 worst corporations in 2004. It cites a class-action lawsuit on behalf of 1.6 million women workers alleging rampant employment discrimination and the retailer’s shifting of workers’ health care and other costs to taxpayers.
ELIGHT AT SKYLIGHT—AFM members at Skylight Opera Theatre in Milwaukee unanimously ratified a first (three-year) contract that improves job security, designates 25 musicians as nonprobationary, adds a grievance and arbitration procedure, and raises pay.
COLLEGE UNIONS WIN FLORIDA CASE—According to the state’s 1st District Court of Appeals, Florida officials had no right in 2003 to terminate the collective bargaining agreements of the faculty and employee unions at its public universities. The court ruled the state government may not “unilaterally terminate its obligations under a collective-bargaining agreement simply by reorganizing the executive branch, where the employees affected perform the same work, in the same jobs, under the same supervisors, by operating the same facilities, carrying on the same enterprise, providing the same service.”
What Is Social Security?
SOCIAL SECURITY provides a guaranteed income each year for more than 47 million retirees, family members of workers who died and people with disabilities. About 30 percent of Social Security beneficiaries receive survivor or disability benefits.
Nearly two-thirds of retirees count on Social Security for most of their retirement incomes.
Social Security is a safety net that keeps retirees out of poverty. Between 1960 and 2004, Social Security helped cut the poverty rate among seniors by more than two-thirds, from 35 percent to 10 percent.
Social Security beneficiaries earned their benefits by paying into the system throughout their time at work.
We must strengthen Social Security, but we must take the time to get it right. Social Security is a sound system that can meet 100 percent of its obligations until 2042 (some projections say 2052). After 2042, if no changes are made, funds from Social Security payroll taxes will be sufficient to finance nearly 70 percent of the payments to beneficiaries.
Administrative costs for Social Security are less than 1 cent per dollar paid out in benefits. This is much lower than the average administrative costs of 12 to 14 percent for private insurers.
Privatization backers are trying to scare Americans into believing Social Security faces a crisis so they can sell privatization. But while Social Security does face problems that must be addressed, privatization will make the situation worse, not better.
In fact, under privatization proposals:
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The average worker would lose $152,000 in guaranteed retirement benefits.
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Guaranteed benefits would be cut by 40 percent even for workers who don’t choose to have a privatized account.
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For workers who do choose privatized accounts, the government will take back 70 cents in Social Security benefits for every $1 in their accounts. That’s on top of the 40 percent guaranteed benefit cut.
Social Security
FIX IT. DON’T RISK IT.
AFL-CIO
www.aflcio.org/socialsecurity
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