Wal-Mart - Selling Out American Workers

摘要

When General Motors was the nation's largest and most emulated employer, there was truth to the famous assertion by Charles Wilson, General Motors President from 1941 to 1953, that what was good for General Motors was good for the country. In the decades following World War II, the United States was an unmatched industrial power and many of its workers reaped the benefits. Manufacturing jobs in the U.S., which generally provided good pay and benefits, made up 35 percent of America's workforce in 1953. Jobs were plentiful and so were profits. General Motors brought prosperity to factory towns and made American workers the envy of the world. With a high-wage union job, an assembly- line worker could afford a house, a decent car, received health care benefits and even had a pension. Today, things are very different for the American worker. Manufacturing jobs now represent less than 12 percent of all U.S. employment Service industries now employ about three quarters of the workforce, with many workers trapped in low-wage, dead-end jobs. Instead of General Motors, Wal-Mart is America's largest employer with 1.2 million U.S. employees, none of them unionized. There is strong evidence that what is good for Wal-Mart is not necessarily good for the American worker. The giant retailer generated over $9 billion dollars in profits in its most recent fiscal year, yet most of the company's rank and file employees earn wages that put them below the federal poverty level. Additionally, more than half of Wal-Marts employees are not covered by an employer-provided health insurance plan. Wal-Mart imposes a waiting period for health care eligibility and even those employees who are eligible can often not afford the cost of the plan. There is considerable evidence of Wal-Mart frequently violates worker protection and anti- discrimination statutes with its employees.