Just when you think Wal-Mart can’t treat their workers any worse, they manage to find a way.
Yesterday, Wal-Mart announced that it was eliminating the health insurance option for workers who worked less than 30 hours per week. About 30,000 workers are afffected. That’s roughly 2 NBA arenas worth. Wal-Mart says it is taking this position because its healthcare costs have increased $500 million in the past year, $130 million more than they projected. Wal-Mart didn’t say so directly, but indirectly it suggested that Obamacare was to blame. Let me raise another possible cause: greed. Half a billion dollars is a lot of money, but that’s not the cost of the insurance of the 30,000 dropped workers, that’s the total marginal increase for its 1.2 million workforce. If you look at the big picture though, last year, Wal-Mart had $473 Billion in revenue and $16 Billion in profit after taxes. Wal-Mart returned $13 Billion of that profit to shareholders in the form of dividends. Walmart’s largest shareholders include members of the Walton family with a combined net worth of over $150 Billion. (I always capitalize Billion because any time you are talking about a thousand times a million dollars, I think it’s worth an upper-case letter.)
In other words, Wal-Mart is cutting the insurance of 30,000 workers (and more family members) because Wal-Mart billionaires weren’t rich enough. Now, Wal-Mart is getting all of the benefit of cutting the insurance completely right. What are they doing for the affected workers? They are hiring a consultant to help them find “affordable” health insurance. You know what would make health insurance affordable? A RAISE. No sign of that. Those who aren’t having their insurance eliminated are having their premiums increased. You know what would make that affordable? A RAISE. Again – silence.
If Wal-Mart admits that 30,000 workers are affected, you can bet in the real world the number is much higher, because there is even more incentive now to keep workers’ hours under 30 per week. If you work at Wal-Mart, you need all the hours you can get because even 40 hours a week doesn’t necessarily mean you can provide for your family. If you have been getting 33-34 hours per week, you can bet that a week after this policy goes into effect you will be getting 29. That means you will lose your insurance and have your pay cut 10% or more. You will still be working too many hours to fill in with another job that provides benefits. In states like Indiana (that refused to expand Medicaid under Obamacare) there may be no subsidized health insurance that you qualify for.
The arrogance of Wal-Mart never ceases to amaze me. A highly profitable company, already under presssure for low wages, poor working conditions and open hostility to unionization going out and CUTTING the wages of its most vulnerable employees. I would boycott Wal-Mart if I wasn’t doing so already. I thought about what I can do to show compassion and solidarity to these workers, and I decided to give a FREE ONE HOUR ATTORNEY CONSULTATION TO WAL-MART WORKERS. For the rest of 2014, I am going to give a free 1-hour attorney consultation to the first 30 (maybe more) Wal-Mart workers and their dependents who contact me, with no obligation or expectation that they will pay any more. Although I usually talk to people on the phone the first time for free, I usually charge for office consultations. So this is a significant perk for Wal-Mart workers. I hope quite a few take advantage of it. I’m sure I’ll be able to be of significant help with debt collection matters in particular.
