[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 151 (2005), Part 17]
[House]
[Pages 23931-23932]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




   WAL-MART MAKING LIFE WORSE FOR WORKERS WHILE APPEARING TO DO GOOD

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from California (Mr. George Miller) is recognized for 5 
minutes.
  Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, this morning the New 
York Times reported an absolutely shocking story. The Times published 
an internal memo from Wal-Mart written earlier this year. The contents 
of that memo are stunning.
  The memo, penned by Wal-Mart's executive vice president for benefits, 
is concerned with employee benefits, namely how to cut the cost of 
benefits while improving Wal-Mart's public relations. In other words, 
the memo laid out a scheme whereby Wal-Mart will make life worse for 
working people, while appearing to do good. It focused on cosmetic 
improvements to Wal-Mart's image and real damage to Wal-Mart's 
employees.

                              {time}  1930

  First of all, the memo admits that Wal-Mart's critics are onto 
something.
  The memo states that Wal-Mart's health care plan, for example, is 
expensive for low-income families, and Wal-Mart has a significant 
percentage of associates and their children on public assistance. The 
memo states that 46 percent of children of Wal-Mart employees are 
either on Medicaid or uninsured. It reveals that in 2004, 38 percent of 
Wal-Mart's employees enrolled in the company health plan spent more 
than 16 percent of the average Wal-Mart income on health care.
  Next, the memo goes on to complain that too many workers are sticking 
around too long, driving up labor costs. The thanks that these loyal 
employees get from Wal-Mart is a plan by Wal-Mart to get rid of them. 
According to the memo, Wal-Mart is seeking to cut its labor costs by 
switching to more part-time employees who will not have meaningful 
access to the company health care plan. So while Wal-Mart announces to 
the public that they are going to offer the best health care plan they 
can for their employees, they are secretly redesigning their work force 
so those who work for them will not be able to take advantage of the 
health care plan that they have announced.
  The memo also suggests that Wal-Mart can cut its labor costs by 
keeping less healthy employees out of the workforce. It even suggests 
that they should include physical lifting requirements in the cashier 
job, just so that the company can use that requirement as an excuse not 
to hire unhealthy people. The memo says that the top Wal-Mart officials 
received the recommendation enthusiastically. And, guess what? We are 
starting to see those changes take place.
  Earlier this week Wal-Mart announced a new health care plan for 
employees, including a high-deductible plan with health savings 
accounts. What does the memo say about this? It recommends plans with 
high deductibles and health savings accounts in order to attract low 
utilizers, that is a euphemism for healthier people, and discourage 
employment of high utilizers, the euphemism for sick people.
  The question is often asked, is Wal-Mart bad for America? The 
company's own executive vice president has answered that question. The 
memo speaks for itself.
  Madam Speaker, what Wal-Mart is saying here is that the benefit that 
they have announced to their employees as being new and expansive it 
turns out is no benefit at all. You must work 1 year before you 
qualify, and yet Wal-Mart plans to get rid of those people who have 
worked that length of time. Wal-Mart plans to hire more part-time 
people so they will not qualify for the health care plan. Should they 
hire somebody that qualifies for it, they want to be able to 
discriminate in their hiring against somebody who may have a health 
care problem, and, therefore, they do not want to hire them, so they 
will make up a test that that person has to go through, go around 
collecting shopping carts or lifting things so that they can root those 
people out of the selection process for whom they would hire. So Wal-
Mart then says that this is the discriminatory policy that they want to 
follow.
  What this shows is that Wal-Mart in the last couple of days has 
announced a new energy policy; they announced a new health care policy; 
they said they support an increase in the minimum wage, that it would 
help their businesses; and people started to say, what is this? Is this 
an extreme makeover for Wal-Mart? Have they come to their senses 
whereby they recognize their obligations to their employees, their 
obligations to the Earth's environment, their obligations on energy 
policy? Has Wal-Mart finally become responsible?
  No, this is not an extreme makeover. This is a cosmetic nip and tuck. 
This is

[[Page 23932]]

a cosmetic redo of a policy that is no policy at all, because, 
apparently, Wal-Mart has already designed, as this memo points out, the 
means by which they will not have to invoke the benefits of the health 
policy for their employees.
  This is damning evidence, but what it means, if we thought that this 
was going to be maybe a new Wal-Mart, a Wal-Mart that would be welcome 
to communities rather than fought by communities, what this means is, 
in fact, that that is not the case at all. Wal-Mart is going to 
continue their policy of everyday low wages, of everyday no health 
care, of everyday ruination of the environment, of everyday 
mistreatment of their workers. That is the Wal-Mart policy. That is the 
Wal-Mart policy that caused them to violate labor laws over and over 
again, to discriminate against their employees over and over again, to 
abuse the women employees over and over again. That is the record of 
Wal-Mart.
  This was a false sunrise. This was a false sense that somehow Wal-
Mart had started to accept its responsibility towards its employees. In 
fact, once again, it is going to abuse its employees. Sadly so, that is 
the case.

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