Fortune magazine announced its Fortune 500 rankings yesterday. The big name corporations that made the Top 10 this year, including Exxon, Chevron, and Apple to name a few, are not surprising. But the king of all the companies this year was Walmart Stores, Inc., ranking first once again after its fall to second place last year.
As a corporate giant, Walmart employs 2.2 million people and brought in $444 billion in revenue in 2012. It is run by the Walton family whose empire includes around 8,500 stores worldwide.
Despite its capitalistic genius, no one can deny that Walmart Stores, Inc. has a reputation for treating their employees poorly. With thousands of lawsuits filed against them a year, Walmart Stores, Inc. continues to forbid employees from unionizing. (Walmart cited “economic reasons” when asked why they were closing a branch in Canada that successfully unionized.) They fail to cover hundreds of thousands of their employees with health care benefits. And if you do the math and compare CEO Michael Duke’s yearly salary of $35 million to the average worker’s $8.81 an hour, you will find that Duke makes more money in an hour than a regular employee makes in a year.
What part of that qualifies them as being the best?
Many workers’ rights groups have been working hard to change the way Walmart Stores, Inc. treats its employees. In an excerpt from her recent interview with U.S. Catholic, Kim Bobo, the founder and director of Interfaith Worker Justice (IWJ), discussed the many ways that employers like Walmart steal wages from their workers. She warns buyers to be conscious of where they shop because low prices often means low employee satisfaction.
“Walmart has a history of cheating workers, of paying them low salaries, of offering very few benefits,” Bobo said “That’s why [IWJ has] helped organize activities at Walmart on Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving. You should plan right now to be protesting at Walmart on Black Friday this year.”
An editor from America magazine also brought up another interesting consequence of Walmart’s low prices. In an article in February, Kevin Clarke wrote:
“The low pay may keep costs low for Wal-Mart’s customers, but U.S. consumers make up the difference indirectly. A lot of his fellow workers, [Walmart employee William] Fletcher reports, qualify for a number of government support programs, including supplemental nutritional programs, housing assistance and earned income tax credits. ‘If you plan on getting by on a Walmart salary,’ he says, ‘you have to know how to do so on public assistance.’ …
“Mr. Fletcher thinks U.S. taxpayers would be ’shocked’ to learn ‘how much they’re supporting Walmart workers,’ especially considering the company’s outsized annual profits. In 2011 Walmart reported a net profit of $16 billion on $447 billion in revenue, making it number two on Fortune 500 in terms of revenue, just behind Exxon, and number 10 in net profitability. The lion’s share of Walmart’s income goes directly into the hands of the company’s largest shareholders, the Walton family, holders of 48 percent of Walmart stock and the richest family on earth, with over $107 billion in net worth.”
In other words, Walmart is exploiting its workers for the extremely high profit of a select few corporate leaders, and American taxpayers are left to pick up the tab by financially supporting the low-income workers who make it possible. Why aren’t more people outraged about this? Is it simply because they don’t want to give up the “savings” they get from shopping at Walmart?
These are just a few reasons why Walmart should not be considered number one by any measure. Something is definitely wrong here. Their exploitation of workers should raise a few eyebrows. As corporate America basks in this prestigious ranking, we must not forget the average workers who are also responsible for making these operations happen.
Flickr photo cc by OURWalmart
