US Diary: What Walmart means to women

Angry Women Are Watching Wal-Mart -- by Martha Burk

Though we’re already seeing a few Santa Claus displays going up, Americans usually wait until the after Thanksgiving to indulge in the annual holiday shopping binge. This year there will be an added element to the pre-Thanksgiving run-up. Wal-Mart Watch, a group dedicated to better working conditions, fair pay, and responsible business practices, kicked off what it called “Higher Expectations Week” from November 13 to 19. The week highlighted the various business practices of the world’s largest retailer and the largest employer in the U.S. – Wal-Mart.

One activity was the showing of a new film by Robert Greenwald titled “Wal-Mart, The High Cost of Low Prices.” The movie was shown in hundreds of churches and other free public venues to highlight the company’s impact on communities and taxpayers. For example, just 47 percent of Wal-Mart employees are covered by the company health plan, in contrast to 68 percent of workers in comparable companies. That pushes many of Wal-Mart’s “associates,” as the company calls its workers, onto public health assistance, forcing taxpayers to foot the bill. Wal-Mart management is worried enough to release their own film in rebuttal, and hire ex-political spin-doctors to tout the company’s good side.

The National Council of Women’s Organizations has joined the awareness campaign, and for good reason. Most people don’t know that the majority of the working poor (who make below $9.04 per hour) are adult women, and Wal-Mart is responsible for a bunch of them. They’re also mostly white (58 percent) and mostly high school educated or higher (77 percent). The company’s higher-than-average employee share of health premiums is the reason many workers can’t afford to buy into the plan.

Health care isn’t the only way Wal-Mart squeezes females. Women are suing the firm for sex discrimination in pay and promotion, and a California judge has ruled they can move forward as a class. That means the women with various claims won’t have to go it alone (each with a separate lawyer and separate expenses) against Wal-Mart’s legal firepower, surely as formidable as its retailing expertise. The company is appealing, of course, but if women can prove a “pattern and practice” of discrimination, back pay and promotions could be due, and the company might have to mend its gender-biased ways.

Wal-Mart has even made anti-woman statements in the culture wars through products it chooses to sell, and those it chooses not to sell. Ten years ago, it pulled T-shirts that read, “Some Day a Woman Will Be President,” featuring Margaret from “Dennis the Menace.” Wal-Mart called the shirts “offensive” and “against Wal-Mart’s family values.” But it continues to sell violent video games such as the Grand Theft Auto series, where players get points for having sex with a prostitute and garner even higher scores for killing her to avoid payment.

U.S. women aren’t the only ones suffering from Wal-Mart’s business practices. According to Wal-Mart Watch, the company’s "Buy America" plan is long gone. Seventy percent of Wal-Mart’s merchandise is from China, a major source of female sweatshop labor.

Women are not only the majority of Wal-Mart’s workers; they’re the majority of its customers. Advocates are hoping to make them more-aware consumers, so that public pressure from customers shopping elsewhere will force the company to spend less on public relations advertising and more on higher wages and health coverage. Of course, Wal-Mart is entitled to a fair profit, as are all businesses. But the key word is fair. Most people are no doubt willing to pay a penny more for holiday goods if it means health care and a living wage for their neighbors. The five members of the Walton family hold positions four through eight on “Fortune’s” list of the 400 richest Americans, with the Waltons alone having assets of $102.5 billion. If they gave up just one cent on the dollar of that in the form of higher wages for their workers, it would be enough to provide affordable health care – fair indeed.

(Martha Burk is author of “Cult of Power: Sex Discrimination in Corporate America and What Can Be Done About It,” released this spring from Scribner.)