The United States of America-Mart

By: Vince Yanez

They tried

In 2006, Maryland passed the Fair Share Health Care Law. This law required that employers, such as Wal-Mart, spend at least 8% of their payroll on employee health care. If they would not spend that percent on healthcare, they would need to put it into a state fund so that taxpayers did not have to pay the healthcare of those same employees.

A federal judge struck it down.

They tried again

In Chicago, response to Wal-Mart not giving its employees a decent wage or healthcare caused the passage of a ‘living wage’ ordinance. This required that any employer with surface area above 90 thousand square feet and annual sales over $1 billion provide an hourly wage that increased with the cost of inflation. This wage would require them to pay their employees $9.25 in 2007 and reach $10 by 2010. That’s a .75 cent increase over a three year period.

This measure was passed, and Mayor Daley vetoed it soon after.

The reason for both failures, Wal-Mart spent millions of dollars lobbying against them and threatening cities with moving out if they were forced to abide by such laws, causing massive unemployment.

I left my town in 1989, we had a Sears, Bayless, Sprouse Reitz, Revco, Yellow Front and bunch of mom and pop stores. I came back in 2009, not one of those places remained, instead we had a Wal-Mart. In the Frontline documentary they showed that Wal-Mart would build in every town, destroy the competition, then shut down every-other store, forcing the people to travel to the next town. They moved like locusts across America. And their employees were those people who worked in all the stores they had forced to close, workers who accept the low wages and lack of healthcare, in order to survive in their (now) one-store town.

It’s not just Wal-Mart

In 2005 the oil industry said the price of oil was going up, it was beyond their control and in response they raised the price at the pump. The oil industry made a record profit that year of $140 billion. Exxon alone made $36 billion in profits.  Exxon mobile CEO Lee Raymond retired that year with a pension of $440 million.

Bob Nardelli of Home Depot received a $250 million pay package in 2006, when their stock was on the decline. When the stockholders and the public heard of this, they applied enough pressure to cause Nardelli to resign, taking along an additional $210 million severance package.

Last week the Institute of Policy Studies just released their annual report that the top 50 firms who laid off the most workers during this recession, also gave their CEO’s a combined compensation of $598 million.

CEO pay DOUBLED from 1997 to 2009, it has quadrupled since the 1980’s and it is EIGHT TIMES what it was mid-century. At the same time, workers are taking home LESS in ‘real weekly wages’ then they were in the 1970’s.

Verizon is in the TOP FIVE companies with the most layoffs during this recession. They fired 21,308 employees in a one year period. Ivan Seidenberg, CEO of Verizon, took home a compensation package of $17.5 million. American Express received $3.39 BILLION in TARP funding to help them during the recession, in that time they laid off 4,000 employees while giving their CEO $16.8 million in take home pay, the highest pay for a CEO in one year.

Why does this matter?

Because these same CEO’s, who cry that healthcare reform is socialism, refuse to provide healthcare to their own employees, forcing them to NEED healthcare reform.

Because these same corporations will fire thousands of Americans, in order to keep their profits and stock numbers up, then scream that we should stop paying unemployment benefits to those ‘lazy’ people.

It matters, because these same corporations, by our Conservative-led Supreme Court, will now have the ability to give UNLIMITED AMOUNTS OF MONEY toward the candidate that best represents the type of country they would prefer to live in.

One man (or a group of men) who will lay off thousands, not pay decent wages to thousands more and provide healthcare to no one, want to decide who will represent their ‘ideals’ in American politics.

Wal-Mart will now become the blueprint for America. The Wal-Mart business model will be that which we hope to achieve from sea to shining sea. Goodbye to our once great country, hello to plastic shit made in China…but at a great, low price!