From a commentary in the Atlanta Journal Constitution:
Wal-Mart makes workers pay
By ANNETTE BERNHARDT


Federal officials missed the boat last week when they arrested 300 undocumented workers whom contractors had hired to clean Wal-Mart stores. The real offenders aren't uncarded custodians. They are their employers and not simply because they employ undocumented immigrants.

Wal-Mart -- and other low-wage employers that follow its lead -- relentlessly and systematically cut costs by reducing the wages and health benefits of both its in-house and subcontracted workers, regardless of their immigration status. Jailing janitors after a long night shift of cleaning up after shoppers isn't the answer. Ultimately, the only effective response is to reinstate America's wage and workplace standards that have been decimated over the past 30 years.

Wal-Mart pays its in-house workers only $7 to $8 an hour. The federal poverty line for a family of four is $8.70 an hour. Wal-Mart's health insurance is so costly that fewer than half its workers can afford it. Many aren't even eligible.
Lawsuits pending against the company in 30 states charge that Wal-Mart routinely forces workers to work off the clock without pay, locking them in stores until they finish cleaning up.

This is not about keeping prices low for consumers. A recent calculation based on payroll data showed if Wal-Mart gave all of its workers a $1-an-hour raise, the impact on prices would be one half of one cent. Last year, Wal-Mart had profits of $8 billion. The CEO received $18 million in total compensation. Yet Wal-Mart aggressively violates workers' right to organize.

As documented in the nearly 50 complaints issued by the National Labor Relations Board, Wal-Mart has prevented its employees from distributing union materials, interrogated and threatened employees who are trying to organize, taken unlawful disciplinary action and fired union supporters, and even gone to the extreme of closing entire departments in a community like Jacksonville, Texas, when Wal-Mart meat workers voted for a union.

In short, Wal-Mart is not playing by the rules. Nor are many other employers who are pursuing its low-wage, cost-cutting business model in a wide range of industries, from hotels, hospitals, and call centers, to laundry, food processing, child care and home health care.

The cost to our society is enormous. Every day, one in four American workers does not earn enough to live on and support a family. There are now 30 million low-wage workers in this country. With no health insurance, they are forced to go to emergency rooms for routine care. To make ends meet, they must apply for food stamps and rental assistance, use subsidized child care vouchers and draw on other government services.

This means we the taxpayers are involuntarily subsidizing low-wage employers, and in the process, are supporting a business strategy antithetical to the American dream: that hard work opens the door to upward mobility and economic freedom. Turning the tide will take an enormous commitment. It will take re-establishing he right to organize for all workers -- both by enforcing existing labor laws and by instituting long-overdue changes to cover millions of Americans, including many "new economy" workers.

It will take raising our national wage floor. The minimum wage has been stuck at $5.15 an hour since 1997. That's 40 percent lower in real terms than it was in 1968, and $3.50 an hour below the federal poverty line for a family of four.
This falling wage floor has created the wrong incentives. High-wage employers can simply subcontract jobs to other firms that have no problem paying poverty wages.

And it will take charting a clear path to citizenship for undocumented workers. With or without papers, immigrants have become a vital part of America's economy. They do the work that keeps this country running -- in construction and restaurants, child care and home care. Ensuring their right to the protections that the rest of us take for granted will go a long way toward stopping exploitative employers.

Wal-Mart has set a trap for us by pitting consumers against workers with the myth that living wages are incompatible with affordable goods. The truth is, in the long run, poverty wages undermine the health of our workers, our families, our communities and, ultimately, our economy.


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Annette Bernhardt is a senior policy analyst at New York University's Brennan Center for Justice.