Walmart’s rank (PDF) as employer of retail workers and rank in size of private U.S. employers Walmart’s 2010 revenue as the number one Fortune 100 company But America is paying the price… Number of U.S. jobs lost from 2001-2006 as a result of Walmart’s imports from China Conservative estimate of percentage of Walmart’s share of U.S. Trade Deficit with China Cost to Massachusetts (PDF) of Walmart associates using publicly subsidized health care in 2009 Cost to nation if public safety net use by Walmart associates in Massachusetts is adjusted nationwide1 And Walmart associates are paying the price… Average annual salary of a Walmart sales associate (based on an IBIS World figure) Average hourly wage of a Walmart sales associate (based on an IBIS World figure) Additional cost per shopping trip for a Walmart customer if the company offered a minimum wage of $12 an hour (PDF) We can make it better. When UFCW locals and members, Walmart associates, elected officals, religious leaders, small business owners and community allies join together as one, we can make change at Walmart and make change in our communities.

1. Figure is a calculation of the percentage of Massachusetts Walmart associates receiving subsidized care (42%), applied to the 1.4 million associates in the United States, at the cost to Massachusetts per each associate ($1,753.00) receiving aid. Using the data from Massachusetts for 2009 found the percentage of Associates using publicly subsidized care.   Then applied this to the entire Walmart workforce to determine number of Associates nationally who would receive publicly subsidized care using the rate in Massachusetts.  From the Massachusetts data found the per Associate cost by dividing the total cost of providing subsidized care in MA to Associates by the number of MA Associates receiving subsidized care.  This yielded a per Associate cost of $1,753.  Multiplied that by 42% of Walmart’s total US workforce (1.4 million).  Results in $1 billion. 2. $8.81 per hr x 34 hrs a week x 52 weeks = $15,500Walmart, the nation’s most profitable corporation, may also be the greatest beneficiary of the taxpayer-funded Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), commonly referred to as food stamps.

But how has Walmart managed to make so much money off of taxpayers? For the short answer, take a look at the chart below where we’ve illustrated the scam. For the long answer, keep reading. Step One: Pay your employees so little that they are forced to rely on food stamps to survive. Even at Walmart’s definition of a full-time job, an employee earning the company’s average wage of $8.81/hour makes just $15,500 per year, placing them well below the federal poverty line for a family of four. Outdoor Seat Pads UkWith such low wages, even when working full-time hours, many associates are forced to depend on taxpayer-funded assistance such as food stamps and Medicaid to survive. Lounge Furniture Rental DetroitIn other words, Walmart is shifting responsibility onto the public for ensuring their associates’ basic needs are met. Half Breed Dogs For Sale

One study showed that a single Walmart can cost taxpayers anywhere from $904,542 to nearly $1.75 million per year, or about $5,815 per employee for these programs all because one of the world’s most profitable retailers is paying substandard wages and benefits. A more recent report by Americans for Tax Fairness revealed that Walmart’s reliance on programs like food stamps cost federal taxpayers an estimated $6.2 billion a year. Step Two: Exploit loopholes to avoid paying billions in taxes that fund food stamps. While taxpayers are shouldering the responsibility to ensure Walmart’s employees can make ends meet, the company zealously avoids contributing its fair share of taxes using a myriad of schemes. Another report by Americans for Tax Fairness and the Institute for Policy Studies claims the company exploits a little-known loophole to avoid an estimated $104 million in U.S. taxes by granting extravagant “performance pay” bonuses to top executives. You read that right – the more Walmart pays its executives, the less it pays in taxes.

The Waltons, the nation’s wealthiest family and owners of Walmart, contribute almost none of their personal wealth to the charitable foundation that bears their name and instead uses the charity’s tax structure to avoid an estimated $3 billion per year in estate taxes. By fervently minimizing its tax liability, Walmart has once again dodged its responsibility in addressing its employees’ basic needs and is instead letting the rest of us foot the bill. Step Three: Reap billions in profits when food stamps are spent in your stores. So what happens to all those food stamp dollars? They’re spent at Walmart! Last year alone, Walmart collected an estimated $13 billion in revenue from food stamps spent in their stores. As Slate and NPR reported in April, “The same company that brings in the most food stamp dollars in revenue – an estimated $13 billion last year – also likely has the most employees using food stamps.”Walmart’s perfected its food stamp scheme by keeping its employees dependent on taxpayer-funded food stamps, not paying its fair share in taxes to  fund SNAP, and then reaping all the profits from food stamp redemption in its stores.

For a company that can easily afford to pay its employees decent wages, Walmart has decided to do just the opposite. Just last week, the company’s spokesman, David Tovar, published a snarky retort in response to a recent New York Times opinion column denouncing the company’s refusal to meet its employees’ most basic needs. As the Huffington Post revealed, Tovar’s “fact check” was short on actual facts, but it did illustrate another of Walmart’s usual strategies: when problems are exposed within your ranks, unleash a well-funded PR machine instead of addressing the issue.As part of Walmart’s “aggressive cost-cutting” strategy, they’ve reduced security guards, causing their stores to become hotbeds of crime. An in-depth report from Bloomberg describes how security costs get displaced onto police departments, and therefore onto taxpayers, who are effectively subsidizing the giant retailer’s business costs. The report profiles Darrell Ross, a cop in the Tulsa, Oklahoma police department, who gets called “Officer Walmart” by his colleagues.

He earned the moniker because he’s stationed at the local Walmart Supercenter for up to 10 hours a day. And he’s kept busy; it’s not unusual for the police department to send a van to transport all the people Ross arrests on a given day. Of course some of the arrestees are accused of simple shoplifting, but around the country, there are also over 200 “violent crimes,” including kidnappings, stabbings, shootings, and even murders that have taken place in the 4,500 US Walmarts just this year. Within a large drain-pipe underneath a Walmart parking lot in Amherst, NY, police even discovered a meth lab. Most Walmart stores are open 24 hours a day, and people are allowed to camp overnight in the store parking lots. There’s so much crime going on in the stores that petty shoplifting barely registers anymore. Walmart has recently started a program where they don’t call police for first-time shoplifters caught stealing cheap merchandise below a certain value if the shoplifters agree to go through Walmart’s “theft-prevention program.”

That’s a good thing, I guess, but Walmart isn’t doing it out of compassion for shoplifters. They’re reaping profits by skimping on security: Walmart sales per employee in the US have grown 23 percent in the past decade. That might also be due in part to Walmart’s famously abhorrent labor practices, which include wage theft, union-busting, endangering and discriminating against workers, and employing child labor. According to Ross’s sergeant, Robert Rohloff, “it’s ridiculous” that a multibillion-dollar corporation isn’t providing security in its own stores. “We are talking about the biggest retailer in the world,” says Rohloff. “I may have half my squad there for hours.” Bill Ferguson, a police captain in Port Richey, Florida, agrees: “The constant calls from Walmart are just draining,” he says. “They recognize the problem and refuse to do anything about it.” But maybe instead of adding security, Walmart needs to employ social workers.