May 27, 2006
WakeUpWalmart.com exposes Wal-mart's new health care plan for part-time workers
“Based on these new documents, either Wal-Mart falsely claimed it would offer its low cost plan to 50% of its Associates, or Wal-Mart has ‘transitioned’ many more workers to part-time than has been reported publicly. Either way, Wal-Mart’s rhetoric doesn’t match reality, and Wal-Mart workers are paying way too high a price,” said Paul Blank, campaign director for WakeUpWalMart.com.Posted by fightingdem at May 27, 2006 9:17 AMBased on the two documents, it is obvious Wal-Mart’s “new health care changes” will do little to expand health care coverage for many of its 1.3 million employees. Rather, Wal-Mart’s health care changes are clearly structured to cut health care costs and minimize the public relations disaster from slashing over 200,000 full-time jobs and replacing or transitioning them with low paid part-time workers.
According to a JP Morgan report issued in January 2006, as well as the infamous internal health care memo authored by Wal-Mart Executive Vice President Susan Chambers, Wal-Mart publicly states it intends to shift hundreds of thousands of full-time workers to part-time status. In the two health care documents, Wal-Mart coldly refers to this shift as a “transition” and now describes part-time workers as “peak-time” employees.
