Gina points out that at her store, “almost all the young people are on food stamps.” And it’s not just her store. Across the country, Walmart pays such low wages that many of its employees rely on food stamps, rent assistance, Medicaid, and a mix of other government benefits, just to stay out of poverty.
The next time you drive into a Walmart parking lot, pause for a second to note that this Walmart—like the more than five thousand other Walmarts across the country—costs taxpayers about $1 million in direct subsidies to the employees who don’t earn enough money to pay for an apartment, buy food, or get even the most basic health care for their children. In total, Walmart benefits from more than $7 billion in subsidies each year from taxpayers like you. Those “low, low prices” are made possible by low, low wages—and by the taxes you pay to keep those workers alive on their low, low pay.
As I said earlier, I don’t think that anyone who works full-time should live in poverty. I also don’t think that bazillion-dollar companies like Walmart ought to funnel profits to shareholders while paying such low wages that taxpayers must pick up the ticket for their employees’ food, shelter, and medical care. I listen to right-wing loudmouths sound off about what an outrage welfare is and I think, “Yeah, it stinks that Walmart has been sucking up so much government assistance for so long.” But somehow I suspect that these guys aren’t talking about Walmart the Welfare Queen.
Walmart isn’t alone. Every year, employers like retailers and fast-food outlets pay wages that are so low that the rest of America ponies up a collective $153 billion to subsidize their workers. That’s $153 billion every year. Anyone want to guess what we could do with that mountain of money? We could make every public college tuition-free and pay for preschool for every child—and still have tens of billions left over. We could almost double the amount we spend on services for veterans, such as disability, long-term care, and ending homelessness. We could double all federal research and development—everything: medical, scientific, engineering, climate science, behavioral health, chemistry, brain mapping, drug addiction, even defense research. Or we could more than double federal spending on transportation and water infrastructure—roads, bridges, airports, mass transit, dams and levees, water treatment plants, safe new water pipes.
Yeah, the point I’m making is blindingly obvious. America could do a lot with the money taxpayers spend to keep afloat people who are working full-time but whose employers don’t pay a living wage.
Of course, giant corporations know they have a sweet deal—and they plan to keep it, thank you very much. They have deployed armies of lobbyists and lawyers to fight off any efforts to give workers a chance to organize or fight for a higher wage. Giant corporations have used their mouthpiece, the national Chamber of Commerce, to oppose any increase in the minimum wage, calling it a “distraction” and a “cynical effort” to increase union membership. Lobbyists grow rich making sure that people like Gina don’t get paid more.
The result is that for decades, the policies and rules that once served to build a robust middle class no longer offer the same kind of foundation.
EARLIER I MENTIONED that when I was a kid, my mother’s minimum-wage job paid enough to let us cover our mortgage and keep food on the table. We didn’t need welfare or food stamps because the minimum wage set a floor that would support us without taxpayer help. But there was something else different about my mother’s job. When she got hired by Sears two generations ago, she worked for a predictable forty hours a week. If Sears was busy, she got a paycheck. If Sears wasn’t busy, she still got a paycheck.
My mother is the tall one in the plaid dress. Her minimum-wage job at Sears covered our mortgage and put food on the table.
Gina describes life at Walmart as a constant fight to get enough hours to support her family. Walmart deliberately overhires, which then puts workers in competition for shifts. Even though she’s worked at the store for nearly a decade, Gina doesn’t get her work schedule far enough in advance to plan a trip to the dentist. And she doesn’t know how many hours she will get each week or whether her paycheck will be enough to cover the basics.
Gina thinks the crazy Walmart system of scheduling work isn’t just about keeping the store open. She believes it’s about raw power. She talks about her friend named Nicole, who is trying to support herself and her little boy on a Walmart paycheck. “She needs more hours. She was trying to do better, so she was taking classes at the local community college at night,” Gina says. Nicole was available every day and five evenings every week, but “she needed Tuesdays and Thursdays off at night” so she could go to class. “They wouldn’t give them to her.”
Why? Gina says that management wanted to show Nicole that she wasn’t any better than anyone else. “They use [the schedule] as punishment,” Gina says. “They were going to teach her a lesson.”
Once Gina starts talking about her coworkers, the examples tumble out one after the other. There are stories about workers whose schedules are changed without notice. Stories about workers who have anxiety attacks. Stories about workers who burst into tears in the break room because of bullying from higher up the food chain.
Gina has become a sort of anxious den mother. She started a food collection for the coworker living in his car. She sweet-talked one of the store managers into changing the work assignment for an elderly coworker who couldn’t do much heavy lifting after his bout of pneumonia. Gina tries to help her coworkers every chance she gets, but it’s never enough.
Even though she’s worked at Walmart for years now, her position at the company always feels unsteady. Talking to me didn’t help things. I repeatedly promised I wouldn’t use her name or tell anyone how to find her. She was always willing to talk—in fact, she would say, in a near shout, “We need to tell this story!” Then, in a much smaller voice, she would add, “But I really need this job.”
Employers in other industries have invented new models that are every bit as effective as Walmart’s efforts to eliminate guaranteed hours, fixed schedules, minimum wages, and benefits. They classify workers as subcontractors, independent contractors, or gig workers. Today, millions of hardworking people live in a world in which their incomes go up and down, their schedules shift from day to day, and they take whatever work is available. The much-touted virtues of independence and the creativity of the “flexible workforce” are undoubtedly true for some workers under some conditions. But for millions more, the new work economy adds up to little more than another setback in a losing effort to build some economic security in a world that is tilted against working families.
To get a sufficient number of hours, workers need to be available. But that availability comes at a cost. If she can’t go to community college, how will Nicole ever build up her skills and get a better job to support herself and her baby? How will she ever make enough to let go of her rent subsidy or food stamps? How will she ever move to a better neighborhood, one with nice parks and good schools?
It’s not just Nicole. How does the guy in the stockroom sign up for auto-repair
