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LookieNoNookie -> RE: Black Friday strike at Walmart (11/18/2012 4:29:23 PM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: defiantbadgirl
Some Walmart workers are going on strike because health insurance premiums are tripling next year without Walmart absorbing the cost and because of being told on short notice they're expected to work even earlier on Thanksgiving. How are employees supposed to afford a triple increase in premiums on Walmart wages? How many employees will be forced to drop their coverage? How many deaths will that cause? Places like fire departments, hospitals, and nursing homes have to be open on holidays. Department stores and convenience stores don't. Working holidays sucks period, but I think the worst thing about it is mortality. What if a loved one ends up spending their last holiday without you because you're at working at a place that doesn't even have to be open?
http://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/wal-mart-workers-black-friday-110048819.html?
When the line around my offices runs 3 blocks long to apply for $10.00 an hour jobs that offer a shitty health care package that the employees pay 35% of (as they do for every WalMart I've seen around the Seattle market....an unbelievably healthy one)....when I offer starting wages of $18.00 plus (depending on skills), and can't get 12 people who can actually spell their own names correctly, for a firm where we pay 100% health care (and a killer policy)....I'll cry some tears for these folks.
And my staff are eligible after 90 days, again, 100% coverage...not 2 years.
No offense to the largest employer on earth, or their employees but...if they obtained some marketable skills....they'd earn more.
Simple economics.
"Evaluating Wal-Mart’s Health Insurance Benefits
Corporation’s plan is only slightly worse than its chain competitors
Wal-Mart’s critics are often appalled by the company’s health insurance coverage, but the facts don’t always justify the rants directed against the company.
Detractors point out that Wal-Mart covers only 48 percent of its employees. But according to the Employee Benefit Research Institute, in the retail sector overall only 45 percent of workers receive health coverage from their own employer. Still, why do more than half of Wal-Mart’s employees opt out of the company’s health insurance?
For one thing, part-time workers who make up 25 percent of Wal-Mart’s workforce are not eligible until after two years. Then there is the cost. Wal-Mart pays 67 percent of the cost of health insurance for employees, about equal to the retail industry average of 68 percent for family coverage-but, for individual health insurance, far below the 77 percent that retailers contribute on average.
Many employees opt out because they are otherwise covered. The company says that two-thirds of its employees are second-income providers, college students, and senior citizens. Many of these have health insurance through their spouse’s employer, parent’s plan, or retirement and Medicare programs. Thus about 40 percent of the company’s workers are covered apart from Wal-Mart’s plan.
Hence the company asserts that close to 90 percent of its employees have health insurance by one means or another. Deductibles are $1,000 for a plan with a low premium, which does not include routine treatments such as flu shots and child vaccinations. Wal-Mart’s health insurance emphasizes protection for catastrophic health expenses such as cancer treatment.
Health-care premiums for U.S. employer plans increased 11.2 percent in 2004, the fourth consecutive year of double-digit increases. Wal-Mart’s coverage seems to reflect a company facing spiraling health-care costs for more than 1.5 million employees."
Waaaaaaaaaaaaa.
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