By Jim Hightower | Nation Of Change
November 14 2011
OP-ED | How small can a giant corporation get? I don’t mean in size, but in spirit.
Once again, America’s biggest commercial empire — Walmart — is displaying its incredibly shriveled ethical center by whacking the already meager health care benefits that hundreds of thousands of its workers count on.
Just a couple of years ago, this $408 billion-a-year retailing colossus tried to hush critics of its Dickensian labor policies by ballyhooing a bare-bones health care plan for its “associates.” The insurance scheme had such high deductibles, however, that barely half of its employees bought into it.
Now, even that benefit is being yanked from the 40 percent of Walmart’s employees who are part-time workers. Also, insurance premiums and deductibles are being dramatically jacked up for thousands of full-time workers. For example, one full-timer who’s paid only $12,000 a year will see her premium more than double to about $3,300 a year — a fourth of her income! “I won’t be able to afford the insurance,” she says, “and I really can’t go without insurance, because I have a heart problem.”