An internal memo sent to Wal-Mart's board of directors proposes numerous ways to hold down spending on health care and other benefits while seeking to minimize damage to the retailer's reputation. Among the recommendations are hiring more part-time workers and discouraging unhealthy people from working at Wal-Mart…
The memo acknowledged that Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, had to walk a fine line in restraining benefit costs because critics had attacked it for being stingy on wages and health coverage. Ms. Chambers acknowledged that 46 percent of the children of Wal-Mart's 1.33 million United States employees were uninsured or on Medicaid.
Wal-Mart executives said the memo was part of an effort to rein in benefit costs, which to Wall Street's dismay have soared by 15 percent a year on average since 2002. Like much of corporate America, Wal-Mart has been squeezed by soaring health costs. The proposed plan, if approved, would save the company more than $1 billion a year by 2011.
Wow! If Wal-Mart can even further screw it's employees, one half of which have children who are uninsured or on Medicaid--that's right! The children of Wal-Mart employees are relying on taxpayers to pay for their meager health care--Wal-Mart can save one billion dollars by 2011!
And Wal-Mart can pass those savings--at the expense of American taxpayers--onto its shareholders! Who are mostly the Walton family. And we all know how much the Walton family needs a few extra dollars at the expense of their employees and the American taxpayer.
After all, of the richest Americans who have ever lived only five of them are Waltons:
NAME NET WORTH($mil) AGE
1 Gates, William Henry III 51,000 49
2 Buffett, Warren Edward 40,000 75
3 Allen, Paul Gardner 22,500 52
4 Dell, Michael 18,000 40
5 Ellison, Lawrence Joseph 17,000 61
6 Walton, Christy 15,700 50
6 Walton, Jim C 15,700 57
8 Walton, S Robson 15,600 61
9 Walton, Alice L 15,500 56
10 Walton, Helen R 15,400 86
Gee, I wonder how many crumby group rate family health insurance policies you could buy with about seventy nine billion dollars. Don't bother adding it up. It's a waste of time.
But you have to wonder why five people who have nearly a hundred billion dollars, who are all over the age of fifty, need to screw thousands of working men and women, with young children, out of their health care to save their shareholders a billion dollars in the next six years.
Christ, Helen Walton is eighty six years old. She could write a check for a billion dollars tomorrow, and I doubt it would much cramp her Golden Years style. In fact, Christy, Jim, S Robson, Alice and Helen could all write a check to Wal-Mart employees for a billion dollars each and not one of the precious powdered wigged, God blessed, sun kissed, leisure graced, test cheating Walton offspring would even notice any of it was even gone.
They'd still have seventy billion dollars to scrape by with.
There's a special place in hell for people who have more money than they can ever spend, than their children, or their grandchildren, or their grandchildren's grandchildren can ever, ever spend, and rather than be generous or grateful, spend their considerable resources on thinking of ways to make themselves even richer at the expense of their fellow men and women.
Good Christians all. Tell me how pleased Christ would be.
Christ is pleased. He is VERY pleased.
Posted by: Neil Shakespeare | October 27, 2005 at 12:14 AM
Jesus may not be pleased, but all those greedy bastards that use his name to get richer, are pissing themselves in glee.
Posted by: cookie | October 27, 2005 at 12:44 AM
Jesus shops at Walmart. I saw him drag his cross in setting off the alarms. The little greeter lady stuck a yellow sticky on it and asked if it was a return. I think they are going to change the name from Walmart to Jesusmart.
Posted by: Mary | October 27, 2005 at 07:51 AM
you know, twice i've been duped and caught unaware by wal mart and accidentally bought jesus things. I was just trying to purchase non-descript thank you notes and then a plain notepad with a magnet for my fridge.
When I got them home, and opened the packages, the notepad had a cross on it, and the thank you notes said something about "thank god for you." Neither were visible until you undid the packaging.
Wal Mart works in mysterious ways.
Posted by: cookie | October 27, 2005 at 09:01 AM
Well, you see, Wal-Mart is actually very progressive. By forcing the government to take on the cost of medical care for their employees and their families, they are actually leading the way in promoting socialized medicine in this country. God bless Wal-Mart.
I had a thought: since Wal-Mart gets people into their stores partly by promoting loss-leaders (items that they sell below cost), what would be better than a boycott, would be to find out what the loss-leaders are, then go and only buy those items. They'd lose money on every transaction! HA HA!
Posted by: Dave | October 27, 2005 at 03:12 PM
Walmart employees in Canada are all insured, but it's not Walton goodness of course, it's universal medical coverage. The fight up here is to unionize and Walmart even closed one store that had a successful vote. You nailed it bro - immoral, greedy and plain nasty levels of wealth.
Posted by: Gary | October 27, 2005 at 06:19 PM
J.C. would not be very pleased about what many of his supposed followers are doing.
Posted by: Margaret | October 27, 2005 at 10:06 PM
Just so you know, the Ellison on that list? It ain't me.
I spell mine differently. I'm younger.
Oh, yeah - and I don't have seventeen billion fucking dollars.
Thankyewverymuch.
Posted by: Elisson | October 28, 2005 at 01:51 PM
Elisson, look if you don't want to share, that's your business. But don't lie about your seventeen billion dollars, you cheap bastard.
Frankly, that's just beneath you.
Also, I'd like to clarify a point that I sort of glossed over. When the Waltons of Walmart talk about their responsibility to shareholders, or their concern about Wall Street, this is a lie.
The five members of the Walton family on that list of the ten richest Americans own--just those five without any other member of the Walton family--own 48% of Walmart stock.
When the Waltons talk about a responsibility to shareholders, they're talking about them. Period.
Posted by: ricky | October 28, 2005 at 08:14 PM
It really is unfortunate that assholes like me and my dumbass company fucking rip people off and spend more time spamming blogs than providing any kind of useful service. I fucking hate myself. I wish I were dead instead of such a pigfucking, stupid asshole mindlessly spamming blogs.
Also, I had a serious erotic thing for my own mother. Check out my website!
Posted by: Blue Cross of California | November 23, 2005 at 08:23 PM