New Wal-Mart Watch Report Exposes Serious Problems with Wal-Mart’s Worker Comp Program
For Immediate Release
Thursday, June 28, 2007
Washington, D.C. – Wal-Mart Watch today released a new report on the retail giant’s workers’ inadequate workers’ compensation program that exposes serious risks to both its workers and the public. The report, titled “Work At Your Own Risk,” highlights ways Wal-Mart puts the health of their employees as risk while shifting the burden of caring for its on-the-job injured employees onto the taxpayer. It explains how Wal-Mart, the United States’ largest private employer, has a track record of difficulty in complying with state workers’ compensation laws, while putting its employees’ health in jeopardy. The study examines seven state case studies that have ramifications for the company’s operations in all 50 states.
The report explains how cost-cutting doesn’t always pay off – workers’ compensation was created during the 19th and early 20th centuries to protect and aid workers. Yet, Wal-Mart’s neglect for workers’ compensation laws is coming at the cost of healthy employees. As illustrated in “Work At Your Own Risk,” every dollar that Wal-Mart doesn’t pay towards benefits for their employees is a dollar that the company gets to keep.
According to the report, the issues regarding Wal-Mart and compensation for injured workers range from contesting and refusing to pay out valid claims, to intimidating workers who are trying to file claims, to processing being so lengthy that medical conditions are allowed to worsen instead of care being administered promptly.
It’s time for Wal-Mart to set a better corporate example by treating injured employees with respect and investing in their care and rehabilitation, instead of making decisions that end up hurting far more than they are helping.
Key excerpts from the Wal-Mart Watch report include:
- In 2001, the State of Washington Department of Labor and Industries made the unprecedented move of threatening to seize control of Wal-Mart’s entire injured worker program, after the company showed itself “unwilling or unable to manage its workers’ compensation program as required by law.” A decertification case ultimately was settled, but Wal-Mart is prohibited from self-administering its workers’ compensation program claims in Washington until 2010.
- In 2004, Maine amended the state’s Workers’ Compensation Act and began tracking workers’ compensation payments and claims challenges, finding Wal-Mart’s challenging of workers’ compensation claims was “off the charts.”
- Class action was filed in 2007 in Oklahoma for retaliation against employees who filed workers’ compensation claims. The charges include cutting hours, transferring employees to less desirable positions, and termination. There are over 30,000 people employed by Wal-Mart in Oklahoma.
- Individual stories reflect a policy, whether formal or informal, of fighting claims regardless of validity, and delaying payments as long as possible. The result is an increase in the number of employees forced onto federal and state programs to pay for treatment and subsidize lost wages, effectively shifting the cost of compensation workers away from Wal-Mart and onto taxpayers.
Click here to read the full report.
