Everyday Low Wages: The Hidden Price We All Pay For Wal-Mart

The retail giant Wal-Mart has become the nation's largest private sector employer with an estimated 1.2 million employees. The company's annual revenues now amount to 2 percent of the U.S. Gross Domestic Product. Wal-Mart's success is attributed to its ability to charge low prices in mega-stores offering everything from toys and furniture to groceries. While charging low prices obviously has some consumer benefits, mounting evidence from across the country indicates that these benefits come at a steep price for American workers, U.S. labor laws, and community living standards.

Wal-Mart is undercutting labor standards at home and abroad, while those federal officials charged with protecting labor standards have been largely indifferent. Public outcry against Wal-Mart's labor practices has been answered by the company with a cosmetic response. Wal-Mart has attempted to offset its labor record with advertising campaigns utilizing employees (who are euphemistically called "associates") to attest to Wal-Mart's employment benefits and support of local communities. Nevertheless – whether the issue is basic organizing rights of workers, or wages, or health benefits, or working conditions, or trade policy – Wal-Mart has come to represent the lowest common denominator in the treatment of working people.

This report reviews Wal-Mart's labor practices across the country and around the world and provides an overview of how working Americans and their allies in Congress are seeking to address the gamut of issues raised by this new standard-bearer of American retail.

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