HomeMy WebLinkAboutCOM 0032.020 2006-2008
Murashige, Laura
From: Mary Marvin Porter [islandeyesvideo@yahoo.com] P1;..,
Sent: Wednesday, January 17, 2007 6:21 PM
To: counciltestimony@co.hawaii.hi.us .~U7 ~fli~ 1~ $ Z~
Subject: Support of Resolution 21-07
r;-.
Attachments: Supercenter opposition letter to council.rtf
rQt~l'e~ I ~ - - ...y.
Supercenter
opposition letter
Dear Council Staff,
I am sending this resolution below as attachment done in TextEdit on my Apple computer. It
is also RTF (Rich Text Format.) Because Yahoo does an odd squezing of emails I would much
prefer you use the attachment that is all on one page. If you are not able to open the
attachment, please call me at 982-9100 and I will send in another format that you could
open.
Mahalo,
Mary Marvin Porter
Aloha Council Members,
I am submitting this testimony in support of Resolution 21-07 opposing Big Box
Supercenters. The trend today is the spread of huge chains, resulting in the wiping out
of small business everywhere, and often with it better paying jobs, better working
conditions, the distinctiveness of local cultures and the money no longer stays in the
local community.
Wal-Mart has started adding grocery stores to their businesses. Sometimes resulting in
stores the size of
4 football fields. Happy with low prices, Wal-Mart
customers don't connect those prices to the demise of neighborhood stores, or the use of
foreign suppliers to replace U.S. companies and the loss of many more jobs.
Wal-Mart's astonishing success exacts a heavy price.
By squeezing suppliers to cut wholesale costs, the company has hastened the flight of U.S.
manufacturing jobs overseas. Today, it is the largest importer of Chinese-made products
in the world. Charlie Kernaghan of the National Labor Committee reports, "In country
after country, factories that produce for Wal-Mart are the worst," adding that the bottom-
feeding labor policy of this one corporation "is actually lowering standards in China,
slashing wages and benefits, imposing long mandatory-overtime shifts, while tolerating the
arbitrary firing of workers who even dare to discuss factory conditions."
Also Wal-Mart's penny-pinching extends to its own 1.2 million U.S. employees, no unions
are allowed and by the company's own admission, a full-time worker might not be able to
support a family on a Wal-Mart paycheck.
Yet according to Forbes, Wal-Mart has the distinction of having five of its Walton owners
ranked among America's 10 richest people. The Waltons do especially well while their
employees do especially poorly, with clerks earning, on average, 40 percent less than
unionized workers, and receiving either marginal health care coverage or none at all.
Traditionally, grocery workers have been able to make somewhat a decent living. The wage
of full-time unionized clerks averages around $15 an hour - $25,000-$30,000 annually,
depending on hours worked.
In addition, workers have had health care benefits.
Wal-Mart's average associate makes about $8.00 an hour with about 32 hours of work a week
- a monthly gross of barely over $1000. This makes it unlikely that he or she can afford
the company's family health plan at
$218 a month or almost 25~ of their gross income. Comm. NO.
t Ref. To: Pres
Ref. Uate JAN 2001 _
These low wages combined with unaffordable benefits have pushed nearly 700,000 of Wal-
Mart's workers onto their spouses' health care plan or taxpayer subsidized
public assistance. Also before they can be covered,
full-time employees must work for six months, and part-time employees must work for at
least two years.
Wal-Mart's labor turnover rate is 44 percent per year.
In California, critics said Wal-Mart's healthcare benefits are often so poor and the
coverage is so expensive that many employees chose to go without it and instead get their
coverage through state programs like Medicaid and or hospital charity. Wal-Mart has
disputed findings that the company encourages its employees to apply for public
assistance. However, November 2004 New York Times article cites a study in Georgia that
found 10,000 children of Wal-Mart employees were in the state's healthcare program at a
cost to taxpayers of $10 million a year. And in California, a study released in August
2004 by researchers at the University of California at Berkeley determined that the
healthcare expenses of uninsured Wal-Mart employees were costing the already economically-
strapped state $32 million a year in taxpayer funds.
A recent PBS documentary on Wal-Mart featured communities in Vermont and California
fighting to keep the retail giant out of their neighborhoods, claiming that Wal-Mart could
damage their quality of life. A dozen communities, including Oakland and Contra Costa
County have passed zoning laws to keep out retailers like Wal-Mart. In Bakersfield,
homeowners and union workers successfully fought Wal-Mart's building plans by arguing that
the superstore would destroy local business.
In November 2004, activists in California went to the ballot with Proposition 72, a
statewide initiative that would require big employers, such as Wal-Mart, to offer
adequate, affordable healthcare coverage to all of their employees or else pay into a
state insurance fund. Wal-Mart campaigned strongly against Proposition
72 and won by 50.9 percent to 49.1 percent.
Wal-Mart in putting the local stores out of business is not only offering lower paying
jobs and less health benefits but is also facing 38 state and federal lawsuits filed by
hourly workers in 30 states, accusing Wal-Mart stores of systematically forcing them to
work long hours off the clock unpaid.
Low prices for the customer, yes, but also low wages, extra government taxes to pay
employees health cost, lost American jobs to China. And the extra wealth
goes out of state to the Billionaire Waltons. What
is really the cost? Who are really the winners here?
Please support Resolution 21-07.
Thank you for your consideration of these concerns,
Mary Marvin Porter, Island Eyes Video
Journalism (Resident of Orchidland)
The fish are biting.
Get more visitors on your site using Yahoo! Search Marketing.
http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com/arp/sponsoredsearch_v2.php
2