Walmart and H1N1

[Omaha Steve]

This is from the National Labor Committee this morning:

NATIONAL LABOR COMMITTEE ( http://www.nlcnet.org/ )

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: 7:05 a.m. Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Retail Giant Flouts Recommendation of Centers for Disease Control
WAL-MART’S SICK LEAVE POLICY RISKS SPREADING SWINE FLU

“Everyone is coming in sick. We have no choice..”
- Wal-Mart employee

Punishing workers for taking sick leave puts Wal-Mart on track to be a major spreader of Swine Flu this fall, according to a new report ( http://www.nlcnet.org/article.php?id=688 ) by the National Labor Committee. The retail giant gives workers demerits and deducts pay for staying home when they are sick or to care for sick children.

In interviews with Wal-Mart “associates” at stores across New York State, workers confirmed that they had no choice but to work sick. One Wal-Mart employee from a supercenter explained: “Plenty of girls are coughing their brains out, but they can’t go home because of points. Everyone comes in sick.” Workers-including food handlers and deli workers-are routinely coming to work with the flu, conjunctivitis, fevers, strep throat and vomiting.

Single mothers working at Wal-Mart are really hurting. In September, an associate received a call from her four-year-old’s preschool telling her to pick up her child, who had a fever of 103. For leaving work she received a point and lost her wages. “Parents are loading their children up with Motrin and Dimetap to mask their symptoms and sending them to school--for fear of being fired if they stay home with their sick child instead of showing up for their shift,” comments Charles Kernaghan, director of the National Labor Committee.

Ken Senser, a senior vice-president for Wal-Mart, distributed a memo on “Flu Season Preparation” to Wal-Mart stores in October advising employees to “have back-up childcare plans in the event your child cannot attend school.” He went on to recommend that associates “familiarize yourself with relevant company policies including those for attendance, sick pay and return to work following an illness.”

But Wal-Mart’s policies are the problem. Under Wal-Mart’s “Point System” a sick day results in one point and also the loss of eight hours’ wages, even if the worker brings a doctor’s note and has accumulated sick leave. In any six-month period, if a worker accumulates five or six points, they can be fired.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is recommending that employers “Ensure that your leave policies are flexible and non-punitive.” Further, employers should, “Be prepared to allow workers to stay home to care for children if schools are dismissed or childcare programs are closed.”

The U.S. Department of Labor recommends: “Workers who are ill with pandemic influenza or have a family member with influenza are urged to stay home to minimize the spread of the pandemic. Employers are encouraged to support these and other community mitigation strategies and should consider flexible leave policies for their employees.”

According to Kernaghan, “With its punitive policies against sick days and by ignoring CDC recommendations, Wal-Mart is not only putting its 1.4 million workers at risk, but could contribute to the spread of swine flu and other illnesses to the over 150 million customers Wal-Mart services each week.”

The NLC is challenging Wal-Mart to immediately end its punitive Point System for sick days and to allow its employees to use the sick pay they have built up rather than automatically deducting the first eight hours of sick time from the workers’ wages.

Every Wal-Mart employee we spoke with was terrified that they would lose their job if their name and store were mentioned.


Links: Wal-Mart “Flu Season Preparation” memo ( http://www.nlcnet.org/admin/media/document/Wal-mart/A_Flu_%20season_preparation.pdf )
Wal-Mart Attendance/Punctuality policy ( http://www.nlcnet.org/admin/media/document/Wal-mart/B_attendance_policy.pdf )
Wal-Mart Sick pay policy ( http://www.nlcnet.org/admin/media/document/Wal-mart/C_sick_pay_policy.pdf )

Excerpts from CDC 2010 Employer Guidelines on Influenza ( http://www.nlcnet.org/admin/media/document/Wal-mart/D_CDC_selected%20passages.pdf )

[msongs]

1. get H1N1 at walmart - lowest prices, guaranteed nt

[glinda]

15. Haahahahahahaha!

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

[blondeatlast]

36. DUzy. nt

[stray cat]

2. If people can choose to be irresponsible then I guess businesses can as well

Freedom all the way around....

[Chemisse]

4. This is rather the opposite of individual freedom

Workers don't have the choice to stay home when they or their kids are sick.

I guess this business chose to be a bully.

[Chemisse]

3. Walmart is such a monster store.

I can't believe they are given a point for taking sick days they have earned!

[indepat]

19. The makers of Walmart's personnel policies had better hope there is no just God in heaven so they

don't have to worry about burning in hell. :P

[Go2Peace]

31. Have friends who have been called while out of town on vacation. Come in or they're fired!

No kidding. And this wasn't a manager. As if they did not have 100 employees and many managers that could not have covered! She stopped her vacation.

And yes, they fire employees routinely that have the "gall" to actually be sick and use sick leave.

Here is how the typical wal-mart works. They go through their time cards and look for people to let go. It often happens after the holiday season is over. Over a couple week period they will lay off a fair number of employees for such acts as being sick and using sick leave or having taken lunch "at the wrong time" (no kidding, they can lose their job if they leave their post when a customer is nearby, but if they stay and help the customer they also loose points for taking lunch more than 15 minutes later than scheduled.)

[indepat]

45. Burning in hell might not be sufficient, considering the degree of depravity

running amok. :D

[Kievan Rus]

46. In "Rain Man," Dustin Hoffman's character said "K-Mart sucks"; shoulda been "Walmart sucks" instead

[elocs]

5. Millions of hard working Americans do not have sick days,

they live on the edge and cannot simply take a day off if they are feeling sick because that could mean not eating a day that week or maybe losing their job. Those who casually suggest that people stay home from work if they are sick need to be hit up alongside the head with a reality 2 by 4.

[clear eye]

17. Seems more was at stake than a day or two's lost wages

as hard as that can be. The OP describes a "point system" penalizing even unpaid sick days, and leading to dismissal if too many are accumulated.

[elocs]

24. This is true in many work places, some not so formally.

If you don't work, you don't get paid. If you miss too much work, you lose your job. The work is "at-will" meaning you can leave when you like without reason and the company can fire you without reason (it's not hard for them to come up with a reason, real or not).

[Kievan Rus]

47. Yet more proof our legal system is beholden to corporations

[malaise]

18. This is hard to believe

seriously. How can people not have sick leave? What kind of fugging country does not give workers sick days?

[elocs]

23. I heard on the radio this afternoon that only 40% of American workers have sick days.

For those who do have sick days it seems very easy to tell people to stay home when they are sick. There are also jobs that pay little and if that's all you can get then if you miss too much work, then you're done and somebody else has your job. That is the reality of work life in America.

[clear eye]

28. Until the next person gets caught in the same trap & is let go.

It's intentional.

What I don't get is why you're so angry w/ the DUers who want big companies to give everyone sick days, or at least not penalize them for staying home when they're sick if it's not excessive.

They're not saying you should stay home and get fired. They're saying you shouldn't be made to come in when you really can't.

[elocs]

32. Who said I am so angry, because I am not.

I am simply stating the facts that even when somebody like President Obama comes out and says that if people are sick then they should stay home from work should realize full well that millions of Americans do not have that option. When Obama said that people should stay home if they are sick I never heard an argument made that all workers should have sick days. Frankly I have not seen that here at DU either when it is said that people should stay home if they are sick, but if they do not then the claim is that they are simply selfish and risk infecting others when the reality is that they do not have the simple option to stay home.


So the message I hear is: Stay home if you are sick. That's it, nothing else. Millions cannot simply do that.

[clear eye]

35. Please reread some of the posts

Pretty much all of them are saying how horrible Walmart is for putting their workers in such a terrible fix. I didn't read one that blamed the worrkers.

Maybe I missed one that did, but even so, all the rest were just talking about the rotten Walmart system. Some even said they wouldn't shop there because they keep hearing about bad things Walmart does. (Probably not so helpful to the workers, but nothing seems to get through to that company--shopping or not shopping. People are just disgusted.) Remember the guy that got crushed trying to control a crowd because the store had whipped customers into a frenzy by offering one or two of some good things real cheap to the first customers in a Christmas ad?

You know, Walmart has been trying even harder since the recession started to keep down prices, but they don't seem to realize how many customers they lose whenever stories come out about the crummy way they treat their employees. They just can't believe that prices aren't the only thing that matters to people.

[elocs]

39. I'm talking about my posts and I have worked for places as bad as Walmart

regarding absences, legitimate or otherwise.

Here is an article about the problem from today's NY Times:
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/03/who-receives-sick-leave/

This paragraph is particularly telling (good graphs as well):

In a report issued on July 28, the bureau said that just 22 percent of workers in the lowest 10 percent by wage income received paid sick leave and just 37 percent in the lowest 25 percent did. That compares with 86 percent for the highest 25 percent of all wage earners.

So the workers who are the least likely to be able to afford to miss work are the very ones most likely not to have that benefit.

Even here at DU where I have posted about this problem in the past, how workers who have no sick days can so casually be told to simply stay home when that is not an option for many of them, and the argument that so many posters gave here was that how could these people be so selfish. They are not selfish, but they're just trying to get along the best they can. It would be nice if they had sick days but they have to deal with reality as it is and not how it is wished to be.

[clear eye]

27. Places where they want to "churn" the workforce,

and find excuses for firing workers so almost everyone is always making the entry level wage. They begrudge the little they have to raise people's pay after a couple of years, so they make rules that are impossible to follow over time as a way of firing anyone who gets a little seniority.

[RobinA]

43. I Worked Retail

in the early '80's and never had sick days 'til I was a manager. My current public sector, union job (ya know, the ones with the wonderful benefits, pay, and multi-months of vacation) didn't give me sick days until I had been there several months. What, you're immune from sickness in the first three months of work?

[eilen]

21. My husband is a union employee-- journeyman electrician

if he is sick and does not work, he does not get paid. Period. No sick pay. If the contractor decides to lay him off because of this, oh well.

My brother is an independent contractor. If he stays home sick and does not get the work done in time, he is fined. Granted, he has more flexibility with his time that most others.

Such is life.

[elocs]

22. I used to work a union job (Teamsters) at a food warehouse and we gave up sick days

in contract talks for something else because nobody ever used them. When I worked there on 3rd shift there were only 3 or us so when somebody was missing it put a bigger load on the other 2 there because the orders needed to get picked because the trucks would be there in the morning to pick them up. The trouble we had was that there was a guy for whom no excuse was too small to go home early from work or to call in sick.

[eilen]

34. I found large abuse of sick time

working for the state. Our unions would never give up the sick time though. If you acquired a certain amount, you could convert it to either vacation time or pension credit. Of course in a hospital, you need to take sick time if you are sick and you generally were not penalized if you did not abuse it (calling in frequently, calling in often on weekends and holidays). Unfortunately, there were people who had acquired quite a bit and they would use it for anything. They really didn't need to as there was plenty of vacation, personal time. However, if you worked in a high demand job like nursing, it is hard to get scheduled time off as they cannot have too many people off at once so people would use sick time instead.

Of course, in the case of flu, they gave out flu shots to everyone, now it is mandatory.

There are malingerers at every job.

[Go2Peace]

30. OMG. If he is a Journeyman Electrician he makes $25+ an hour. No comparison

Probably more. I can't believe you even tried to compare your situation.

I have also worked contract work that payed well but with no benefits. I agree that our country has a long ways to go in defining sick and vacation in labor law, but in those situation if it is a hardship it is budget problem.

The situation for wal-mart employees is not near comparable.

[eilen]

33. My dh typically gets under 37 weeks of work a year.

tell me again how flush we are.

edited to add-- and almost half those weeks are out of state in which there is no per diem to assist with paying hotel rates and travel expenses, of course he is gone, missing family, birthdays, holidays if he is too far away. Save your envy for those earning over $40,000 a year. We are lucky we have gotten to the point where we can cover our bills and save some money for emergencies. He had 5 years of apprenticeship training and then transferred to the union which put him back to do another 3 years which totaled to 8 years of apprenticeship pay which is $7-$12/hr depending on your level. His job is skilled and physically strenuous in hazardous conditions, it is also an arguably critical job as his work, if done shoddily or wrong can result in fire later on costing lives and property. Hardly the responsibility carried on a store manager or store clerks shoulders. Over the years he has acquired asthma due to the air particles in the industrial and commercial worksites in addition to a broken hand, hearing loss and back problems. He has worked in nuclear plants acquiring rads and had to work at great heights in constructing windfarms. Even with union protections, they still have to fight for a safe area to eat their lunches, access to toilet facilities, water in high heat and a fan in enclosed uncooled areas (particularly in high rises), masks, ear protections and the appropriate tools for the job that the contractor is supposed to supply (drills that work with safetys, etc.). There is no vacation pay, just a rapidly deteriorating healthcare plan and a damaged pension (thanks to Bernie Madoff). He has been unemployed since the second week of September, no jobs in sight.

Years ago, it seems life was much easier for an industrial electrician, there was lots of work. But not anymore. What happens when industry leaves? Those jobs disappear too. People operate under assumptions that the trades are the same as they were in the late 1960's and early 1970's. They are not. Like everything else for those in my cohort (born in mid-to late sixties and above) , "back in the day" things were so much better. And yes, he is a college graduate. ("if you get your degree you can write your own ticket" meme is deader than a doornail). Apparently they ran out of tickets to write in the early 1980's.

[alittlelark]

6. I haven't shopped at one for over 5 years....

I'm sad for the workers - not so much so for the shoppers.


Our family has done only hand-made gifts (food, scarves... ) or 'made in America' for 3 years now.


Christmas is pretty cool and unique.

This is just one of many sites. http://www.madeinusa.org/nav.cgi?christmas

[Skittles]

8. thank you for that site

I've made a resolution to "walk the walk" more because of my sheer disgust at cheap foreign crap

[endless october]

7. if a walmart store has sick employees, shut it down.

we do have a board of health, right? surely spreading pandemic flu virus can't be on the list of acceptable practices.

[Sirveri]

10. I'm sure that won't hurt the employee at all.

Walmart being the big compassionate fluffy teddy bear that it is will surely pay all those workers while the store is closed by the health department.

[endless october]

12. another reason to unionize. n/t

[Sirveri]

25. Unionising these bastards is the best way, but they'd sooner go out of business. N/T

[endless october]

37. sounds like a win / win. n/t

[Kievan Rus]

9. Another reason to skip Wally World...

and yet more proof that all corporations care about is lining their own pockets.

That South Park episode on Wally World was a brilliant parody of that place.

[Posteritatis]

11. Wait, they get fined for being ill?

I can understand not being paid for the time they spend off work due to illness, but that suggests that on top of that they lose eight additional hours' pay?

[noiretextatique]

13. yes...they lose pay if they have points

they get points if they have to take time off work. lovely :eyes:

[Posteritatis]

14. Is that even legal? (nt)

[8 track mind]

20. I really don't see how it could be n/t

[Hannah Bell]

26. how can it possibly be legal to dock their wages & give them a black mark

"Even if they have accumulated sick leave"?

what kind of sick leave is that?

the kind you get penalized for using? wtf?

[clear eye]

16. So the choice is to endanger a sick child now or risk them ending up starving and homeless.

"Parents are loading their children up with Motrin and Dimetap to mask their symptoms and sending them to school--for fear of being fired if they stay home with their sick child".

I thought I could no longer be shocked.

Does the National Labor Committee suggest any remedies or actions we can take to change the Walmart "point" system?

[spin]

29. My company had a policy like that...

of course it primarily was used to punish older employees to get them to retire.

For example I got pink eye at work one time. I was one of a bunch of workers who came down with the problem.

I was at work on Monday when someone noticed my eye was red. I was sent home in the morning, so that afternoon I was at the doctor's office. I got some medication and the doctor told me to take two days off.

I returned to work on Thursday and had to check through the medical office. They sent me home again. Off to the doctor for more medication.

Back to work on Monday with the problem finally gone. I dropped the doctor's excuses off with my supervisor.

On the next appraisal I got slammed for taking five days off. I reminded my supervisor that the company had sent me home and the doctor had written excuses. That didn't have any effect. I protested to higher management to no effect.

So every time I got a cold, I made sure to come to work early and smear snot all over the door knob to my supervisors office.

I know, I'm an asshole. Not only that, but sometimes I'm proud of it. I talked some of my other fellow employees into using biological warfare against the supervisor's door knob. The year before I retired, she was sick a lot.

[Egnever]

38. "she received a point and lost her wages"

WTF?

[Echo In Light]

40. Why are so many big decision-makers in the corporate structure such evil cocksuckers?

Oh, wait...whoops...forgot about that whole Profits Over People religion

[skygazer]

41. So you can accumulate sick leave - you just can't use it

That would be funny in a movie or something. In real life - it's just sick.

[1monster]

42. How can it possibly be legal for an hourly wage worker to be docked for eight hours pay that he/she

has earned by working those eight hours?

It has always been my understanding that if one worked for an hourly wage, the employer was required by law to pay the worker for the hours worked.

[demodonkey]

48. Maybe something like demotion or a wage cut going forward, but take away wages already earned?

Weren't the slaves freed some decades ago??

If this is somehow legal, all I can say is wow. Just wow.

[Algorem]

44. they're planning on selling a whole lot of coffins