Walmart Myths #2

(This is another in a series of articles in which I will discuss certain aspects of working at Walmart, which is the subject of so much hatred on the internet. I should point out that these are not attempts to debunk or disprove any claims made against the retail chain. I will simply relay my experience working with the company. Some of the things I state reflect the period of time from 2001 - 2006 and working in two locations in California. Some of what I say may no longer be true, may be different in other locations, or policies may have changed.)

Walmart employees take advantage of government programs like Medicaid, Medi-Cal and Food Stamps because they don't get paid enough.

I can tell you right away that Walmart offers medical and dental benefits. The premiums get taken out of your pay, but it was around maybe $30 a paycheck (and I may not be remembering the amount correctly). There was no minimum number of hours you needed to work to qualify for medical insurance. But for dental insurance, you needed to be working at least 32 hours a week. (Toward the end of my employment, I told my Store Manager I was cutting my number of hours per week to 12. He told me that I would lose all my benefits. I told him I had already talked to HR and they said I could keep my medical, but would lose my dental. He admitted that was correct. What was he trying to pull?)

During my first month of employment, I noticed that the store's HR department had posted notices asking specific employees to come into the office to sign up for benefits. I thought these were employees who had started just a couple of months prior and that they needed to come in before they hit the three-month deadline. I was expecting a similar notice for me and the others who started at the same time within a couple of months. I knew that I just needed to keep my eyes open and I would get a reminder.

A couple of months later, I never saw a notice with my name on it. In fact, I hadn't seen any notices since before the end of the previous year. My three-month anniversary was coming up. I went into the HR office and asked what I needed to do to sign up for benefits. The HR person said, "I'm glad you came in today. If you had come in tomorrow, it would have been too late for you to get benefits!" WHAT? "Uh, I was expecting to see a notice asking me to come in like I saw in December." "Oh, that was for Open Enrollment! We're required by law to get all our employees to state whether or not they want to sign up for benefits during that time." "But what about new employees?" "Oh, we're not required by law to get new hires to sign up for benefits. If they miss it, they have to wait for Open Enrollment at the end of the year."

I didn't think to ask what would have happened if I needed benefits but didn't get them. I assume that if someone asked, the HR person would have pointed them toward contacting Medi-Cal (or Medicaid outside California) because at our wage levels, we would have qualified for coverage. But I don't know that for a fact. It would seem like employees who did get Medi-Cal would decide that they didn't need to have money removed from their paychecks to cover insurance since they already had it, so they would just continue to decline the benefits when Open Enrollment came around.

I do know that the benefits offered by Walmart weren't very good. I had to pay a lot more money than I expected for appointments. Later, I found out that I had to pay $30 and $40 amounts for labs. When it was determined that I had a number of health issues related to my high blood pressure, the labs cost me hundreds of dollars. But who knows how much I would have had to pay if I didn't have insurance?

As for Food Stamps, I can tell you that in the four years that I worked the registers, I never once had an employee come through my line with an EBT card. Some people I've told this to have countered by saying that maybe they were too embarrassed to let their co-workers know they were on Food Stamps. But that didn't make sense. We got a 10% discount on non-perishable food items. That discount would still apply regardless of how the customer was paying for the food. And Walmart already had the lowest prices on that food. I don't see how being embarrassed about Food Stamps would have kept anyone from stretching those funds as far as they could by buying food at Walmart.

I will tell you this much: I never felt the need to go onto Food Stamps. I know I would have qualified, but what I earned at Walmart was enough to pay my rent, pay my bills (including my car loan and insurance) and have enough left over for pizza from time to time (and there were PLENTY of those times). But I have to admit I didn't have anybody else to take care of.