More about Wal-Mart

(3) I ran across the Wal-Mart Watch site today. As thousands descend on Fayetteville, Arkansas for the annual Wal-Mart shareholders' meeting, they have produced their own report. Here are some quotes from their annual report:

"Year after year, Wal-Mart’s low pay and insufficient employee benefits programs leave hundreds of thousands of Wal-Mart workers to rely on Medicaid, food stamps, and public housing assistance to make ends meet. Call it the 'Wal-Mart Tax.' It costs American taxpayers at least $1.5 billion in federal tax dollars every year, and hundreds of millions more in state and local subsidy costs."

And this one:

Wal-Mart President and CEO H. Lee Scott has earned a reputation as a hardcore cost-cutter who demands that his fellow Wal-Mart executives strive to save fractions of a penny on everything from supplier costs to the cost of toilet paper in store restrooms. But when it comes to his own pay, the Wal-Mart CEO is quite generous. Scott’s $17.5 million in compensation in 2004 was nearly twice the average of $9.6 million for leading CEOs, according to Business Week. Scott raked in about $8,434 per hour, which is $8,424 more per hour than the official Wal- Mart figure for its average worker of $9.68.

I've been watching Wal-Mart for a while and none of this is any news to me. Check out their site. It's an eye-opening read.