ANOTHER WAL-MART REPORT

As long as we've interrupted our vacation, we might as well complete some unfinished Wal-Mart business. A few days ago it was reported that the nation's largest retailer is cooperating with a federal probe of its employment practices. That's so nice to know, especially when there's so much to investigate.

Maybe the feds will look into the fact that Wal-Mart saves on personnel costs and keeps prices low by encouraging its workers to make use of community health-care services, which are provided at public expense.

"The taxpayers are apparently taking care of a lot of Wal-Mart workers," Bill Moyers' investigative news program, NOW, reported Friday after we began our vacation. "According to the Institute for Labor and Employment at the University of California/Berkeley, in 2002, Wal-Mart workers in California relied on 50 percent more taxpayer-funded health care per employee than those at other large retail companies. Put another way, taxpayers subsidized $20.5-million-worth-of medical care for Wal-Mart in California alone."

Maybe shoppers will realize Wal-Mart pays such low wages that many of its workers can't afford the company's private (and expensive) health-care benefits plan and that it also keeps workers from qualifying for benefits (even if they can't afford them). 

Here's the complete transcript of NOW's devastating report on Wal-Mart, which shows how the giant retailer's low prices are achieved at taxpayer expense not only for health care but for tax breaks and other concessions.

Those who don't believe Wal-Mart pays its workers less than its competitors might consider this: "Unionized supermarket workers pay little or nothing for their health plans and have an average hourly wage of $10.35 per hour," NOW reports. "Wal-Mart workers earn about 25 percent less ... a reported $8.23 per hour."

One Wal-Mart clerk who earns $14,500 a year pointed out that on his salary he can't afford "the roughly $250-dollars it costs each month for Wal-Mart's family medical plan." To cover his wife and three children, he'll need public health-care assistance.

One Wal-Mart manager said that when he spoke out against the company's "inadequate health-care plan," he was fired. Another explained that Wal-Mart "counted on [employee] turnover to get rid of some of the people that ... were actually eligible to get the [company's] insurance." This went on for years, he said. Reporter Sylvia Chase concluded: "So putting it in plain language you had to get rid of some workers. You had to replace them with part-time workers. You had to keep your workers un-eligible for health insurance coverage." He agreed.

And one California official put the lie to Wall-Mart's legendarily low prices: "When you walk out of Wal-Mart and you look at your receipt, you need to add onto that receipt the cost that you're paying for increased transportation taxes for streets and roads, increased taxes to cover subsidies for their employees. Both in health care and social services. That's a hard concept to get across. Because it's not there in black and white on the receipt. But it's -- black and white in your pocket. You pay it. "