Employment for all

Dear Congressman,

I noted today that even with the unemployment figures showing another 500,000+ people reaching the unemployment line last month, there is one company that is coming to the rescue of the American worker....

Yes, it is Wal-Mart.

Wal-Mart has announced that in 2009 they plan on opening or expanding 150 of their locations and hiring an additional 22,000 employees during the year.

Just a few small issues here....

1. Wal-Mart tends to mainly higher employees close to the minimum wage, which will not help someone who has to raise and feed a household.

2.Their health insurance plan is relatively expensive, so many have to choose between rent and food or insurance for their families, so they have to go uninsured. (2004 statistics quoted 2/3rd of employees were uninsured)

3. Wal-Mart has a litany of lawsuits it is defending against for sexual and wage discrimination.

So adding these jobs to replace higher income wages does not help the average worker. It is not quite a Mc-job, but it appears that for one of the largest corporations in the USA they could do a little better in the employee relations area, lest we start referring to it as Wal-work.