Are You Paying the Wal-Mart Tax?

Full story: http://blog.aflcio.org/?p=242




UPDATE: Wal-Mart offered an anemic response to our report yesterday in this Reuters story, with a spokeswoman pointing out that many of its employees were on public assistance before getting jobs at Wal-Mart. But isn’t the point of getting a job to get off public assistance? The fact remains that many of the retail giant’s employees rely on taxpayer-funded programs to get health care for themselves and their families.

A new report from the AFL-CIO shows that Wal-Mart’s refusal to pay decent wages and provide affordable health insurance is costing taxpayers millions to provide health care coverage to Wal-Mart workers.

As employer-based health care declines, many working families have been forced to rely on public health care programs to secure coverage. The result has been exploding Medicaid costs that are breaking state budgets. In many states, Wal-Mart has more employees relying on public health programs than any other company.

medical help to apply for federal or state aid. They don't put that in their brochure.