Employees at nation’s largest employer, Walmart, face benefit cuts and soaring costs during health benefits open enrollment
Posted on November 1, 2011 by Will
MEDIA ADVISORY
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
October 28, 2011
CONTACT
Casie Yoder, 202-285-2418, cyoder@ufcw.org
Janna Pea, 202-412-5362, jpea@ufcw.org
Employees at nation’s largest employer, Walmart, face benefit cuts and soaring costs during health benefits open enrollment
***Interviews available with Walmart associates
At the peak of the health benefits open enrollment season for most private employers, the nation’s largest company, Walmart, is dramatically rolling back health care benefits for its 1.4 million U.S. employees. New part-time sales associates working fewer than 24 hours will no longer be eligible for insurance. Full-time employees will see their premiums rise as much as 60 percent. And already high deductibles are being raised even higher – which means associates are essentially getting less coverage for more money.
“We end up choosing between food, bills and health insurance, which we shouldn’t even have to be thinking about working for one of the largest retailers in the world,” said Walmart department manager Girshriela Green of Los Angeles. She works at the Walmart store in the Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza and makes $9.80 an hour. Girshriela has never been able to afford Walmart health insurance and gets her health care coverage from Los Angeles County.
While part of a trend of companies passing health care costs onto their workers, Walmart’s benefit cuts are excessive and punitive. Associates will face cost increases that are as much as six times higher than the overall rise in projected healthcare costs for 2012. Despite expert estimates that healthcare costs will rise between 5.4% and 11% next year, Walmart is forcing employees to pay premium increases of 20%-60%, and even more than that for smokers.
For Walmart associates like Barbara Collins, this is going to make the struggle to support and keep her family healthy nearly impossible. Facing a health care premium increase of 33.5% and making only $14,956 a year, she does not know how she will budget for the increased healthcare costs. To make matters worse, Barbara is working to pay off more than $1000 in medical bills that have accrued from an on-the-job back injury that wasn’t fully covered by her Walmart plan.
Walmart associates are available for interviews about how higher healthcare costs will impact them. These associates are members of OUR Walmart (Organization United for Respect at Walmart), an independent organization of current and former hourly Walmart associates.
Visit OUR Walmart’s Facebook page to read associates’ comments about the healthcare rollbacks.
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