Doubling the number of part-time employees
By Jack Rasmus
Z Magazine Online
December 2006 Volume 19 Number 12
This past October, Wal-Mart, the largest employer in the U.S. with revenues of more than $310 billion a year, announced it was going to double the number of its workers employed part-time —from 20 percent to 40 percent of its total work force—while reducing full-time jobs by yet unknown thousands at the company. Given Wal-Mart’s total U.S. employment of 1.3 million, that means 260,000 more Wal-Mart workers will now make roughly half of what full-time employees earn. What little health and other company-paid benefits the 260,000 had as full-time employees will be reduced or eliminated. Wal-Mart will save an estimated $3.042 billion a year in wages and benefits by doubling its part-time work force to 40 percent, for a total of 520,000 part-timers.
Wal-Mart also announced in October a “cap” on wages that will impact many thousands more of its workers. In addition, both part-time and full-time workers will have to work erratic work schedules and be on call nights and weekends, with as little as 24hour notice of work shift changes.
Like “just-in-time” inventory introduced throughout most industries and companies in recent years, Wal-Mart workers now will be “picked off the shelf” at the last minute by Wal-Mart managers to satisfy day-to-day shifts in sales demand, creating in effect a just-in-time work force—a trend that hasn’t been seen since the early 1930s in the longshore and trucking industries.
Just-in-time employment will undoubtedly allow Wal-Mart to reduce its total employment significantly over the near term, saving the company further millions of dollars annually in addition to the $3.42 billion above. Workers who miss work due to illness will face new company rules for discharge due to health related absences—a change designed to further drive out more full-time workers.
The above combined actions by Wal-Mart will result in a significant shift in income, from Wal-Mart’s employees as a group to the bottom line of the company’s annual profit and loss statement. The combined total from the announced changes could easily amount to $5 billion a year in direct savings to the company and, in turn, in lost income to workers. It was not surprising that Wal-Mart’s stock price jumped by more than 10 percent in the days immediately following the above cost saving (and income shift) announcement.
The broader point, however, is that Wal-Mart is just one of many contemporary examples of the radical restructuring of jobs by Corporate America—a restructuring that is now ushering in a de-facto “New World Jobs Order” in the U.S.
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