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Gang Box

Date Posted: June 25 2004

Wal-Mart has received more than $1 billion in subsidies from state and local government, according to a new report by the public interest group Good Jobs First.

The group combed public records and newspaper files to document more than 240 cases where public funds, tax write-offs and other government subsidies helped Wal-Mart open 160 retail stores and 84 distribution centers in 35 states.

The average Wal-Mart store received $2.8 million in public subsidies while its distribution centers (warehouses) each received an average $7.4 million in government assistance, the study found.

Public aid to Wal-Mart included financing through tax-exempt bonds, construction of access roads, installation of utilities and tax abatements.

Wal-Mart is famous for creating low-wage, no-benefit, nonunion jobs and for using its enormous buying power to crush local business competitors.

U.S. economic tidbits were recently summarized by the Union Label and Service Trades Dept.:

  • The unemployment rate remained stuck at 5.6% last month, with 8 million Americans out of work.
  • The length of time people are out of work actually increased. The average period of joblessness rose to 20 weeks, up from 19.7 weeks in April. More than one in five jobless U.S. workers have been unemployed 27 weeks or longer.
  • The economy added 248,000 new jobs last month. But the number of new jobs doesn’t come close to matching Bush’s predictions, or to the normal job growth after past U.S. economic downturns. There have been 60% fewer jobs created during the past 11 months than the Bush administration predicted.
  • This is the first “economic recovery” since 1939 where employment has failed to bounce back above pre-recession levels. Based on past performance, the economy should have added 5.5 million jobs by now. Instead, the U.S. has lost 2.9 million jobs since Bush took office.
  • Only one-third of today’s entry-level jobs offer employer-provided health insurance, compared to 63.3% of such jobs in 1979, according to Economic Policy Institute. Twenty-five years ago, 36 percent of all entry level jobs provided pensions, but only 20% do so today.
  • Total labor compensation (wages, salaries and benefits combined) grew only 2.8 percent during the past three years. If the U.S. economy was performing as well as it has after past U.S. recessions, total labor compensation would have risen 9.9%, EPI figures show.
  • On the other hand, U.S. corporate profits skyrocketed 62.2 percent during the past three years – more than four times higher than the historic average.

President Bush showed “total disrespect for the views of millions of working people” by
refusing to meet with top union leaders of the world’s major industrial nations, known as the G-8, said John Evans, general secretary of the Trade Union Advisory Committee (TUAC) to the
Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

Bush is the first head of a host country to refuse to meet with labor leaders in 29 years of G-8 summits. The labor leaders issued a joint trade union statement in advance of the G-8 summit meeting in Sea Island, Ga., June 8-10.