As ABC News picks up the Walmart spreads swine flu story, we get this classic example of Wal-Flack double speak:

“As in the past, Walmart is encouraging our associates who may be ill to stay at home, get well and avoid infecting customers and other associates,” said Greg Rossiter, a spokesperson for Walmart.

He also refuted the NLC’s claim that they automatically dock pay from sick workers.

“We do not automatically deduct eight hours of sick time from worker’s wages,” Rossiter said. “With vacation, personal time and accrued sick time, an associate can continue to receive pay or compensation when they’re sick and that’s our goal.”

Gee Greg, how does that square with this (from the NLC report)?:

Wal-Mart has a punitive point (demerit) system that punishes workers who cannot come to work because they are ill or their children need care. Associates who miss a day due to sickness (or for any other reason) will receive a one point demerit, along with the loss of eight hours wages. Moreover, employees who “have more than three absence occurrences in a rolling six-month period…will be disciplined.” (“Attendance/Punctuality Policy (PD-52) New York,” January 2008.) Workers with four absences in any six-month period—no matter what the reason—will be disciplined. A fifth occurrence—like a sick day—will result in “active coaching” by management, and a sixth occurrence” will activate a “Decision Day,” when an “associate” can either be terminated or put on a year-long trial period, during which a worker can be fired for any infraction, no matter how insignificant. During this year-long probation the worker cannot receive a promotion.

So apparently what Walmart is saying to its workers is: “Don’t come. You’ll still get paid, but we’ll give you the points anyways.” And what are people who want to keep their job going to do?

At the end of this report, the National Labor Committee explains that it will be issuing a longer report on this soon. Since I’m on their mailing list (twice, actually), you’ll read about it here first.

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 5th, 2009 at 1510 by Jonathan Rees and is filed under Employment. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.