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The Buzz, 10-24: Attention,
Dancers!
Wal-Mart Workers' Sub-Poverty Wages Underwrite a Dance Company
By Paul
Ben-Itzak
Copyright 2005 The Dance Insider
It's great that Wal-Mart
scion Nancy Walton Laurie is providing the dancers of her Cedar
Lake company with their own renovated building in Chelsea, formerly
Annie Leibovitz's photography studio, to be unveiled tonight as
the company opens its season with new work from Joffrey veteran
Jodie Gates, City Ballet alum Edwaard Liang, and artistic director
Benoit-Swan Pouffer, formerly of the Ailey. It's laudable that she's
providing them with health insurance and paying them enough that
they don't have to hold down multiple other jobs but can devote
themselves completely to their art.
"Working here has been
a dream for all of us," Pouffer tells me, insisting that he's speaking
for the dancers as well as himself. (Well, maybe not former employee
Dario Vaccaro, who told the New York Times that working for Cedar
Lake was "the most horrible experience I've had in my career. They
took $75 out of my paycheck because I arrived one day, 34 seconds
late." In fact, the Times's intrepid Erika Kinetz reported* Saturday that "...the
company has lost a number of members, and the atmosphere at its
elegant new Chelsea home seems strangely choked." The Draconian
late penalties are no longer in force, said Pouffer, who succeeded
the company's first director L. Jan Ballard in May.)
Unfortunately, the Wal-Mart
workers who, through their sub-poverty wages, fuel the store profits
some of which have no doubt filtered to the dance company through
stock-holder Walton Laurie are not afforded the same power to dream
as Cedar Lake's dancers, who Walton Laurie refers to in the Times
as "my kids." (When a dance company owner or director refers to
the adult artists as children, watch out.)
It's great that, by
her own statements to the Times and elsewhere and by Pouffer's statement
to me, Cedar Lake's owner values her dancers. Unfortunately, the
values of Wal-Mart, co-founded by Walton Laurie's father (she and
her sister inherited his stock), are not always so laudable, at
least according to the United Food and Commercial Workers. Here's
some of what union president Joe Hanson has to say about Wal-Mart
values, in an April 2005 commentary for USA Today also posted on
the union's website:
"As America's largest
company, with more than $285 billion in sales and more than $10
billion in profits, Wal-Mart has a responsibility to set the standard
for customers, workers, families and communities. America's largest
employer -- with nearly 1.3 million workers -- must reflect America's
values.
"A company that reflects
America's values doesn't pay below poverty-level wages to its workers.
At 34 hours per week (full-time at Wal-Mart), the average Wal-Mart
associate makes $17,114 per year, well below the poverty level for
a family of four." (In 2005, $19,350 for a family of four, according
to the Federal government.)
"A company that reflects
America's values doesn't have 660,000 of its employees without company-provided
health insurance, forcing workers to seek taxpayer-funded public
assistance. In fact, in 11 of the 12 states that have disclosed
employers who have employees on Medicaid, Wal-Mart tops the list."
(This may be changing: As the Times's Michael Barbaro reports today*, this morning Wal-Mart
chief H. Lee Scott will talk to employees about the company's new
"Value Plan," which drops monthly premiums to as low as $11. However,
as healthcare experts and Wal-Mart monitors point out to the Times,
the plan's $1,000 deductable could represent a major hurdle for
Wal-Mart workers, who skew older and thus are more likely to face
health crises -- and remember that salary level. At present, according
to the union, less than half of Wal-Mart employees are covered by
the company's healthcare plan, 20 percent below the national average.)
"A company that reflects
America's values doesn't ask taxpayers to subsidize its $10 billion
in profits. A U.S. congressional study found that Wal-Mart costs
you, the American taxpayer, up to $2.5 billion in public assistance.
One newspaper editorial titled it, 'Wal-Mart Welfare.'
".... Wal-Mart is not
creating jobs in our communities. Wal-Mart's business practices
simply exchange decent jobs with health benefits for lower-paying
jobs and taxpayer-subsidized health care. The truth is Wal-Mart
is forcing good-paying American jobs overseas. Wal-Mart is creating
an America of lower wages, no health care and lack of retirement
security."
Walton Laurie prides
herself on her support of dancers, whose ranks, we know, are dominated
by women. Unfortunately, the company from which she has derived
much of her income does not do so well by females, according to
the union. For the same jobs, it alleges, they earn 5 - 15% or 40
cents less per hour than their male counterparts, "even though women
have, on average, longer seniority and higher merit ratings than
their male counterparts." The disparity does not stop when they
scale the hierarchy; "the average mail senior vice president...
makes $419,435 a year, while the four women senior vice presidents
earn an average of $279,772" says the union. And the company, it
says, "still faces the largest gender discrimination lawsuit, 1.6
million women, in U.S. history for unfair pay and unequal promotion."
To find out more about
Wal-Mart and its workers -- from the union perspective, anyway --
please click here.
What does Wal-Mart think
about unions, by the way? From its corporate website: "At Wal-Mart, we respect the individual rights
of our associates and encourage them to express their ideas, comments
and concerns. Because we believe in maintaining an environment of
open communications, we do not believe there is a need for third-party
representation." Uh, excuse me, but a union is not a 'third-party'';
rather, it levels the playing field by giving workers negotiating
skills and representation commensurate with those of management.
(To read more about what the union characterizes as Wal-Mart's Anti-Union
Campaign, click here.)
So, besides concern
that the anti-union stance of her uncle Sam Walton's company might
migrate to her dance company, what's my point? Do I say that because
Nancy Walton Laurie (likely) acquired the means to enable her to
found a dance company through profits gleaned partly from Wal-Mart's
paying retail workers relatively low wages, dancers should refuse
to work for her, dance audiences refuse to see her company, or,
for that matter, dance publications refuse to review the company
or accept its advertising dollars? No, I don't say this; the reality
is that in our financially piss-poor community, with relatively
little public funds available to it, at least in the U.S., we seem
to be in large part dependent on money gleaned from cancer agents
("Altria" a.k.a. Philip Morris) or labor exploiters (oil/Harkness,
automobiles/Ford, and Wal-Mart). What I do say is a) when
you sit in that spanking new theater tonight watching those glorious
dancers -- or as you dance across that new stage -- be aware of
whose inadequately-compensated labors are paying for all this and
b) urge Ms. Walton Laurie to use her clout as a major stock-holder
to urge her family's company to take as good care of its workers
as she apparently does -- notwithstanding the previous alleged problems
assiduously reported by Kinetz -- of her company's dancers.
(On Friday, the Dance
Insider sent a form of this article to General Strategic Marketing,
Cedar Lake's publicist, with an invitation for Walton Laurie to
respond. As of presstime, no response from Cedar Lake's owner had
been received.)
*If you're reading this column more than seven days after the
Times article was published, you may not be able to access it without
paying; unlike the Dance Insider, the New York Times charges its
readers to view its archives, except for reviews.
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