A local candidate was in the running to be named Scrooge of the Year for 2011 by a national labor group, but lost to that most dreaded of villains: a Wal-Mart executive.
Each December, Jobs With Justice invites the public to vote for a person or corporation deemed to have done the most harm to the interests of working people. This year, the four nominees included Eddie Hull, executive director of residential life at UMass-Amherst.
Hull made the list for eliminating two student positions within his department, leaving 73 undergrads who work as peer mentors and advisors out of jobs at the end of the current school year. The changes were part of a larger restructuring of the school’s residence life program, which Hull has said is intended to improve dorm culture.
The Daily Collegian reported that at a meeting with the Student Government Association, “Hull … responded to criticism that there was not enough student involvement in the process of implementing these changes by saying that although students were not exactly involved, concerns and opinions of the student body were taken into account when the decisions were made.”
According to the article, Hull told the students, “Depending on how broadly or narrowly you define student input you might be right. Students were not at the table when we made decision, but saying that student voices were not [taken into account] would be unfair.”
Other nominees for the national Scrooge award were the Publix supermarket chain, criticized for refusing to join an effort to improve conditions for farm workers, and the conservative American Legislative Exchange Council, nominated for its role in pushing what Jobs With Justice calls “voter suppression laws.”
But in the end, the honor went to Rob Walton, chairman of Wal-Mart’s board of directors.
“The Waltons are the richest family in the United States, with a combined net worth [of] $93 billion,” Jobs With Justice said in announcing the winner. “The Walton family has as much wealth as the bottom 30 percent of American families combined—more than 35 million families.”
Jobs With Justice contends that the amount earned by Walton family members from their Wal-Mart stock dividends alone could boost the hourly wage of one million of their store employees to $12. The current hourly wage for Wal-Mart sales associates is $8.80, according to Glassdoor, an online company that collects wage information and other data about corporations.
Jobs With Justice also slams Walton for his company’s recent decision to eliminate health insurance benefits for new hires who work 24 hours a week or less, and to eliminate spousal coverage for new hires who work 24 to 33 hours a week.
“Wal-Mart, under Rob’s leadership, slashed health care coverage for hundreds of thousands of Wal-Mart employees and their families—right before the holidays!” the labor group noted. “What a scrooge!”
