I first noticed Henry* at the Wal-Mart store located in Chicago's Austin neighborhood.  I watched as staff members pulled him in different directions to either joke around or seek work-related advice. He appeared well-respected and admired by his younger associates, so I felt compelled to approach him and ask a simple question: "Do you enjoy working for Wal-Mart?" I had previously posed the question to six other employees, all of whom had robotically shouted "Yes!" Not surprisingly, Henry eventually gave me the same answer.  But first he paused for a while and chuckled to himself.

Henry is in his late-fifties and began working for Wal-Mart in 2007 at $8.40/hour.  He remembers hearing Ald. Emma Mitts (37th Ward) and Wal-Mart representatives promise workers that all employees would soon earn at least $10/hour and receive quarterly bonuses.  Over the two-plus years that Henry has been employed there, however, he's only received $1 in salary raises; bringing him 60 cents shy of that $10/hour wage. He has also only received three out of his 12 possible bonuses; the last one came to $83 and was paid out last spring.

After meeting at the store, Henry and I sat down over coffee to discuss his monthly budget.  These numbers illustrate how difficult it is for a full-time Wal-Mart employee to simply cover basic living expenses.

Henry takes home $1,170/month after taxes.  His monthly expenses come to $1,613, however, leaving him $443 over budget. He has supplemented his income by taking on another job.  In total, he works 70 hours per week, not including the three hours he spends each day commuting on public transportation.

As with the other Wal-Mart employees I spoke with, Henry subsidizes his and his child's health coverage through government programs.  His wife is uninsured and relies on free clinics for care.

When asked what he does for fun, Henry responded as if the concept seemed foreign, explaining that he lives a "simple life of church, home and work."

"Basically, the way the schedule is, you don't have that much [time for family], because your off-days are not back-to-back,” he told me.  “So you get off one day, you take care of errands, but by then it's time to go to bed to go to work the next day."

Henry is just one of the 1.4 million Americans who work at Wal-Mart, the largest private employer in the country. Last fiscal year, the mega-retailer earned $401 billion in sales, which is larger than the GNP for some small industrialized nations. While Wal-Mart managed to open one store in the Chicago urban market, it wants to expand further. Their next proposed location is for a 190,000 sq. ft. supercenter (including a full grocery store) on 83rd and Stewart in the Chatham neighborhood.

These efforts appear to be escalating this week. While Ald. Howard Brookins’ (21st Ward) ordinance to approve the Chatham Wal-Mart remains in the Finance Committee, Mayor Richard Daley said yesterday that he would like to see the City Council and Chicago unions reach a “compromise” with the mega-retailer so that the store can be built.

Leading the resistance – and the fight for quality jobs -- is the Good Jobs Chicago (GJC) campaign, a coalition of residents, business owners, religious leaders, and organizations.  GJC spokesperson Amisha Patel defines a quality job as one that provides a living wage and affordable health insurance. “Low wages are not economic development,” she says, adding that workers should “not be placed in a position” where they have to choose between necessities like rent, food, clothing, and medicine.  In mid-November, the group held a press conference that packed the second floor of City Hall (see Progress Illinois’ coverage of their earlier rally here).

Based on the experiences of Austin employees like Henry, GJC is concerned that Wal-Mart will make certain promises during negotiations, then renege on them once the new store is built. Thus Ald. Fredrenna Lyle (6th Ward) is fighting for a Communities Benefit Agreement to ensure that any commitments by the retailer will be contractual. Lyle explains: “This is an attempt to vaccinate ourselves against a Wal-Mart coming into our communities without any … vehicle to hold them accountable.”

"[Wal-Mart] makes lots of claims that sound great, but in reality it's quite different,” Patel says. “Costco on the North Side has quality living wage jobs.  Why can't Southsiders get those same living wage jobs too?"

So yes, Henry has a job at Wal-Mart.  But he must work an additional 30 hours elsewhere just to make ends meet.  That’s 30 hours taken away from laughing with his family, watching the game with his buddies, and being more active in his church.  Is this the kind of life we want replicated across our communities?

* Name changed for the purpose of protecting his identity.
 
Dhyia is a non-profit management consultant with the virgoProject, LLC. Wal-Mart did not respond to her request for an interview. She can be reached at: dthompson(at)thevirgoproject.com