IN THE SUMMER OF 1998, Wal-Mart employee Winifred Snider was on an 18-foot ladder arranging boxes of shower curtains when a box gave way. "I fell backward and straight to the concrete floor," she recalls. Her wrist was broken in two places. Once the cast came off Snider's arm, doctors saw that her wrist was swollen, her skin shiny and cold, the hair standing on end. Snider was the unfortunate victim of a rare and bizarre disorder known as "reflex sympathetic dystrophy," in which the body, in a sense, disowns a traumatized limb. A host of doctors examined her, including specialists at the UW and Harborview. They all expressed alarm at her condition. "She had the worst case of RSD I've ever seen," says Dr. David Drobnicki, a rehabilitation expert in Bellingham. Drobnicki attempted to get Snider into an aggressive therapy program at the UW Pain Clinic to try to restore function to her arm and alleviate the intense pain. It would have required overnight stays and daylong treatments, and likely would have cost in the range of $17,000, Drobnicki says. But, for weeks, Wal-Mart refused to authorize this treatment. Drobnicki says the company's headquarters staff in Bentonville, Ark., was difficult to deal with. "Every step along the way, they either lost reports or denied they'd received them," he says. Wal-Mart ultimately agreed to pay for the recommended care, but by then Drobnicki had concluded that aggressive measures were no longer appropriate. He later wrote to Wal-Mart's attorney: "It is my opinion that [Wal-Mart's] delay . . . during a crucial time in this disease process negatively impacted her long-term use of the right upper extremity. . . . It may have been possible to prevent the spread of this syndrome with more timely treatment." Barbara Drew, a paralegal who oversaw Snider's case at the Bellingham law firm Knies and Allen, also wrote a letter of complaint to state regulators, requesting—successfully—that a fine be levied against Wal-Mart for its handling of the claim. "In all the years I have been practicing as a paralegal representing hundreds of injured workers," she wrote, "this has been by far the most abusive management of a seriously injured worker that I have ever witnessed." After nearly two years off work, Winifred Snider attempted to return to Wal-Mart, but she lasted only a day. "They sat me in front of a music store on a stool," she says. She has been at home and unemployed ever since. "I still don't have use of my arm and my hand, it's all deformed," says Snider. "I'm living on 18 to 20 Advils a day and no paycheck."
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If what state regulators say is true, Snider's experience is not unique. Officials at the Department of Labor and Industries contend that Wal-Mart mistreats its injured employees in Washington. According to a state order issued November 30, over the last seven years Wal-Mart has "repeatedly and unreasonably" delayed giving injured workers the benefits they were owed under workers' compensation laws, and, in some cases, Wal-Mart employees were not allowed to file workers' comp claims at all.
"Time and again," says Gary Moore, head of Labor and Industries, Wal-Mart has shown itself "unwilling or unable to manage its workers' comp program as required by law." Moore's agency has audited the company, fined it, issued "directives," put it on probation, and now is moving to seize control of Wal-Mart's entire injured worker program—a step it has never before taken except when an employer was going bankrupt. "This is not an action we take lightly," says Moore. "We worked with Wal-Mart for several years to improve their program. But they failed to make the necessary progress."
An examination of recent cases involving Wal-Mart shows that workers' comp claims can be far from black-and-white. And in fact, Wal-Mart has frequently prevailed over L&I in disputed cases that have come before the Board of Appeals in the past.
Speaking from Arkansas, Wal-Mart spokesperson Bill Wertz maintains his company is doing better. "We feel somewhat puzzled by the department's action and feel it is unwarranted," he says. "It's true we have not handled every case perfectly. We do acknowledge we've made mistakes in the past, most of them minor in nature." But, he says, "We feel we've clearly demonstrated steadily improving performance." The company is appealing L&I's order to the Board of Industrial Insurance Appeals, an independent state agency with its own judges.
WAL-MART IS THE BIGGEST employer in the United States, outside of the government, and the biggest retailer in North America. It is as much a part of the culture in midsized American towns as Starbucks has become in urban centers. Its vast stores, carrying everything from drugs to hardware to CDs to groceries, helped to launch the "big-box" retail phenomenon around the world, and the company served as the model for Amazon.com's (now discredited) ambition to sell everything imaginable online. Wal-Mart has taken heat for destroying small merchants wherever it goes, and many towns fight to keep the "big-box" giant out. The company is also a perennial target for unionization drives and lawsuits, and is well known for its tough tactics against both.
