Walmart illegally opened high-fee bank accounts for 1m workers

Walmart illegally opened a bank account for each of more than 1m delivery drivers without their knowledge or consent, then forced them to use them to receive deposits—harvesting more than $10m in junk fees. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is suing the company on their behalf.

…for forcing delivery drivers to use costly deposit accounts to get paid and for deceiving workers— "last mile" drivers in Walmart's Spark Driver program—about how they could access their earnings. The CFPB's lawsuit alleges that Walmart and Branch opened Branch accounts for Spark Drivers, and Walmart then deposited drivers' pay into these accounts, without the drivers' consent. Walmart told Spark Drivers that they were required to use Branch to get paid and that they would terminate workers who did not want to use these accounts. Walmart and Branch also misled workers about the availability of same-day access to their earnings. Drivers had to follow a complex process to access their funds, and when they finally did, they faced further delays or fees if they needed to transfer the money they earned into an account of their choice. This resulted in workers paying more than $10 million in fees to transfer their earnings to an account of their choice.

Read the complaint. The drivers were told they would lose work if they did not use the accounts.

The government's lawsuit says Walmart told drivers, who deliver its shipments to customers' homes, that they would lose their jobs if they didn't use Branch accounts to receive the pay. "Thousands" of drivers had their wages deposited into a Branch account before ever agreeing to terms and conditions, according to the lawsuit. Drivers who didn't want to — or couldn't figure out how to — access their Branch accounts, the lawsuit says, would lose their Walmart delivery work and often the wages that had been deposited to those Branch accounts, too.

We're well past the point where it takes so much effort to describe events without implicitly critical language that the effort can't be hidden from readers. Journalists talk about impartiality and objectivity; the thing is, readers can see who doesn't get the benefit of it.