Some service-sector companies have made much of the fact that they offer stock options or “profit-sharing” to low-level employees, among them Wal-Mart, which calls its clerks “sales associates” Borders, which refers to them as “co-owners” and Starbucks, which prefers the term “partners.” Many employees do appreciate these gestures, but others claim that while the workplace democracy schemes sparkle on a corporate Web site, they rarely translate into much of substance. Most part-time workers at Starbucks, for instance, can’t afford to buy into the employee stock-option program since their salaries barely cover their expenses. And where profit-sharing schemes are automatic, as at Wal-Mart, workers say their “share” of the $118 billion of annual sales their company hauls in is laughable. Clerks in the Windsor, Ontario, outlet of Wal-Mart, for example, say they only saw an extra $70 during the first three years that their store was open. “Never mind that from the viewpoint of the boardroom, the pension plan’s best feature was that it kept 28 million more shares in firm control of company executives,” writes The Wall Street Journal’s Bob Ortega of the Wal-Mart plan. “Most workers perceived that they could cash in, so the cost of the plan paid off in spades by helping keep the unions out and the wages low” (italics his).26