Another win(?) for Wal-mart...

[67alecto]

http://www.pensacolanewsjournal.com/...7/COLUMNISTS01

then this one:

http://www.pensacolanewsjournal.com/...507240314/1020

[da BoMM]

WHOA - eye-opener! Interesting that we're subsidizing the big blue meany. . . let the truth be told: Walmart SUCKS and there's a new Iron Curtain.

What the hell do we do about it? Boycott? How can we when we're hooked on Falling Prices . . .

[beefheart]

I've never set foot in one.

[done]

I've never set foot in one.

Whoopee for you. I have never seen an episode of Seinfeld or Friends.

[grinner]

I remember when we lived in Nashville, it was all in the news how WallyMart bulldozed ancient Indian burial grounds because it was a great location for a hell, uh I mean a WalMart. Money talks much more than tribal traditions though and they dozed away.
While I have seen many Seinfeld episides and have to admit to actually watching a friends episode once (well most of it, anyway) I do not go to Wal Mart unless I have a limb that's fellen off. Wait thats the hospital. Well I just don't go to WalMart.

[boggart]

I go to Wal-Mart 2-3 times a week. Our community is thriving, more business coming than ever before. I guess Wal-Mart didn't shut the town down. What people need to realize is that you shouldn't get paid $20hr for scanning items over an infared scanner and then staring at me with a deer in the headlights look as if I'm to read their mind for the total. That's a minimum wage job folks. Most minimum wage jobs don't come with benefits, they're supposed to be transitional jobs, or jobs for those with absolutely no skill, or gumption to move ahead in life, or a second job for you to save extra money to go to Vegas or something.

I like Wal-Mart.

[FOHN_JARGO]

This is a touchy subject for me. I design packaging and displays for people wanting to sell their stuff in many different stores. However, being just ten minutes from Wal-Marts home office in Bentonville, AR, most of what I do goes into Wal-Mart or Sam's Club. I am here because of that.

There are more vendors moving here everyday. The economy is booming because people from both coasts demand the comforts they are used to.

I see the cars the WM executives drive. Total excess. They don't seem to get it. These guys rake in hundreds of thousands of dollars per year and they have some poor 30ish year old woman with bad teeth and semi-clear plastic duct taped windows on her 15 year old car with baby seats in the back working the register. I would tend to believe that WM pays their employees low wages so they can only afford to shop, where else, at Wal-Mart.

I hate them too but I have no other stores to shop at. K-Mart went under here and the nearest Target is 40 miles away.

I can only hope something changes soon.

[boggart]

I would tend to believe that WM pays their employees low wages so they can only afford to shop, where else, at Wal-Mart.

That's just silly. They pay them low wages because that's what that job is worth. If you owned a company, would you pay someone $15-$20 an hour to do a job if there were people lined up around the corner to do it for $6 an hour? If you did, you'd be out of business real quick, or your prices would be higher than they needed to be, and people like me would go somewhere else to shop where the prices are more in line. The people raking in the big dough do so because they have the companies profitibility in their hands, they screw up, they're gone in an instant. They have a lot more risk involved in their job than the checker, the cart guy, or the old lady telling me Hi when I walk in the door. Again, any given job is only worth so much, and being a checker isn't rocket science. They're on the bottom of the food chain and are paid as such. Heck, we don't even need them to check us out, more and more stores are doing the self checkout lanes, and doing them effectively. So, would you rather they fire the bottom feeders and put those in or are we better off with the jobs that are there?

[Rev.Hammer]

I have to agree with you on this. The great majority of people are paid what they are worth. Also, if you want to make more money as an employee, no matter where you work, make yourself more valuable. Increase your skillset and your education and find a better paying job. Nobody forces anyone here into conscripted labor. As individuals it is up to us to find our own future. As individuals it is utter foolishnes to rely on anyone other than ourselves and to ever believe that we are irreplaceable in the company we work in.
Also, if Americans did not want WALMART and what it offers... it could not be the success that it is.
I personally dont care for WALMART, but here in Arab Alabama, its about the only game in town and they pay higher than local average to..

[IDSmoker]

Before commenting about minimum wage jobs, could you please explain to me why, when the cost of living goes up each and every year, our federally mandated minimum wage has been frozen since... hasn't it been at least a decade since the last increase?

I'm sorry, but while I agree that minimum wage jobs are for those without the skills to find better paying positions, it seems that these days, the only people who can still count on yearly increases in their wages are the executives who are in charge of deciding on the raises (like Congress voting themselves a pay raise). And don't forget that most CEOs that lose their jobs for lack of performance will still walk away with a 'severance' package worth more than the yearly salaries of the entire workforce of most Wal-Marts!!!

Whoopee for you. I have never seen an episode of Seinfeld or Friends.

[sarcasm]
Yeah, but did you watch the episode of South Park that featured Wal-Mart?
[/sarcasm]

[boggart]

Before commenting about minimum wage jobs, could you please explain to me why, when the cost of living goes up each and every year, our federally mandated minimum wage has been frozen since... hasn't it been at least a decade since the last increase?

No I cannot. It hasn't been quite that long, but it is overdue. And nothing chaps me more than seeing a business owner say something to the effect of "I wish the gov't would raise minimum wage, my employees deserve a raise." Well guy, if they deserve a raise Give them one!!!! That's a minimum wage, not maximum wage mandated by the government.

However, I am also not a person that agrees with across the board, yearly, cost of living increases as the only increase in income. I see an honest, fairly done, meaningful (yes, that is a lot of qualifiers) annual performance appraisal as the key to a successful raise process.

[05MagnumRT]

MagnumSXT- You're focusing on the employees of Walmart. So let's start there, Walmart will schedule employees for just below the number of hours per week to qualify for benefits in that state, so almost nobody that works at Walmart has any health insurance, 401k, etc. I expect cashiers to make a lower wage than many jobs out there - I still think that they should be able to get enough hours to make a living wage and care for their families.

Additionally, Walmart passes those "price drops" on to their suppliers. This means that many manufacturing jobs are sent overseas because things cost less. All the Master Locks used to be made in the Milwaukee area. Now, they're made in China - with 100s more people in Wisconsin out of work. If Walmart hadn't played dirty with Master Locks, those people would still be employed. Now they can't care for their families either, and the only place they can afford to shop is Walmart, enabling them to remove even more jobs from our nation. How long can this go on before there are not enough consumers that can afford to buy whatever it is that provides your salary?

Consumers cannot be consumers without a living income.

[DawsonMagnum]

I shopped at Wal Mart for years but no more. The quality of the merchandise is pretty good, the prices are usually very good, and their customer service policies are the best I've seen in that sector (especially w/ regard to returning merchandise).

I have absolutely NO issue with Wal Mart's hiring and compensation practices, either. Sure, they may pay low wages and give few if any benefits, but I don't see anyone holding a gun to peoples heads and forcing them to work there.

Where Wal Mart and I part company, however, is in their willingness to encourage local governments to abuse eminent domain powers and take, by force, land and homes away from private citizens that don't wish to leave. No free society has EVER survived the curtailment of private property rights and ours is no exception.

Wal Mart, I'm sad to say, has been guilty of this all across the country. Alabaster, AL; Arvada, CO; Maplewood, MO; and many other places have felt Wal Mart's bully tactics. As such, I will not shop in any store that has obtained it's property by force from people who didn't want to give it up in the first place.

[FOHN_JARGO]

I guess I would like them to spread the wealth a little more.

http://money.cnn.com/2005/01/10/news...ne500/walmart/

I know they donate a lot of money to charitys in the communities they have stores in. I commend them for this. That is still no reason to pay minimum wage. Quality pay gets quality people. The employees I see are always struggling to put forth a happy face. When the butchers wanted to join a union, WM fired them all and brought in pre-cut pre-packaged meat. A town around here will not allow a Sam's Club to sell liquor. Sam's decided to punish that town by closing that store and opening one in a different town. Wal-Mart has power and they are not afraid to use it.

Sam Walton belived in treating people with respect and not flaunting what he had. He died in 1992 but still drove his 1979 Ford F-150 complete with broken windshield, rusty fenders, and a bent radio antenna. I bet he is turning over in his grave right now over what his store has become. BTW, his grave is marked by a simple headstone with Walton engraved on it.

[boggart]

05, I'm not focusing on the employees at Wal-Mart, but employees and jobs in general. Having part time people is a Corporate America thing. Wal-Mart gets beat up about it at every turn, but why not GE, CitiBank, Chase, Sprint, Texas Industries, etc. etc. etc...

Do I like it? Yes and no. I employee some part time employees. The key benefit to me is that I can cover scheduling needs for a call center. However, not having to pay benefits lets me get more employee time (EFT) for the same dollar. Now, I'm not exclusively PT mind you, but I do utilize that.

I'm not saying that everything WM does is moral. But I do think they get a bad rep,and a lot of beatings for things they do that EVERYONE else does too. If it's that bad, make it illegal. If you require employers to provide benefits, prices WILL go up, if prices go up, cost of living goes up, if cost of living goes up the rest of us get raises to pay those new higher prices. But those who now have the new benefits won't get raises because they just did, in the form of benefits. Who's going to pay for their new higher priced groceries? It's a vicious cycle to which I do not have a perfect solution. I just happen to think that people have lost accountability for themselves, and expect something from everyone.

When I wanted more, I scractched, learned, applied myself, and got more. I have no earthly reason to think that I would deserve what I have now if I were still loading feed onto trucks, or flipping burgers like I was in high school.

As for companies moving offshore, W/M might have forced a hand, but they've never said "I'll only buy from you if you move to China". Those companies wanted to retain a certain level of profitability, it was their choice to move off-shore to keep the executives fed, not W/M's. They could have said, you know, we like our product just the way it is and W/M if you want to sell it fine, this is our price. But they didn't.