Users Trash Wal-Mart On Its Facebook Site 594
hhavensteincw writes "Only two weeks after Wal-Mart launched its latest foray into Web 2.0 land, Facebook users have hijacked a page aimed at selling back-to-school supplies to college kids to instead post rants about the company's labor practices. Of the 100-plus comments, none relates to dorm decorating as Wal-Mart had originally envisioned."
I don't get it (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Informative)
Do us all a favor and do something about your ignorance before posting next time: http://walmartwatch.com/ [walmartwatch.com]
In SF maybe, but not all over Cali (Score:3, Informative)
Walmart isn't a employee friendly company. The reason their employees go on welfare is because they can't get full time work. walmart doesn't want have to pay benefits so there are few full timers.
Not enough workers available (Score:3, Informative)
The alternative to Wal-mart is people starving and dying like in Africa where there is hardly any industry.
Wal-mart isn't forcing people to work at Chinese factories. People are choosing to work there instead of dying of starvation and preventable diseases on the farm.
American workers can easily do other stuff instead of repetitive and boring factory jobs. Plus with the flood of cheap goods less work would be needed. Come on gardeners get paid $50 an hour. You think a factory worker would get anything beyond minimum wage? Also, we currently have a 5% unemployment rate here. Which jobs taht people are currently doing would they have to leave to fill up the shoe making factories? Are you prepared to give up cell phones and great computer software so that you can have shoes made by americans
The world still needs cures for major diseases. There aren't cheap cars of BMW quality. Ferrari performance is not available cheaply yet. Not everyone has a large house, there is mad demand fror pre-fabbed structures so that infrastructure to be built. All of this shows there is a need for products and services
Do you think China has enough workers to construct all the machinery to develop their infrastructure? I don't think so
Re:This is *exactly* why (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I don't get it (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Not enough workers available (Score:5, Informative)
So it's work for walmart or die. I don't see how that's a choice. In fact, I'd call it coercion.
How is it coercion? They aren't the ones causing people to die. Think about it, without the factory
If someone is willing to do work for you for less, why isn't it moral to choose that person?
Because in this case, you'd be exploiting them by paying them wages less than the value of what they produce
Unless a person is being forced to work at gunpoint, that is impossible. Value of work is determined by supply and demand -- not anything intrinsic to the product. If there are others who are willing to provide a product for cheaper, I have the moral prerogative to choose the cheaper one provided by someone who is willing to work harder. The whole point of any work/pay contract is that the each person is choosing to work because they are going to be compensated equal to or more than what they feel the usefulness of their time/energy is. You can always choose not to work if you feel the deal is bad. So a doctor gives me a simple antibiotic and cures me of pneumonia so I live and can work
Re:I don't get it (Score:2, Informative)
It really is possible to love someone your entire life.
That's entirely subjective.
Global Warming really is the biggest problem facing the planet today.
The are libertarians and thus idiots on this. (The biggest? Let's just say one of the top five.)
Secondhand smoke actually causes cancer.
Secondhand smoke causes cancer when you sit next to someone smoking day-in and day-out. It does not cause cancer because someone lit up within ten feet of you outside. Not having seen that episode, I don't know which stance they took.
AA really does help a huge number of Alcoholics quit.
According to AA's own logic, AA has never helped anyone ever quit at all, because you cannot quit being an alcoholic. I don't know what Penn and Teller said, though. But South Park got that one right on the money.
The Boy Scouts are not ran by the Mormon Church.
They are not 'run' by it, no, which isn't what anyone asserted. If you're asserting in the last twenty years the Scouts haven't started all sorts of fuckary WRT conservative viewpoints and whatnot, you're not paying attention, they've been repeatedly sued. I say this as someone who was in the Scouts (Before any of these issues really were noticed.) and someone who does not support them today because of their homophobia and religious bigotry, and, no I learned about this crap entirely independent of P&T.
We really are getting fatter as a nation
I doubt they said that.
the Americans with Disabilities Act is a good thing
This goes along with their libertarian stupidity.
When P&T are doing shows about religion or bigotry or sex, they tend to make good points. When they aren't, when they're talking about government regulation, like the ADA show, they say a lot of interesting things that are mostly true, and then, somehow, pretend that what they just showed people isn't important. (The big thing on the ADA show was some lawyer suing an entire town under it as part of a scam, and some handicapped moron who said the ADA wasn't important just because.)
I.e, when they're attacking concepts, they're almost entirely on the right side. When they start attacking implimentations, instead of the concept they claim to be attacking, you know they're in the wrong but won't admit it.
With the Walmart show, they did about half and half. They're right, Walmart isn't as bad for communities as people make it out to be, which is the specific idea they attacked. That doesn't change the fact that Walmart is known for illegal union busting and deliberately reducing positions that give benefits and all sorts of anti-employee behavior. Which, mysteriously, P&T didn't address at all, because it would cut into their libertarian ideas.
P&T are, in a way, perfect libertarians. Totally social liberal and totally fiscally conservative. It's actually a pretty amazing show to watch if you watch it from that POV.
Re:I don't get it (Score:3, Informative)
Wal Mart doesn't just buy "that cheap stuff" which "would still be made regardless of whether WalMart was the retailer". Wal Mart goes to the manufacturer and says "here are the specs that we want you to build to and here is how much we're going to pay for it".
Wal Mart is actively driving the creation of "that cheap stuff" and it is somewhat damaging to the manufacturers. They can barely afford to meet Wal Mart's demands, but they certainly can't afford to turn Wal Mart down. The net result is cost cutting through lower quality material in order to have some profit margin.
I could give you numerous examples if you want them, but if you've paid any attention at all to the things written about WalMart, I shouldn't have to.
Re:I don't get it (Score:2, Informative)
They payed suprisingly good wages there, much better than the 6.75 I started at at Farm & Fleet, with no extra holiday or sunday pay. Though in Farm & Fleets defense, I did get $2. in raises in the first year, and I barely have to deal with customers.
No employee discount at either place though
I work at Wal-Mart now. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:You keep using these words (Score:4, Informative)
But they conveniently ignore the fact that back when anyone could have been carrying a gun, massacres still happened, just with a different technique [wikipedia.org].
The part where their own reasoning was bullshit is where they imply that "school shooting" == "walk and shoot at point blank" and that they exist because of gun laws; It's bullshit because if that stopped working, people who want to kill a lot of people as part of their suicide will go back to bombs and sniping.
I don't remember the walmart ep all that well, but I remember that they spent a lot of time talking about how a non-representative sample of people who dislike that store were idiots, and not at all any time on how walmart up and closes any store that dares start a union, build on native burial grounds, etc. They glossed over the evils and focused on people you wouldn't want to be associated with and declared them the anti-walmart type.
P.S. In their "environmentalists are t3h dumb" ep, they pass around a fake petition to ban dihydrogen monoxide, and then say they told no lie... meaning that they really intended to ban water? Bullshit. I like watching those guys, really I do, but they produce bullshit whilst decrying other people's bovine manure: they are entertainers, not the mighty defenders of the Truth.
P.P.S. Mythbusters also "bust" myths that they simply failed to do right: It's TV, corners are cut. Watchers beware.
Silly Canadian...it's the health care (Score:3, Informative)
In the US, where there is no national health care, it is left up to the employer to provide health insurance. This represents a cost to the company, and Wal-Mart is pretty good at avoiding it.
Its health plans are open to part-time employees (those who work fewer than a specified number of hours per week) only after a year of employment. Meaning, as a newly hired employee, you must wait at least a year before you can get any insurance at all. (And Wal-mart may force people to work off the clock to keep their hours-per-week low.) Furthermore, the plans that they offer are too expensive for the wages that they pay; the premiums are higher, the deductibles are higher, and the coverage is lower. So many eligible Wal-Mart employees are still unable to afford health care.
Re:They should take it one step further (Score:3, Informative)
no, it isn't. workers have a right to unionize, and the tactics that walmart (and some others) use to prevent unionization are illegal.
i think some unions have unrealistic goals, and many seem to serve their leadership better than their membership. but US law isn't at all vague about the right of workers to unionize.
-esme
Re:They chose to work there. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:They should take it one step further (Score:3, Informative)
Yeah...at least in some fantasy world where "U.S." cars aren't made in Mexico. Where, I understand, there aren't any maquiladora labor unions.
Re:Labour Unions (Score:5, Informative)
You are dead wrong. The U.S. has one of the lowest levels of unionization among industrialized countries. Union density was 12.4% in 2003, roughly 2/3 of Japan's (19.7%) and 1/2 of Canada (28.4%) or the E.U. (26.3%). Statistics used are from the U.S. Department of Labor [bls.gov].
Re:They should take it one step further (Score:4, Informative)
even threatening to shutdown operations because the employees unionize is illegal. actually doing so, when the purpose it only thwart unionization, is definitely illegal.
as I said before, some unions have unreasonable expectations. and i can imagine a scenario where a union forms and demands wages and benefits that would make it impossible for the business to operate. and that business would be within its rights to shut down.
but that's not what wal-mart is doing. they pull every trick in the book to prevent unionization, legal or otherwise. and shutting down a location to break a union is illegal. NRLA [nlrb.gov] is pretty clear on this.
-esme
Re:Just an incredibly banal version of the Borg... (Score:2, Informative)
You mean they force you to work and shop there? Otherwise, you don't really have any justification for your comment, do you?
Re:I don't get it (Score:3, Informative)
You're missing the point.
I work for a major grocery store chain that is unionized in the Northeastern US. I started there at minimum wage (5.15 at the time), but there was a detailed plan as to my financial advancement. Seven years later, I now make basically triple that, and also maintain benefits for myself and my family.
My college buddy has worked at Wal-Mart for the same time that I have worked for the grocery store, and he is making a dollar more an hour then he did when he started, and with minimal benefits. While he started out making over 2 dollars more an hour than I did, he now makes much less than I do, and with much worse benefits.
I recently graduated from college, and I am vested in my job at the grocery store. It isn't much, but an extra couple hundred dollars a month will be an added bonus for a job I maintained while going to school full time. He is looking forward to no long term gain from his 3/4ths of a decade working for a company.
I guess I find it difficult to defend Wal-Mart when I walked in to an E-O-E retail business, interviewed for 5 minutes, and was working the next day, with better benefits, guaranteed rights, and much better long term pay.
Re:They should take it one step further (Score:3, Informative)
This is just flat wrong. Some wealth is transferred, but most wealth is created. Inventing something new, increasing productivity, finding a more efficient or less wasteful organizational structure--all of these things create wealth. Every year someone invents something new, makes an incremental improvement on existing products, or re-organizes a system in order to cut out waste. The end result is more products, better products, at a lower cost. That's the definition of greater wealth, and that wealth wasn't transferred from someone else, it was created by doing new things or by doing old things in a new way.
Wealth that's transferred is done through government programs that confiscate the wealth you earn by working and inventing, and then give it to someone else.
Quite wrong! (Score:5, Informative)
The problem stems from statistics, and how the numbers are played with. Basically in the 'west' retiree benefits are paid from 'current' income. In the past these 'western' companies saved money by failing to invest for the future benefits they contractually agreed too. They did this by setting up shells that actually gave the investment money back to the originating company This made the companies look profitable and growing, and raised their then share price. This sort of nonsense was encouraged by the markets and governments which fed back into the management which gave more of the same. Behind the scenes everyone crossed their fingers and hoped that growth would make up the difference. There were many at the time who said it was all a house of cards, but they were starved of research funding and quite effectively silenced. Now time has caught up with these companies and governments and they have to pay, which is then, by accountancy tricks, spread across the current employee base, making current employees look way more expensive and quite unproductive.
Contrast this with Japanese companies who invested for the future benefits with strict governmental controls on how they were allowed to do it. Now these companies not only receive income from the investments, they also have a much lower cost base as they only pay out for their current workforce which makes them look less than half the price and considerably more productive.
Re:Just an incredibly banal version of the Borg... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I don't get it (Score:1, Informative)
You "don't get it," because you don't read. Walmart's "benefits" are subsidized by the federal and state governments that provide food stamps and other welfare payments to the employees who provide the vast majority of the labor required by the company in their stores. In the mean time they supply U.S. with a nearly endless stream of cheap plastic crap that breaks long before it should.
Granted people exercise their freedom to choose to buy from this behemoth, but it's in no one's best interest that we allow Walmart to cheat people out of overtime, systematically discriminate against female employees by paying them lesser wages, or hire undocumented cleaning workers and lock them in the building in the wee hours while they work. Walmart has engaged in all of these practices, they have been successfully sued for the first and last, and it's been covered in the general press.
Stop politicking for your employer, and go read a book that's not connected with the University of Chicago's Busineess School. In short, pull your head out of * and your stock charts and look around.