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."
This is *exactly* why (Score:5, Insightful)
"Only two weeks after" (Score:5, Insightful)
Am I the only one surprised it took so long?
Re:This is *exactly* why (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:I don't get it (Score:3, Insightful)
Funny how things like this work out. (Score:5, Insightful)
And if anyone is surprised that a publicity stunt / Advertising trick that intrudes on what many college students think of as their "hallowed ground" of friend networking backfired in such a way that it's incredibly embarrassing, they must be either silly or don't know what they are doing.
That's like Microsoft putting a "tell us how you love Microsoft" section in the middle of a linux community.
The fun part, Let's see if they try it on MySpace and expect a different result.
Re:I don't get it (Score:3, Insightful)
Than why do so many Wal Mart employees in California require social assistance to just to scrape by?
Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I don't get it (Score:3, Insightful)
Do us all a favor and take your own advice. Watch the Penn & Teller 'Bullshit!' episode about Wal-Mart, where they thoroughly demolish the anti-Wal-Mart arguments.
Re:"Only two weeks after" (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Funny how things like this work out. (Score:3, Insightful)
"Hallowed ground"? It's a web site!
Re:I don't get it (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I don't get it (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Funny how things like this work out. (Score:3, Insightful)
They might actually have a modicum of success of myspace, unlike Facebook . Facebook users are more socioeconomically advantaged [nytimes.com] than those on MySpace and tend to come from families who emphasize education and going to college, and who end up having higher income than their myspace counterparts.
Simply put, myspace users are more likely to shop at Wal-Mart than Facebook users.
Now that everyone can join, the class divide is fading rapidly.
Re:They should take it one step further (Score:3, Insightful)
I think Wal-Mart might believe its own propaganda (Score:5, Insightful)
And Wal-Mart is probably one of these.
They probably do think that the anti-Wal-Mart people are just a few malcontents, and that for most people, Wal-Mart is the center of happy shiny communities. And so they are probably surprised to learn that among many people, especially the educated, they aren't popular.
Re:In SF maybe, but not all over Cali (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I don't get it (Score:3, Insightful)
The American consumer drives the market and we won't pay one more penny than we have to. WalMart just profits from our greed.
They chose to work there. (Score:5, Insightful)
These people chose to work at Wal Mart and knew going into it what the pay was. Its simple economics. Wal Mart pays poorly because they have an abundant pool of workers who are quite willing to work at their pay scale.
Don't like the wages? Take a few night courses and move up. Or just work somewhere else.
Don't like how Wal Mart treats its employees? Don't shop there.
working at a grocery store before wal-mart (Score:1, Insightful)
after wal-mart: full time jobs are cut down to part time, so that they can cut benefits. its simple. 1 full time worker costs a lot more than 2 part time workers. unions are busted so wages drop. alot of the grocery stores before wal-mart, like albertsons, safeway, etc, had union workers. after wal-mart, the unions are almost dead. why? because wal-mart doesnt have unions. it fires workers who try to start unions. it fires workers who even try to talk about forming a union.
wal-mart doesnt just affect wal-mart, wal-mart has affected every other grocery chain and every other grocery worker by driving down wages, making vast numbers of full-time jobs into a bunch of part-time jobs with few or no benefits, and basically
it is not enough to say 'working at wal-mart is better than working at costco'. you have to compare what working at a big chain retail place was like before wal-mart came, where workers had unions and decent benefits, vs what exists now.
think of it like this. imagine 20 years from now, you are doing the same work you do, but you are making less money. meanwhile, the people that run the company are making more money than 20 years ago. that is what wal-mart has brought to the retail business.
ok. penn and teller can say all the funny stuff they want, but if they actually ever interacted with real workers they would not get away with their nonsense. people who have to work two jobs, people who have to go on WIC or food stamps even while they have a job, etc etc.
and if you are truly a 'geek' i think you would be more than happy to do some research to verify what you heard about walmart.
Re:You keep using these words (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:They should take it one step further (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Employer of Last Resort (Score:4, Insightful)
What did they expect? (Score:4, Insightful)
They launched a campaign targeted at college students, trying to get them to discuss dorm decoration?
That might have worked on grade school kids, but college students aren't so easy to "put one over" on -- they're adults, and they're usually informed about the issues. Wal-Mart's marketing suits should have realized that their terrible reputation would precede them.
Re:They should take it one step further (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I don't get it (Score:3, Insightful)
As a non-smoker, I for one appreciate (greatly) any establishment that bans smoking, especially restaurants. I don't particularly want my $20 steak tasting like cigarettes, thank you very much.
Re:They should take it one step further (Score:2, Insightful)
Walmart is notorious for exploiting vulnerable employees.
Go watch Walmart- the high cost of low price. [walmartmovie.com]
Re:I don't get it (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:They should take it one step further (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I don't get it (Score:3, Insightful)
It's my fucking business, if I want smokers to enjoy the establishment by providing a smoking section; I should have that right. You don't want to eat where there's smoke? Don't eat at my joint.
It's not your right to make MY business decisions.
Re:Employer of Last Resort (Score:3, Insightful)
Unfair wages? (Score:2, Insightful)
Bangladesh for example gained 1.5 million additional jobs over the 90s. Their textile industry is now worth billions and growth is running at 6%pa. Are the jobs still relatively shit? Yeah, but the alternative is worse and by not buying their products you just make their life and economy worse.
Re:They should take it one step further (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:I don't get it (Score:3, Insightful)
As for their health insurance, who can blame them? Pay attention sometime and you'll find that all companies from all strata of employment are bitching about health care costs. This shit ain't free no matter how much your local soap box screamer has said it is. In fact, as much I expect gov't controlled health care will kill me one day, I suspect that a gov't takeover of some fashion is a requirement of our economy. Otherwise, we're just going to continue getting run over.
Just get ready for that 18 month wait list for hip replacement! Try to keep off it in the meantime.
Re:They should take it one step further (Score:5, Insightful)
All of them could be. Because it would decrease the cost to build them, which opens up the potential to either sell them for less, or sell them at the same price with more capability. Either of which would also put them on a better competitive footing with Japan, Korea, and so forth.
Don't imagine for a minute that artificially high costs of labor have no effect upon the ability of a business to produce a quality product.
Don't worry about it though; even though labor unions seem to have the upper hand at the moment, they are one of the key forces that bring automation to assembly lines. Sure, they have the power to blackmail employers right now; but at the same time those ridiculous wages are being handed to them across the table, management is handing contracts to industrial robotics firms. American unions are destroying their own member's jobs by making sure they cost more to the company than automation does, and that they are more annoying to have around than robots are.
Re:They should take it one step further (Score:5, Insightful)
They can do it so much cheaper because the first $1500 of each car goes to cover medical insurance costs, not so in Japan. 69% of that health care cost is going to cover retired employees.http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co
Re:They should take it one step further (Score:2, Insightful)
You're so cute when you're all idealistic.
What they'd do in reality is slash wages and benefits, keep the cars as they are at the same price and reap the outrageous profits for a short term gain.
Re:They should take it one step further (Score:5, Insightful)
You may have a point about other goods but many foreign cars are domestically assembled and many domestic cars have as high or higher quotient of foreign parts. Also Japanese companies have historically felt obligations to their workers while US companies have not as much compunctions of screwing over workers to guard the bottom line. Over all your point about this one product type is full holes.
Re:I work at Wal-Mart now. (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh, and unions really ARE evil. Walmart is just more evil than unions.
Re:I work at Wal-Mart now. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Silly Canadian...it's the health care (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I don't get it (Score:4, Insightful)
It's my fucking business, if I want smokers to enjoy the establishment by providing a smoking section; I should have that right. You don't want to eat where there's smoke? Don't eat at my joint.
It's not your right to make MY business decisions.
Can you brandish a gun in public areas? Can you drive drunk? Similar rationale. Smoke at your home thats fine. But the waitress isn't paid enough to breath all your second hand smoke and most restruants are too cheap to get separate ventilation so either they should ban smoking or mandates separate smoking section ventilation and higher wages to waitresses/waiters who work there.
Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Insightful)
They find someone to act as the spokesperson for the position they're arguing against, and that person is always going to be someone who is utterly disagreeable to pretty much anyone who isn't a complete psycho.
For the Wal-Mart episode, they want to show what the anti-Wal-Mart crowd looks like, so they find these two nasty people who print up nasty t-shirts belittling some cruel stereotype of the Wal-Mart shopper, as well as the stereotype's wife and children.
Who's going to agree with that?
Then, on the pro-Wal-Mart side, they've got a nicely-dressed, soft-spoken young college professor.
Penn & Teller are funny and I agree with a lot of their conclusions, but they are very manipulative in their approach.
Re:They should take it one step further (Score:3, Insightful)
What a crock of shit, in modern market society many "business models" are little more then mathematical slavery. People do not have an independent resource base (food,shelter, etc) outside of the market. If people were truly resource independent many businesses would go belly up, or not even be possible. Right now private industry and families hold all the carrots and for many depending on where they are they simply must work or produce value to get things that are not local, we've created machine that never stops, never stopping to question how this effects society and the quality human life.
You can devalue human life towards zero because businesses do not bear the full cost and risk of producing people and supporting them. Imagine having truckloads of free bread simply show up at your business everyday. That's what it's like to be an employer in regards to people.
People do not like making wage progress only to have it backslide and taken away from them and have their time and abilities devalued. We're talking about human lives here, not things, not objects. Not to mention the psychological principle of investment: People hate investing all their time and life into their workplace only to be treated a disposable unit of production. And it's not just the bottom feeding industries like wal-mart, there's a reason many early US presidents were protectionist, as not to get into trade-wars of attrition that suck the wealth out of their economies and fuel unrest.
Most modern economic liberals forget that wealth is just transferred, and if you're one of the millions that wealth is being transferred from because you've been replaced or have been FORCED into redundancy, that's hardly 'the persons fault'. The system has many negative aspects and that's why George Soros is doing what he can because of the threats capitalism poses to itself.
"The Capitalist threat"
http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/soros.htm [mtholyoke.edu]
Re:I work at Wal-Mart now. (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:I don't get it (Score:4, Insightful)
You're missing an important part of the equation. When a wal-mart comes into a smaller town, it tends to drive a lot of the smaller shops out of business because people go to by the uber-cheap (usually poorly made) stuff at wal-mart. Those were stores that were supporting the people who owned them and their employees.
Those people have to have a job to pay the bills. Since Wal put so many places out of business, they are, in effect, the only game in town.
And that DOES drive the wages in an area down.
Re:They should take it one step further (Score:3, Insightful)
The big issue isn't wages (Toyota pays pretty competitive wages in their USA plants), but benefits. It's the idea that this large unyielding workforce is nearing retirement age and thus needing more expensive health care. Even then, however, the cost of the benefits package that these companies agree dto would be a much smaller issue if the Big 3 were able to actually move product in the US. Instead, the Big 3 have churned out shitty design that nobody wants to buy after shitty design that nobody wants to buy. Blaming the problem on the cost of American labor is simply a red herring.
Food for thought: where are most Big 3 cars assembled? Try somewhere other than the USA.
Simply put, if the Big 3 had actually focused on building cars that people want to buy versus how to market cars (SUVs) that are convenient to make we wouldn't be having this issue.
Competition would take care of that... (Score:3, Insightful)
Sooner or later, one of the companies, native or foreign would take the opportunity to drop prices a bit and steal business from the other companies.
Let's ask this question: If they'd take the opportunity to keep their prices the same if costs drop, why don't they raise prices? After all, what's to stop them from making more profit?
Heck - look at gasoline prices. Sure, it takes a little time, but when the refineries are operational and oil costs are down, gasoline at the pump does drop.
Re:They should take it one step further (Score:3, Insightful)
Unions are vitally necessary organizations, working to protect and promote workers' fundamental rights.
These sentences need not be mutually true. Yes, in their time, unions helped correct a number of glaring fundamental injustices, and they helped to bring a bit of sanity and equity into the worker/company relationship. I'd even agree that there's a real chance that backsliding of these rights could happen if unions were abolished. Still, though, the automotive unions sped their own demise. A strictly adversarial relationship with the "company" and political power-grabbing sped realistic compensation demands into blindly overzealous bread-and-circus demands that choked off the system that employed them (as well as much popular sympathy).
Compare some modern union versus non-union policies and benefits: Although some benefits and terms might be reasonable-- and one might reasonably say that the non-union worker is the one being slighted-- many other union benefits and terms are so obviously and stratospherically ludicrous compared to reasonable market-set terms that it's no great stretch to say that these unions' workers are operating in an unsustainable la-la land. Then, once the unsustainable demands on the company finally crack it, it's just all that further a fall back to the real world for formerly overpaid and now over-extended out-of-work auto workers.
Re:They should take it one step further (Score:3, Insightful)
That's just bullshit. Working is mutual exploitation. I go to work for 8 hours a day because I value the money I get more than the work I put in. My employer pays me because they value my work more than they value the money they pay me. Both my employer and I receive value from the setup, and if either of those conditions ceases to be true, I'm going to stop working there. Same thing with Walmart. If the tard stocking shelves thinks their labor is worth more than minimum wage, they can find a job where they get paid what they're worth. Nobody's holding a gun to their head.
But the you can't just magically declare "My labor is worth $100 an hour" and expect people to pay you that much when there's a ton of people doing the same exact thing for a lot less money. Walmart pays what they do because their employees accept it. It's as simple as that.
You capitalism haters are all the same. You'll go on and on bitching about capitalism, but you'll never propose anything better. It isn't perfect, but it beats the shit out of every other economic system that's been devised.
Re:This is *exactly* why (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:They should take it one step further (Score:3, Insightful)
Don't worry about it though; even though labor unions seem to have the upper hand at the moment, they are one of the key forces that bring automation to assembly lines.
You think labor unions have the upper hand?
Union membership has been shriveling for decades. The UAW is on the ropes.
Because it would decrease the cost to build them, which opens up the potential to either sell them for less, or sell them at the same price with more capability. Either of which would also put them on a better competitive footing with Japan, Korea, and so forth.
Cutting costs won't help much if the design is bad. Most American car companies are badly managed and this is reflected in their designs. They blame this on labor but labor doesn't design the cars. Price matters but I'm not buying a poorly designed car no matter how inexpensive.
Re:They should take it one step further (Score:3, Insightful)
And in Canada, they did exactly that. The first Wal-Mart store in North America to unionize, located in Jonquiere, Quebec, was shut down immediately afterwards due to 'lack of profitability'. Fortunately the labor board saw through that bs and ordered Wal-Mart to compensate the workers.
Re:Just an incredibly banal version of the Borg... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:They should take it one step further (Score:3, Insightful)
FWIW, here's a list of Canadian motor vehicle plants:
http://strategis.ic.gc.ca/epic/site/auto-auto.nsf
Re:Silly Canadian...it's the health care (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Just an incredibly banal version of the Borg... (Score:3, Insightful)
People who have significantly less resources than you are often compelled to do what you want, because as you say, the alternative is worse, but it's not really a free choice because a choice to do X or have your children starve isn't a choice at all. (contracts signed under duress are invalid, the fact that in this sense the threat (hunger) isn't created by you doesn't make the choice any less forced)
Offering to feed peoples children, on the condition that they convert to christianity would be wrong.
Offering a woman who is in the wilderness with a broken leg a ride to the nearest hospital, on the condition that she give you a blowjob would be wrong.
Offering someone whose family is starving $2/day, on the condition that they work as slaves for you is wrong.
Yes, in each of these cases, not doing anything at all could be argued to be even worse. But that ain't enough. By that you've just demonstrated that the action is not the worst-possible-action. But there's a long step from being "not-the-worst" and to being "good".
The second example is particularily interesting; it would actually be a *crime* not to help a helpless person in such a situation.
Somehow though, that responsibility evaporates if it's a nation and not a single woman who is in trouble. And if it's a whole world, rather than a single human being, who choose not to help. (or to demand unreasonable compensation for the help)
What is the problem with buying $50 shoes made by people making $2/hour rather than $100 Nike-shoes made by people making $0.20/hour ? It's not as if the first is more expensive than the last....
Yeah, it's hard to know and avoid sweatshop products generally. But when you *do* know, and you *do* have a reasonable alternative, I don't think there's any question whatsoever what is the best choice.
Re:Just an incredibly banal version of the Borg... (Score:4, Insightful)
Offering a woman who is in the wilderness with a broken leg a ride to the nearest hospital, on the condition that she give you a blowjob would be wrong.
Offering someone whose family is starving $2/day, on the condition that they work as slaves for you is wrong.
Yes, in each of these cases, not doing anything at all could be argued to be even worse. But that ain't enough. By that you've just demonstrated that the action is not the worst-possible-action. But there's a long step from being "not-the-worst" and to being "good".
The second example is particularily interesting; it would actually be a *crime* not to help a helpless person in such a situation.
Assuming that you are not an altruist, however, then
Whether this becomes "good" or just remains "better" is entirely a subjective assessment. I would tend to think that so long as you are candid about what your offer entails, then giving more options is a good thing even if you are offering them for entirely selfish reasons. Whether that makes you a "good" person is a different question altogether, but that has no bearing on whether or not the offer should have been made.
As an example, if I were in grave debt I might be happy to hear the offering from the local loan shark with tendencies towards knee breaking so long as he's up front about his interest rates and methods of sanction. I might end up not accepting the offer, but at least I have it on the table along with all my other options.
Re:This is *exactly* why (Score:2, Insightful)
Bang bang, you're dead! (Score:3, Insightful)
Maybe next time you could let us know what your point is so we can actually discuss it, rather than have to guess.
Are you really arguing that the singular case of Charles Whitman (edifying though it might be) proves "beyond the shadow of a doubt" the behavior of all such cowards?
I'm really arguing that if the population is armed and therefore will return fire to the assailant, that this will not prevent the assault. This will not prevent the assailant from killing people, and this is proven by the fact that the circumstances I'm describing are historically recorded and well known. This only leads to the use of a different tactic from the assailant in order to carry out his intended attack.
Yes, some people in Virginia Tech simply blocked doors and evaded Cho's bullets, but that is just because he did not bother with difficult targets, and he was NOT standing in one place waiting to be cornered. He was shooting to kill and moving on. And the important bit which your "stymied" argument fails to take into account is that he set the new record for "most killed before I died". He did not insist on killing these people because he simply did not care about these people, he cared about numbers, about beating the record, and he did. Some tried to save themselves, and it worked, great! In case of a sniper, hiding behind cover would also work. These shooters aren't gods, they're simply cold blooded murderers. A sharp wit, a bit of luck and a survival instinct can get you out of their scorecard.
If conditions are that return fire is expected, the strategy will change. His goal was to get the world to notice his suicide, and he got exactly what he wanted. He was smart, he was methodical, he was patient, and he was insane. Had the campus been armed, instead of walking around shooting people at point blank, he would have snipped, bombed, poisoned, whatever. He could have gassed a whole sleeping dorm with Chloroform stolen from the chem lab and killed them in their sleep for all we know. He had a goal, he devised the means to fit the current environment in order to accomplish his goal. Devising a specific counter-strategy will only work once, maybe twice, and the next mass murderer will adapt his strategy: Change the environment, and the next psycho will just change the means. He'll go pick on the Amish, or start with the Amish to draw away rescue personnel and then detonate remote bombs with a cell phone. The possibilities are endless.
The point is that there is no magic fix to the mass-murder suicide problem, and one of those magic fixes that won't work is having more people armed. I too would like a gun on me if someone tried to kill me, so I should try to kill them right back, but that is not an actual solution to the actual problem, it's a fantasy to make us feel safe.
Is that clear enough?