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)
Re:This is *exactly* why (Score:5, Funny)
Re:This is *exactly* why (Score:5, Informative)
Re:This is *exactly* why (Score:5, Funny)
The special place in hell for the Wal-Mart greeter (Score:3, Funny)
In fact hell has been working on a "Web 2.0 style" social network for ages. I can't wait to meet up with all my friends there.
Re:The special place in hell for the Wal-Mart gree (Score:3, Funny)
"Only two weeks after" (Score:5, Insightful)
Am I the only one surprised it took so long?
Re:"Only two weeks after" (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Just an incredibly banal version of the Borg... (Score:5, Funny)
I've heard the older you get, the more you might need asshole management. (I read that sentence wrong.)
Re:Just an incredibly banal version of the Borg... (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
They should take it one step further (Score:5, Funny)
Re:They should take it one step further (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:They should take it one step further (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:They should take it one step further (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:They should take it one step further (Score:5, Interesting)
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:Quite wrong! (Score:4, Interesting)
What next? You want to tell us about lean production (where Toyota is world leader, bar none)? Total quality management (which was laughed out by everybody, except by the Japanese, who listended very carefully and then went to implement it)? Innovation, like Hybrids (not feasible and too expensive for most, except for some Japanese companies)?
Next you will reason that over-motorized GM junk is unsellable in the rest of the world due to gas guzzling, quality problems and overall borishness, while we all no that's a French conspiracy to hurt America.
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: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: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 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: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: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: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:They should take it one step further (Score:3, Interesting)
That's a beautiful thought, but it doesn't work like that in practice. One of the reasons why is that there is usually not an unlimited supply of jobs that one is able to get. Do you really think anyone would go get at job at Walmart in the first place if there's something better? We all need some things to survive and to live a decent life (you only get one) and some people apparently have to work at Walmart to get those things, there's the gun.
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.
Ever herd of organized labour?
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.
Pure capitalism is really something awful. I'd propose a mixed economy just like what the US have right now (but with a better mix), though I guess I can't really be placed in the group of capitalism haters.
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.
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: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: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.
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)
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.
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: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, 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.
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:Silly Canadian...it's the health care (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't get it (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I don't get it (Score:3, Insightful)
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]
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:I don't get it (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I don't get it (Score:4, Funny)
Re:I don't get it (Score:3, Funny)
You keep using these words (Score:5, Interesting)
And those would be the same Pen & Teller that think that arming students would end all school massacres [wikipedia.org]? They're funny magicians, not prophets.
Re:You keep using these words (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:I don't get it (Score:3, Insightful)
Hypoxia (Score:4, Funny)
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:I don't get it (Score:4, Funny)
I get to the checkout and in front of me are two guys and a girl. The guys had matching tatoos on their necks that read "100% Honky"
I kid you not. I nearly choked because I was trying very hard not to laugh.
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:I don't get it (Score:4, 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: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:3, Funny)
Note: I am vegetarian, but do not think the above (well maybe a secret 0.5 - 1%). However, I hope you get my point though?
Re:I don't get it (Score:3)
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)
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.
Re:In SF maybe, but not all over Cali (Score:3, Interesting)
Anecdotal, yes. But it's a fact.
Re:In SF maybe, but not all over Cali (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I don't get it (Score:3, Funny)
Employer of Last Resort (Score:3, Interesting)
Walmart is an employer of last resort.
Employers of last resort tend to hire people who are already on the margins. Walmart is more likely to be drawing people from the welfare roles than say Sun Microsystems.
Since Walmart is an employer of last resort there will be a lot more movement between welfare roles and employment than in higher end companies. It is difficult to tell if Walmart is abusing the welfare system.
There are cases where Walmart has shown workers how to use the local welfare system. This appears to be abusive. However, these people are generally the marginalized people who the welfare system is intending to help. Even here it is difficult to say if Walmart is abusing the system. These people in the margins often only work at Walmart for a short spell. Learning about local public services is probably more valuable for them than becoming dependent on a job that they are unlikely to hold for a long period of time.
An employer of last resort will always have a greater give and take with the welfare system. It is a fallacy, however, to assume that companies that hire people off the welfare rolls are evil simply because their ex-employees are more likely to fall back onto the welfare rolls when the job is done.
Re:Employer of Last Resort (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Employer of Last Resort (Score:3)
Re:Employer of Last Resort (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Interesting)
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: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.
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: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: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.
Another Example of G.I.F.T. (Score:3, Interesting)
Now if they had actually gone to their local Wal-Mart store and defaced that, I'd be more impressed.
I'd be even more impressed if they started hand-crafting their own dorm furniture from self-produced resources instead of just shopping at Target or Ikea instead.
On the larger problem, see today's New York Times article [nytimes.com] on China's (and soon, the world's) environmental problems.
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:Funny how things like this work out. (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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:Funny how things like this work out. (Score:3, Insightful)
"Hallowed ground"? It's a web site!
So... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:So... (Score:4, Interesting)
Facebook is about rebelion (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
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: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
Better source of Info? (Score:5, Interesting)
Corporate Web 2.0 is a dumb idea anyway (Score:4, Funny)
It really surprises me that marketing departments don't take one look at the concept of a corporate Facebook page, MySpace page, or Second Life presence and fire the idiot who produced it.
Imagine trying to sell life insurance to a bunch of skater dudes drinking Mountain Dew...that's the success rate this will have.
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.
Re:They chose to work there. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:They chose to work there. (Score:4, Interesting)
Don't like the wages? Take a few night courses and move up. Or just work somewhere else.
Y'see, something about this post bugs me. Most people in the lower salary brackets are less likely to move up to higher level salary brackets (i.e., earn better jobs). That's because they don't have the proper resources to make that kind of progress. I'm sure there are some cases where people can attend night classes and earn some sort of certification for their efforts, but that's the exception from the norm. Fortunate folks like to think things are simple all across the board - for all people rich and poor-, but when you're smart enough to the point where you have a college degree (and can comprehend the majority of the stuff on
One of the other problems people have is that they don't like to acknowledge this kind of social issue in today's society. [sarcasm]God forbid we ever acknowledge the plight of the poor and feel guilty about being so well-off. We might just feel a bit too uncomfortable to even turn on our television sets.[/sarcasm] People think that if they don't acknowledge these issues then the issues will go away. And even if they do have to read about it, they'll just cast it off with a simple no-bs remark "don't like such-and-such? don't give em' your business." If things were that simple, I would've stopped paying my taxes when we went to war with Iraq in 2003.
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.
Fix me (Score:5, Interesting)
Wal-Mart's revolting nature comes on a gut level, and not a rational one. There are arguments against its existence for worker's rights reasons, for anti-globalization reasons, and for aesthetic reasons - but most people go looking for these reasons in the first place as a result of actual time spent in the store, and the feeling of sweaty, raw animal terror that the experience inspires in a person who has a choice to go elsewhere.
Should Wal-Mart be allowed to exist? Of course it should. It's a free market, baby, and they are PROVIDING. Jobs, cheap-ass crockery, optometry, etc. But that's no reason not to feel overwhelming pity for the people that are forced to shop and work there. It's a horrible place, but so is the overnight shift at a city hospital. You can't get rid of a place like that because it is ugly.
If anything, Wal-Mart does a public service for the impoverished of a community. It forces the middle-class to look at them -- under stark, neuron-scrambling fluorescents -- and see that they are neither institutionally lazy nor inhuman. They are falling apart, and the only people interested in helping are a corporation with a profit motive that panders to their every prejudice and weakness.
The first impulse is to trample that ant-hive. Find a reason to get rid of it. The ant-hive is the problem!
But Wal-Mart is a challenge. Can we do better to provide for the bottom of society? If not, then Wal-Mart is better than nothing. I think we can do better. I think -- in the same way that Scientology is challenge to scale down the state protections for religion -- Wal-Mart is a challenge to improve the quality of life of impoverished America. It is the natural outgrowth of the system that we have created. It is a website under construction that says "FIX ME."
So shop Wal-Mart, think real hard about how to make it better, and SAVE.
I work at Wal-Mart now. (Score:5, Informative)
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:3, Interesting)
The company was one of the largest and most progressive in Canada. The unions wasn't really evil there and the company was pretty good too.
Re:I work at Wal-Mart now. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I work at Wal-Mart now. (Score:5, Interesting)
As for promotions being handed out to friends, what happens in your store does not mean that it happens in all stores.
Another example of "what happens in your store does not happen in all stores": Remember your comment about management working "below their current rank", I've seen my store manager go outside and push carts numerous times when our store was low on carts. He started out in the company as a cart pusher, by the way. I've seen the front end assistant manager clean a bathroom. I've seen a grocery assistant manager mop the floor. Management expectations start with your store manager. One store manager is not a representative sample of all store managers.
Management (or anybody else) modifying the number of hours an associate works is a terminable offense. I am not salaried management, but I have the ability to edit an associate's time. If I modified an associate's time (either increased or decreased), I have no doubt in my mind that I would be terminated on the spot. There's a report that runs every Saturday morning called the "Time Clock Archive" that lists every associate's time and if that time was edited, it lists the name of the person who edited it. The information is also recorded in the SMART system under the program called "Electronic Time Adjustment" (select "Change/View Time Adjustment"). All associates are given access to the Electronic Time Adjustment automatically when hired.
The "Open Door Policy" is more than your local store management. Have you tried talking to your district manager? Your regional manager?
What Wal-Mart provided pamphlets? In my store, we're usually griping (under our breath) about the number of customers coming in to our store that do not have jobs and whip out their EBT cards- customers we are supporting with our tax dollars.
my turn to bitch (Score:4, Interesting)
For such huge stores, they have many different sorts of products, but in each category usually very low selection. About the only well represented categories are clothing and snack foods. But even in the clothing it's fairly low. I haven't seen cotton shorts there at the one near my place, in a long time for instance.
I went looking for various things for the kitchen a couple weeks back. They had maybe 2-3 styles of plates, 2 styles of cups, etc. Barely any of the odds and ends [e.g. peeler, can opener, cheese grater, etc]. Then head over to home hardware. No real variety in the light bulbs, power strips, fuses, etc. Head over to the music dept, oh look 300 country albums and the top 20 from Sony/EMI/etc. Wow, wonders never cease to amaze me! I've walked out of dept stores many times this year alone empty handed. Not for lack of want, but just because they didn't have anything I needed. And I have to ask myself, for a store so big, how can they fail in this respect so miserably?
I like the concept of a dept store, where I don't have to drive around the city to get say towels, movies, dishes, some junk food, etc. It's simpler, faster, and environmentally friendlier. But I find myself increasingly having to shop around anyways.
Tom
Wal Mart has good taste in music. (Score:3, Funny)
Oh no. (Score:3, Funny)