OMG, OMG, OMG

www.walmartworkersrights.org

Several years back, I was in a "small study group" at a University. A Wal-Mart employee was in the study group. Being this was a business oriented class, of course Wal-Mart came up in the discussion. The W-M employee told us of an older W-M employee (base wage type w no education) that had been with W-M for 15 years. He (the W-M employee) performed basic tasks and janitorial duties and didn't realize he had been in the employee thrift plan the whole time of his employment. He was surprised to know he had any "savings" at all. When my study partner told him about the profit sharing plan, the W-M employee went straight to the front office to see how much was in his account. Then he walked out the front door there on the spot. He had over a quarter of a mil.... I have little sympathy for "abused" W-M employees.

Stripes, I could care less about "abused" Wal-Mart employees. I just thought it was REALLY FUNNY.

come on guys, where is your sense of humor?

Sorry fellas, Got to disagree. I've seen what Wal-Mart has done here and to who. No insurance, most workers are kept under the hour cap to be eligible for any of those old benefits like the guy \\\STRIPES/// was talking about got. And when after a huge fight meat cutters were finally able to organize a union (meat cutters have a traditionally strong union presence) IMMEDIATLEY Wal-Mart laid off all the meat cutters and went to pre-packaged meat. (Factory meat packers & cutters don't count as "real" meat cutters, so no union for them). Just one of a million tricks Wal-Mart uses...and remember folks most everything at "buy American" Wal-Mart comes from China (Wal-mart has the largest corporate offices in China of any US firm by far, accounting single-handedly for over 1/3 of our trade deficit with China)) AND their own "numbers" prove 80% of items in any given Wal-Mart can be purchased cheaper somewhere else...they are the world's best at image building & bait & switch.

from www.instapundit.com : January 26, 2006 MAYBE IT "TAKES A VILLAGE TO CONFRONT WAL-MART," but apparently it takes the population of a small city to apply for jobs there: A year and a half after some Chicago alderman stopped Wal-Mart from opening a store on the city's South Side, 25,000 people applied for 325 job openings in the company's new store, located just one block west of the city's boundary in south suburban Evergreen Park, the Chicago Sun-Times reported. Sounds like it might be a more attractive place to work than some people realize. UPDATE: Bill Quick wonders how many jobs the anti-WalMart folks created in January. ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Freeman Hunt emails: I've never worked there, but I do know that it is one of very few companies where you can start at the very bottom and work your way to the top. I grew up in Bentonville, Arkansas, the home of Wal-Mart and most Wal-Mart executives. I think people would be surprised at how many of the people at the top started out working at Wal-Mart stores. One man I knew in particular was one of the VPs in the international division making a six figure salary, and he started with Wal-Mart as a cart pusher. I think "cart pusher" is probably the lowliest job you can get at Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart is definitely a company where someone can work his way up. No wonder so many people applied for those jobs. You know, to me Wal-Mart is a lot like George W. Bush. It's not that I'm that big a fan in the abstract, really, it's just that the viciousness and stupidity revealed in its enemies tends to make me view it more favorably than I otherwise would. posted at 03:27 PM by Glenn Reynolds

Exact opposite happened here. Guess it's where you are. They "upgraded" from a big Wal-Mart to a "superstore" put one local supermarket and one general type store out of business before they even opened, both had been here over 15 years at least (they could see the writing on the wall). They promised 300+ additional jobs (the old one wasn't 24/7) but some employees I know say they haven't hired but a few people. Now there are just a dozen or more new checkout lines that are never open and they "shuffle" people all the time so if you ask a question in electronics the person may say "I'm sorry I work children's wear and am just filling in today"... and don't even bother asking anybody where something is, they can look at the little computer thing and tell you they have 3 but they don't know where they moved them to this week. The vast majority of people here just don't see the point, their grocery prices are really no cheaper on most items... OK so now it has a deli & a hair salon, flowers, eyeglasses, etc. but they didn't create jobs, just took the leftovers from other places like the closed stores. And I know people who have worked at the one here for years (10+) and have made it 20 feet from checker to the "supervisor" who stands at the little desk & brings people change & helps new cashiers. Not a big career move. I have only heard the "upwardly mobile" success stories in areas where they have had a lot of development so they opened new stores rapidly or new distribution centers or Sam's or whatever so the nearby employees had a chance to move up a step. An example is another town like ours about 20 miles away, also on the outskirts of D/FW that has had a huge housing boom recently in those "rural" subdivisions where people move to escape the city and get their "huge" 1/2 or 1 acre lot. They just added another super center just about 8 miles from the first one because rapid development is happening on the roads leading past both. So over there experienced workers who didn't want to uproot their families had a chance to take a step up moving to the new store while they refilled all the "cart pusher" type positions. In places like that I guess it's a good thing but Dallas/Ft. Worth in general is seeing a Wal-Mart backlash. Several suburbs have voted down zone changes for building new bigger wally-worlds. It's not terrible but here they built the new one right across from the high school entry road so twice a day you have to wait through 5 or 6 traffic light cycles to get to either. It's not the end of civilization, but they sure haven't delivered on the promised new jobs & such here & it seems from the news reports other places in this area are feeling they aren't worth the hassle & loss of locally owned business either.

Wal Mart's kinda like the internet. It sure screwed up a good deal for a lot of people, but it also creates opportunity for poeple who can adapt to the new situation. Ever notice whenever a new Wal Mart goes up, someone always builds a strip center next to it? Some stores have found a way to meet needs that Wal Mart doesn't. Here we have Lowe's and Home Depot, but there are three locally owned building materials companies that are doing very well in competition with them They get a lot of walk in business from home owners, but their main market is home builders. They offer better service than the big boxes can deliver. Same thing might happen in the pavement maintenance business, and we better keep our eyes open.

Wal-Mart has a better business plan. IMHO those people who are "abused" at Wal-Mart would be getting "abused" at Circle K, or Food Lion or whereever. Wal-Mart is working hard to "crack" Chinese market, helping to pave the way for smaller businesses to enter that market. And the Chinese aren't just sitting around waiting for Wal-Mart and others to knock on their door. They spend a ton of money on trade missions touting their "cheap labor" and "mass production". Americans had better pay attention: China is the new America. As soon as their "Berlin Wall" falls (and I think its close) those people are gonna start competing in the world marketplace on a grand scale. Instead of working at Wal-mart, I chose to go to work striping. Now I work 80+ hour weeks, no overtime, have to pay my own health, retirement, taxes, Social Security, the boss is an (expletive), the workplace is either too cold or too hot, no guaranteed paycheck, if I break something I have to fix it, no paid vacation, no paid sick leave, my schedule keeps changing every week, I have to be able to do any job in the company, can't just go home at the end of 8, no employee discount, and to top it all off, no workmen's comp. And just like the folks at Wal-Mart, I can quit anytime.....

Well said Chip.

Hey guys.........IT'S A JOKE!!! I don't think it was a knock on the people who work there. LIGHT-IN UP. If you can't laugh at a joke, your taking life to seriously.

If Frontline ever replays the special they had on Wal-Mart last month try to catch it...it's an eye opener.

BUT, Chips skiff is bigger than my bass boat!

Wal-Mart is good and bad depends who you are and where you at. Maybe I am being selfish but at one point we had a lot of wal-mart's to paint.We painted three and found out by doing some calling that our first invoice hadn't even been processed yet. I called Wal-Mart's home office and ask what kind of payment I could expect.( I did this at district level and was lied to by district manager). Person that answered the phone said she didn't know exactly that she would call me back the next day. End of next day no call. I called same person back and she said she misplaced my number but still does not know. That's when I thought wait a minute I am talking to Wal- Mart not some mom and pop operation.. They know where every penny is going. I started laughing and ask her to speak to her supervisor, guess what he was not in, I got his voice mail.. NO call back for two more days. I called again he was in a meeting. left another voice mail. No call back for another day. This went on for more than at week. Finally I had made it clear to him on his voice mail that I was not going to do no more work for them. had a reporter at a local TV station that was a close friend of mine that was going to call him about this matter he called me back. (going on two weeks). Gave me the speech on how big wal-mart was and how much money I was going to loose blah, blah, blah,. and how many other stripers were waiting in line to take my place. Then at the end of the conversation he just flat out told me that they take as much time as they are allowed by law to pay a vendor or sub because the longer they wait their money is drawing interest in the bank. I thought wow their are thousands of small companies like me working for wal-mart. Ninety days is what he said he could wait if he wanted to. I did finally get paid about 7 to 8 weeks later. I had a funny feeling in my gut that I was just used as a bank for the largest company in the world. Sad and funny at same time.

Robert just think if Wal-Mart decided to go into striping business what would happen to most of us? Don you right on this one. What is interesting about Wal-Mart buying from China is they know exactly what they are doing. They have very few EPA laws over their and in 20 years or less they will probably poison the entire world. We all know that the people over their are slaves working for pennies a day. Every time we shop at wal-mart we are helping to poison the world. I know china is a long way off but sooner or later it will catch up with rest of world. I know a lot of other companies do the same, but it seems that Wal-Mart is rubbing it in our faces and laughing all the way to the bank.

If you are dealing with Wal-Mart corporate you are right about them holding money. And that's 90 days from when your invoice finally ends up in Bentonville and is marked "received" and when they cut the check, not when you do the work or the check is in your mailbox And remember, every TV or such in Wal-Mart Regardless of brand (Sanyo, Magnavox, RCA, Phillips, etc. etc.) are all made in the same Funai plant in China just like one plant makes almost all if not all the brands of coffee makers (Mr. Coffee, Sunbeam, etc. all identical just different packaging) over there. Our largest exports to China are things like used paper & cardboard (for recycling into packaging) used leather, used steel (about the only new thing is some raw cotton) all to be processed and our "trash" sold back to us at a profit so it can break and we make more trash to ship to China...you get the picture. Don't believe it? Quick, where is your nearest shoe repair shop, small appliance repair, or local electronics repair place etc.? We used to have all those good-paying jobs... now if it breaks you buy a new one or maybe they ship it to some service center... I have a somewhat radical friend that believes the "next world war" really will be won & the world dominated by China (maybe not in our lifetime but maybe sooner) and that not a single conventional "shot" will need to be fired. It will all be economics and our nation's infection with affluenza. It is really amazing how many things in Wally-world come from so few companies (it's how they can name their own wholesale price) On that Frontline episode a Chinese economist explained how multi-million dollar contracts for "big-ticket" items are often lost for 1 penny per unit on the bids to Wal-Mart. If they are that ruthless with product vendors why would they be different with contracting vendors? One exception is there is some $$ limit that if it is below that the manager can get it "fast tracked" for emergency reasons but that's not painting an entire lot, just patching a hole in front of the door or doing some emergency compliance striping for an inspector etc.

right on DON!!!!

JimJack42 wrote on Feb 7, 2006:Go to #17

right on DON!!!!