Slashdot Mirror
Users Trash Wal-Mart On Its Facebook Site
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."
You need one of those ancient "greeters" as gate-keepers on the system. I don't even let people post comments on *my* lowly page without approving them first, how can they be so naive?
What, me worry?
Am I the only one surprised it took so long?
Experience teaches only the teachable. -AH
They should go a step further and allow college students to network with the 9 year old children making the products they're buying.
From that I have heard, Wal-Mart pays a decent amount, far more than the minimum wage. They aggressively hire people who normally have a hard time getting a job (elderly), they have benefits, and such. So why is their a small group of idiots protesting against them? Is it only because they are a large corporation?
-- Will program for bandwidth
forway? is that a word?
Did he mean foray? I'm honestly not trying to be a smartass. If forway is a word please share the definition. I like learning new words.
Skiffy is Spiffy, but Ort is tort.
Penn calls BULLSHIT.
(Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory)
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 on China's (and soon, the world's) environmental problems.
Innovation makes enemies of all those who prospered under the old regime... -- Machiavelli
Most people out there know someone that worked at or works for Walmart. I have never met someone that had anything good to say about working there, yes even higher up district managers.
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.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I'm a fan of Penn & Teller, but having now watched a couple of their "bullshit" episodes, it's like- c'mon... pick some morons who represent the "other side" and then call them fucktards.
I mean, seriously. You think these two t-shirt manufacturers actually know how to articulate the issue? Or are they just bandwagoning? Do you really think they're fair representatives of Wal-Mart critics? Uh, no.
What's bullshit is that P&T don't have the rocks to take on someone who can put up a legitimate fight.
Here at Slashdot the anomous coward label is the most famous troll here. Basically the Union backed haters will haunt Walmart until they unionize but here at Slashdot there will be the internet snobs vs the internet idiots. Basically anyone hating Slashdot losing their forum, but targets like Walmart keep reappearing trying to gain respectability.
Halliburton also has a new web 2.0 site. It helps governments find military contractors to deal with their "acute PR issues."
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.
Walmart bursts into a community where its not wanted and people there complain. They must be turning over a new leaf.
lol: You see no door there!
Last time I lived there I paid $850 for a one bedroom in Mountain View with a back yard. And that was right at the height of the tech boom in 1999.
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.
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
Then why don't you explain why we should try to shut down or otherwise impede the worlds largest retailer. Is it because they give jobs to people you'd rather see on welfare, or because they sell food and clothes to people you'd rather see do without?
I'd say that they represent most of the elitist hippy fucktards I've argued this issue with pretty well. But if you think you can put up a better argument for stomping all over my basic liberties and excluding people from the labor market, be my guest.
And those would be the same Pen & Teller that think that arming students would end all school massacres? They're funny magicians, not prophets.
You can't take the sky from me...
If there's a company that has enemies lining up to take them out, it's WalMart. This was guaranteed to backfire just like their fake blog circus.
This is my opinion. To make sure you don't steal it, it's covered by the DMCA.
The Facebook college crowd may mostly be out of their teenage years but they're still about rebellion and experimentation (college). Having the "grown ups" come in and be organized and taking over their little corner of the world just annoys them. Our Australian politicians have been trying to use the Net - social network sites (including myspace which does have a teenage bent) and wikipedia. They're quickly realizing that having some old ass politician come in and try and be one of the cool kids is just going to get them trashed. They're about as cool as golf pants. Well some corporations are going throught he same thing. Short of getting younger already cool representation (look at the softdrink companies hiring rock stars) and having a youngster targetted product range, this is what they can continue to expect.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
I think it often happens with organizations that are large enough to be insulated from the world, or that have very active propaganda machines, that they start believing their own propaganda.
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.
Hopefully I didn't put any [] around my words.
If someone is willing to do work for you for less, why isn't it moral to choose that person?
... americans who could have been designing technology instead?
.. products and services the world wants .. that Americans can provide.
.. there is already signs of labor shortage emerging in China ..factories are having to provide beter and better incentives for their works (google china labor shortage ) .. just to make products for export.
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
One look at the YouTube video confirms that Penn and Teller have no interest in examining the Walmart issue. Might I suggest http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/walm art/ as a more reputable source?
There are so many things wrong and destructive about Walmart that it's hardly worth trying to communicate them.
If you can't see it, it can only be because you don't want, or are incapable of believing it.
This made me think of the Far Side strip where a demon is greeting newcomers to hell and the sign behind him says "This is the first day of the rest of your life."
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.
"These guys wish they were Harry Houdini, but they aren't. Some examples of where they're just bat-shit crazy:
* It really is possible to love someone your entire life.
* Global Warming really is the biggest problem facing the planet today.
* Secondhand smoke actually causes cancer.
* AA really does help a huge number of Alcoholics quit.
* The Boy Scouts are not ran by the Mormon Church.
* We really are getting fatter as a nation
* the Americans with Disabilities Act is a good thing
"
Oh I have plenty of time today. Why don't you tackle those items and explain why they're "bat shit" crazy? Hope you brought some utensils with you because crow's on the menu.
Wal-mart is so damned evil, but it's the last place people expect it, so it takes a while to catch on. Companies like Halliburton and Monsanto's misdeeds are headline-grabbing events; Wal-mart just has cheap socks and asshole management.
Ex nihilo nihil fit.
If you, as a company, offer good products, good services and most of all good working conditions, Web 2.0 and pages like facebook are your dream. What's a more credible ad than one done by your customers and your workers?
If you don't, you have to be quite stupid to let your customers and your workers talk about your shop...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Every company is now trying to jump on the Web 2.0 bandwagon. It's the equivalent of a guy trying to be cool in a hip. trendy nightclub wearing a pair of plaid golf pants.
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.
Tell me again why unskilled labor should be payed at the same rate as a highly trained, skilled worker? If the pay was the same, what incentive would people have to learn skills and work in a more demanding, higher stress job?
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.
before wal-mart: you could make a living wage and raise kids
... i mean...
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.
Sounds like there are two evils here.
There are more options then just letting children starve.
give them better work conditions at least, is one.
Improve the wages of the parents of all these children is definately another.
"Most people out there know someone that worked at or works for Walmart. I have never met someone that had anything good to say about working there, yes even higher up district managers."
Well I've been reading slashdot for eight years and if opinions are anything to go by. There's NO business that's good to work for. Corporations. *spit* *spit*
"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."
Yeah! Like Second Life.
"That's like Microsoft putting a "tell us how you love Microsoft" section in the middle of a linux community."
Or an MS ad on a site popular with geeks.
"The fun part, Let's see if they try it on MySpace and expect a different result."
Children will be children.
Penn and Teller have spent too much time underwater for me to trust their opinion of Wal-Mart.
Maybe they should hire Chad.
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.
No, what .. didnt you say you already joined facebook?
What do you know, it didn't actually work for Wal-Mart. Next stop, viral marketing!
I think it is quite the reverse: If anything, Wal-Mart probably runs marketing surveys to try and get a reliable picture of how people in different demographics view their company. Your post sounds very much like "my friends and I don't like walmart, therefore the most other people must agree with us".
As far as the educated people go... I'll disagree with you there too. I'm finishing an honours degree with a scholarship for grad school in computer science and I love walmart, as do many of my university friends. From my observation, the largest concentration of walmart haters are arts students.
But I think that both of our opinions are going to be less accurate than the surveys that Wal-Mart, and any other large corp does/buys.
Open Your Mind. Open Your Source.
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.
Deleted
Reactionary internet graffiti aside, the divisiveness of Wal-Mart signals a more complicated problem than the superficial split between the caring and the cold-hearted.
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.
Walmart pays several dollars above minimum wage. I read an article from a Walmart analyst who said the last minimum wage increase will actually help Walmart. The Walmart model actually put less labor into each sales than traditional mom and pop shops. Minimum wage increases will have a greater affect on Walmart's competitors. The competitors either have to raise their prices or close. Walmart estimates that the minimum wage increase will wipe out thousands of its competitors. The companies that remain will have higher prices. So they anticipate that the minimum wage increase will transfer a good amount of this business to Walmart.
Walmart's biggest challenge is finding labor. They think the biggest benefit to Walmart is that the minimum wage increase will destroy hundreds of thousands of jobs, and that they will be able to pick up a sizable portion of this displaced labor.
Welcome to Vista!
Yep and those children in Communist China who are working long hours to make cheap clothes & goods for WalMart. Which all the good Anti Commie American Patriots buy because Wal Mart prices are LOWER!.
Snark
Republican leadership = Idiocracy
that Walmart isn't getting from me to send to Red China.
Which part of p0wned don't they get?
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Walmart has some very specific uses for me. I don't by clothes or shoes there because the quality is really bad. I don't by electronics there because even products of the exact same model, as a best buy or circuit city version, have fewer features and lower quality parts.
Movies are cheap at walmart, food is cheap at Super Walmarts, toys are cheap at Walmarts as well. Otherwise I avoid it for almost everything else.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
"Have you ever tried to spend any time with a teenager that cant get online to log onto myspace or Facebook? It's like being with a heroin addict that cant get their fix."
Or a P2P addict that has been throttled.
I work at WalMart now, I make 8.30 an hour. For telling you that I make that much, I would be immediately fired on the spot. There are about 7 pay grades, and being that I work in the Electronics department I am on grade 6. Each pay grade equals to about a 40 cent difference in pay. There are two departments that are on my pay grade: Produce and Bakery. Everyone else is on pay grades 1-3, they make around 6.50 to 7.50, and the minimum wage is 6.15. In each department there are between 1 and 3 full time positions, and over 5 part time positions depending on the size of the store. Benefits for part-time associates are basically intangible. Company policy states they are not to receive over 32 hours a week, they are usually given about 28, so they can't afford health insurance. And they have to be with the company for two before they are even eligible, full time associates are eligible immediately. My wages are capped at 10.00 an hour. I will never make more than that without a promotion. Promotions are generally handed out to friends of management. Why do I really evil though? Because on more than one occasion with more than just a few people (myself included), management has gone back to modify the number of hours recorded in the system that you worked. People have gotten fired for working overtime, when the only reason they had overtime was because management held them over working on something (unloading an especially large truck, cleaning an isle where some jackass dropped a 6-pack of Corona and didn't bother to tell anyone, running a cash register and never being relieved, regardless of the number of times they called management and told them they needed to clock out, etc). Or maybe its the fact that after all the years, not a single manager has come up from the bottom of the company? Throughout your orientation you are told that WalMart promotes from within (also that unions are evil and only want your money, but that's an entirely different subject). But I have yet to see a manager who has actually worked below their current rank. How about the "Open Door Policy" where all associates are supposed to be able to go to management whenever there is a problem, but how the door is always locked with paper taped over the window. People have been fired for knocking too many times when the door was locked and a customer wanted to talk with them. Also, my store itself has been robbed too many times to count. Not petty theft I refer to, I'm talking about men with guns demanding money or merchandise. Yet there has never been even the consideration to hire any kind of security to protect neither the customers nor the employees. Surely some part of the 80,000 salary of the BOTTOM rank managers at my store could be taken to hire an armed guard or something. But oh well, I guess I'll just suck it up and not starve and continue to follow the WalMart-provided pamphlets helping me get on government money just so I can survive.
At least from my experiences here in Canada, they stock the exact same stuff as most other discount department stores, and pay their employees about the same amount. How much do you expect them to pay people to stock shelves?
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.
The US free market: two halves of a government-granted duopoly are free to set the market price.
My complaint about walmart and their kind isn't so much the shitty labour conditions, low pay, or buying stuff from China. For me, it's the total lack of selection that gets me.
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
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
DO what the rest of us do.
Shop at Target.
They're human BEINGS.
When an argument is using a propaganda sight and Penn and Teller as its sources, we all lose, kids.
There's no such thing as a "propaganda cite" You *cite* sources, you go to a (web)site for information / propaganda.
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.
-- "At Microsoft, quality is job 1.1" -- PC Magazine, Nov. 1994
It appears that Wal-Mart is also quite creative when it comes to paying its taxes:
7
Wal-Mart owes back taxes, state says
http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=65216
Basically what Bendodge said.
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.
I don't read AC A human right
If the Big 3 had actually produced quality small to midsize cars in the first place, they would have been plenty able to compete. Cheap labour doesn't make tripe very attractive to anyone. Sure, imported cars are hardly perfect. However, the cars that the Big 3 pawned off in the US in the 80s and 90s were absolute rubbish. Cadillac Cimarron? Ford Tempo? Chrysler LH cars?
The revolution will be mocked
please, your entire point is based on an assumption that japanese auto plants don't have unions.
only that's completely false.
union density in japan is about 19%, or 12 million out of a workforce of 64 million, down from 30% or more in the early 1980's. union density in industrial manufacturing remains high; it dropped because manufacturing began to shift overseas and was replaced by tech or office jobs.
in the united states, unionization is about 12% of the workforce.
the fact is that u.s. labor law says that employers have absolute rights over its employees, with the exception of specific discrimination on the basis of identity or disability. while it is illegal to fire someone for starting a union at their job in the u.s. (concerted activity is protected), the only remedy is for the person to get their job back, or get paid back wages, nothing more, so it happens all the time.
the reason unionization is low in the u.s. is that 1) many union leaders/bureaucrats are (like many politicians and ceo's) fairly corrupt, 2) companies go out of their way to harass, intimidate and bully employees if people begin to actually organize on the shop floor to improve working conditions (even companies with good "responsible corporate citizen" images like starbucks, whole foods and american apparel are merciless when it comes to illegally busting unions), 3) companies routinely violate laws such as the national labor relations act when it comes to union busting, and 4) most people who work either don't know their actual rights or think that being in a union means joining the mob - another result of the FUD spread by anti-union companies and PR firms that has ingrained itself in american culture.
the idea that what's best for the shareholders/ceo/corporation is what's best for everyone is bull, for the simple fact that people all have their own interests to watch out for. the fact that ordinary people can't realize yet that they aren't a billionaire, and never will be, so why should they defend what's best for the Waltons?
misinformation only keeps people ignorant enough to be exploited.
Thank you for pointing that out.
We are (probably less than) 12.4% of the workforce and they think that we are so powerful that they have to fear us. I'm absolutely sick of this anti-union FUD that has been spread about us over the last few decades. It is not based in reality.
We have a few dead heads in my local. There is no denying that. (We are about 1400 strong.) But, by and large, nearly everyone that I have met, in my 24 years of membership, has been very diligent and conscientious. We have consistently proven that we can do the job better, more efficiently, and for less money than the non-union outfits that we have either had to compete against, or go behind to redo their shoddy workmanship.
We are highly trained, highly skilled, and very proud of that. Extreme high level craftsmanship is a tradition that we have maintained since 1898.
If you would like to see a real comedy show. Follow around behind a company called Fru-Con. They, seem to, only hire illegal immigrants and convicts on work release. I watched them burn a factory down after videotaping how we built a Sulfur Dioxide generator and then underbidding us on a rebuild effort. That is what non-union will get you in my business.
Presently, I am the pipefitter foreman at a very large and very well known powerplant in the southeast. If I fail in my current project, the EPA will come in and shut down this 1200 megawatt facility this friday. There will be massive repercussions across the southeast USA. If I succeed, then you will know nothing about it. That is the nature of my work. You never hear about the successes. Mark my word; we will succeed, and you will never hear of what we have done. People will still continue to cuss us even though we have been keeping their air-conditioners on all summer.
Go live in a small town, USA, (if you can find one, they are very nearly gone) that hasn't been stomped on by big retailers, yet - go live there, and watch the town die, as the local small shops get priced out of existence. Go watch how things change as "big money" moves there. If you dare. It's educational,but it's something that takes a few years to experience.Three, here, over two decades and change. Damnkids, get off my lawn ;)
Nevermind. You'll see it sooner or later, son. Or maybe not...
First, many organizations with very sophisticated intelligence gathering capabilities often disregard them because they don't want to pay attention to what is going on. I am sure the Soviet Union, back in 1941, could have come to conclusions about what those big lines of German tanks were doing parked at their border, but they chose not to.
Secondly, I think you need to be a little bit more subtle and sophisticated in your thinking. It is true that most of the issues surrounding Wal-Mart can be argued on both sides, but to say that things like de facto economic coercion, third party effect (as with increased traffic), labor conditions in the third world, and the destruction of character in communities are the concerns of "art students" isn't what I would expect from an educated person.
Hopefully I didn't put any [] around my words.
http://www.last.fm/user/Wal_Mart
I heard that SOMETIMES people even vandalize Wikipedia! I can't believe people these days! Seriously, what is the point of posting an article that pertains to a single page on a massive social networking site? Get a blog.
The walmart hate is completely without logic or reason, it's definately a case of small minds seeking a cause to belong to. Get off your fucking high horse, you aren't "better" then someone who works or shops at walmart, and i suspect you might even be a little bit less of a person.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Before Wal-Mart, the $36k I make per year (and I don't even work at Wal-Mart) could've provided for a family. After Wal-Mart, it can't! OH NOES WAL-MART IS TO BLAME!
You can't really live (though you can survive - I survived on actual minimum wage for two years, very recently) on a Wal-Mart wage these days... Guess what? If archaic mom and pop stores hadn't died out to the godlike purchasing power of Wal-Mart, you wouldn't be able to live on the salaries they'd presently be paying, either.
Conversely, before the Berlin Wall fell, the $36k/year I make was impresive. Now, not so much. God damned freedom, ruining everything for us.
Before Joseph Stalin took power in the USSR, the $36k/year I make was holy-shit-holy-shit-oh-my-god-i'm-rich money. Now, not so much.
DAMN YOU JOSEPH STALIN!
I have seen at first hand the running of a 'Japanese' and a 'Domestic' car plant. The staff at the Japanese plant had much higher pay and benefits.
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.
threadeds blog
It's not just how productive you are, but how much the cost of living increases. However, even cost-of-living increase isn't a great counter.
Let's say that you started a job 10 years ago, and today you make 2.5x what you did then. Perhaps you are able - through experience and education - to get about 150-175% as much done as when you first started. Consider also the average cost of living increase, as well as the margins of the business.
Let's take a scenario where the business is making 2-4x the amount it was 10 years ago. Not entirely unreasonable, and let's also take into consideration that this is not *profit* but overall (anyhow, wages are a deducation gross to get profit anyhow). OK, so the store is making more, mainly because they can charge more. At the same time, you - as an employee - are paying more. Groceries cost more, gas costs a whole lot more, and if the situation is similar to where I live housing is a *lot* more (about tripled in the last 5 years).
So, is it unreasonable to expect an increase of 2-3x in wages... well, it depends. If the store is still making a steady profit, around the same margins, then sure if the work output and cost of living justifies it. I know for a fact that my parents do not make two to three times what they did when I was young, and I certainly don't, but houses do cost at least twice and often more in most cases.
...are full of shit! Union YES! Now, what we need are unions in the IT industry. If you say "No", then you're really full of SHIT!
Over-the-top Response Guy! Giving "Over-the-Top Responses" since 1970.
We were all so confused about what a traffic intersection had to do with teh intarwebs. Lucky you came along and showed us the way.
If X is the new Y, and Y is "X is the new Y", solve for X.
Yeah, you can go look up 'disingenuous' too. If you were "honestly not trying to be a smartass" you would have shut your fat mouth and fucking looked it up. Instead you clicked Reply and proudly declared your intellectual superiority.
While there might be some truth to what you're saying, at least in the case of the american car industry, unions don't necessarily cripple companies. You should realize that the survival of a company is in the unions interest as well; their money doesn't grow on trees either and a strike is a very expensive undertaking. Even European (union-heaven) unions are starting to realize that rediculous demands just won't cut it when competing with low-wage countries like China. For example, IG Metal, a huge German union, accepted a deal where BMW employs permatemps in a new factory in eastern Germany. The alternative would probably have been to build the factory in another country.
it's interesting to me how much anti-union talk there is here on /. ....a place with an ostensibly high margin of tech-workers, a group typically under-represented by unionization, and under pressure from CEO's and foreign labour pools....
Meanwhile, much of the anti-union blame-throwing is aimed at how unions reduce a corporations competitiveness. Where is the blame for CEO's with outrageous compensation packages that blow-in, spend 3-5 years re-organizing, laying-off workers, and exporting labour overseas, then blow on to the next big corporation to strip....
On the other hand, companies (just to pick one example: Birkenstock) that treat their employees as assets instead of cost-centres, seem to do just fine in the marketplace...
Methinks there's been a bit of brainwashing going on here. To get back on-topic, when a WalMart here in Canada went union, the head-office simply shut it down and moved down the street.... That's bullshit, plain and simple.
One final point, however -- Unions in the States have much less power than they used to, and there are many examples of unions not representing the true interests of the workers as well... this doesn't mean unions are worthless and should be abolished. Historically, unions have been much stronger here in Canada, but they are losing ground lately -- at the core of the issue in both countries is the fact that the big business is buying legislation (and altering the market in ways) that is changing the balance.
Unions aren't the problem -- just a convenient scapegoat.
Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind. - Dr. Seuss
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.
That, or find some tariff of sorts to make the imports very distasteful.
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.
Apparently someone slept through the entire Reagan presidency, or never lived through it(much less live somewhere affected by it).
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
They can enroll for health insurance only if they enroll their dependents as well, which is a problem because on their part time salary they can't afford the enrollment premiums.
I didn't work at Wal-Mart, but in college, married, with kids, I worked part-time for $7 or less an hour. And I paid for my own health insurance. My wife didn't work, she finished her degree quickly before our first kid was born, then was a permenant stay-at-home mom. I provided 100% of the money for the house in between taking classes. I was able to afford health insurance for the entire family: not subsidized, and still keep up with the rent, utilities, books for classes, food, etc. I had a decent life insurance policy on myself as well. Living on $7 is not impossible, and it isn't really even a challenge if you try. You make sacrifices (we didn't have a plasma screen TV, we didn't go out to eat every night of the week, etc.) but some of my fondest family memories were from back then.
Wait you mean all we have to do to get rid of Walmart in our communities is start organizing a Union? Hmmm...this presents possibilities...
propaganda:
2 : the spreading of ideas, information, or rumor for the purpose of helping or injuring an institution, a cause, or a person
3 : ideas, facts, or allegations spread deliberately to further one's cause or to damage an opposing cause; also : a public action having such an effect
By your own admission, they have a "slant and agenda" so it is propaganda.
Your problem is with the connotation that the word implies, but that doesn't allow you to redefine the word.
I only go to buffets for the unlimited soft serve.
"Secondly, I think you need to be a little bit more subtle and sophisticated in your thinking. It is true that most of the issues surrounding Wal-Mart can be argued on both sides, but to say that things like de facto economic coercion, third party effect (as with increased traffic), labor conditions in the third world, and the destruction of character in communities are the concerns of "art students" isn't what I would expect from an educated person."
I like how you did that. You told he he was stupid without telling him he was stupid.
Now let me say this. People like you often think their opinion is valid because they hear reinforcement from others with similar opinions, generally because those people are too elitist and sheltered to seek out non-like-minded individuals.
Did you like how I just said you're full of shit without saying you're full of shit?
In all seriousness, if you think you're going to get somewhere with the "more sophisticated" and "educated person" nonsense, you may need to give that one a rethink. Telling people you're right because you think you're smarter than they are while demonstrating that you clearly aren't isn't going to get much done, so I'd avoid that line if I were you. It was a really nice try this time though.
I only go to buffets for the unlimited soft serve.
I presume you live where there are jobs to be had for the plucking.
Burn the Land and Boil the Seas, you can't take the sky from me...
Wal-Mart doesn't have direct competition. They have local competition from smaller retailers in different portions of the country. Either retailers don't want to associate with the cheap shit Made In China, or they can't afford to. Wal-Mart basically sub-contracts manufacturers for their crap, and they can because they're huge. Discount in bulk. Mom & Pop stores can't compete, because they don't need/can't sell 10 million Beanie Baby Sharpies. They could sell 10000, but it would cost them 40% more to manufacture and ship than it would Wal-Mart.
Put a direct competitor in every town that's got a Wal-Mart, and you'll start to see Wal-Mart change their game when it comes to pay scales and health insurance - they'd have to use that as a competitive edge for needed workers.
Oh! Now we are in a metadiscussion about the discussion!
Actually, this particular thread helped me come up with a new rule about arguing with people on the internet.
No longer should it be compared to the special olympics.
Instead, it should be compared to masturbation.
Some people try to discourage it, but it is really natural and inevitable, and so the only thing to do is to make sure you don't waste too much time doing it, and you don't end up doing doing it in front of a bunch of people who would rather not watch.
Hopefully I didn't put any [] around my words.
It's pretty small-minded to think that every locale in the US has a shortage of workers,
I think that it's pretty small minded to not consider moving when you're unemployed and looking for a new job. Yes it sucks, but such is life. You shouldn't be sitting on welfare when there's a job shortage elsewhere.
There's always shortages in some job market; either location or skillwise. There's lots of programs to help get you skills in most of those careers, and moving doesn't have to be that expensive.
I don't read AC A human right
Who said anything about welfare? I never knew anybody on welfare, they were too proud to go on welfare. Where I was raised, a family earns respect by being poor and NOT going on welfare, but such is the idiosyncrasies of the welfare system: The people that need it don't want it, and the people who really don't need it, take it.
I was in WalMart many times. Many times my opinion was that a lot of WalMart employees are actually overpaid for the service they provided me, regardles of how low their wage was.
For example the photo printing service in WalMart near Princeton, NJ was horrendous, I always got there something else than I ordered and you spent no less than 30 minutes in line each time (because of other customers having received similar "service" and arguing about what they got with the Walmart employees at the desk). After getting this kind of service twice in row I swear to never go there again - and I wouldn't return there even if THEY paid me for processing my photos).
I will argue the following, if you like - regardless of what the SHOOTER intends, it is vastly better for the targets to be able to defend themselves ... and vastly better for our society that such idiots are removed swiftly and permanently from it. Over to you for rebuttal.
Hmmm. Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
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? Maybe I'll dumb it down a notch next time, but frankly, I come to slashdot to find people that don't need this service...
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?
You can't take the sky from me...
But all that's okay by your logic, because people can just go get another job which you've handwaved into existence.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
The walmart hate is completely without logic or reason, it's definately a case of small minds seeking a cause to belong to. Get off your fucking high horse, you aren't "better" then someone who works or shops at walmart, and i suspect you might even be a little bit less of a person.
Funny. I thought I stopped shopping at Walmart because they destroyed small towns and their buying policies involve penalizing local producers while funneling all the cash in the West to the East, and because they treat their employees like coal miners. I never had any complaints about the employees themselves. But then, I no longer buy stuff there. --Though, it's hard these days to not buy stuff made in a sweat shop or a slave labour camp! --I find myself building a lot of my own things and buying second-hand. That way at least, I reduce the number of people getting rich from unfair and unwholesome business practices when I pull out my wallet. Interestingly, my money now seems to go a lot further than that of other people. But no, I don't sit on a high horse. I just choose to live in a way whenever I am able which doesn't serve to disadvantage my community. I'd feel rotten otherwise.
-FL
I talked about how I was going to use the greenbacks I saved by not buying Red Chinese goods thru Walmart to decorate my room with.
So, saying "none" is misleading.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
I know some people that work at walmart and I don't see them employing "most people" part-time. They do have more part-time employees that the average business, but that is true generally of most large retail/fast food type establishments. They employ a lot of younger people and others that work odd hours and/or people that can only work part-time, unlike a bank for example. I'm not making walmart out to be some kind of nirvana either, they certainly have their share sleezy managers and other assorted work place complaints that you hear about every workplace. I just don't think that they are somehow significantly worse than most other large employers that employ lots of relatively low skill labor.
----- Question authority, but not ours. Hate the man, but we're not him.
You know what really irks me though is your statement that "when you're smart enough to the point where you have a college degree (and can comprehend the majority of the stuff on /.), you don't realize that a lot of these people in these situations aren't as fortunate or as capable as you are." I feel sorry for you if you think that people who don't have a college degree (like YOU) are all a bunch of mindless drones. Most people are far more capable than you give them credit for. There's a difference between ignorance and stupidity. We are all ignorant, we are just ignorant about different things. Just because they haven't read the Bard, understand discreete cosine tranforms, or solve simultaneous equations doesn't mean they are dumb. It just means you have differing areas and degrees of ignorance. I'll never understand the desire to pitty someone while looking down your nose at them. Frankly, the people that work at walmart know a lot more about than you do, dispite your college degree and their lack thereof. Does that make you a dunce. I don't think so.
----- Question authority, but not ours. Hate the man, but we're not him.
It isn't Walmart forcing mom and pops, or so-called mom and pops out of business. For the most part it is dogooders on the zoning commissions (I'll not assume everyone is out to get something for themselves on these things).
Zoning laws have done more damage to small businesses than any other single thing. When the local government sees dollars from raising taxes or from inducing high land prices by zoning them a certain way, they do so. The result is that smaller businesses simply can not stay in business without higher prices.
To add to that, this misguided and fatally flawed notion of providing mandatory zones of "work goes here, home goes over there" exacerbates the problem by forcing people to have to travel more distance to get somewhere.
When you have governments decreeing that "shopping goes in this central area", what other outcome is likely? None. When you force all shopping into "managed" areas, you raise the price of the land (and hence tax revenues) by creating a false scarcity of land. When that happens, mom and pop can't afford to stay in business. They can't afford to compete with the non-Walmarts that go into those places, if there is any space available for them.
And no, being elsewhere doesn't work either. Most mom and pop type shops operate largely by word of mouth and local traffic, emphasis on local traffic. By channeling shopping onto road fronts on 4lane or more roads and into "shopping centers" as mentioned above, the planning and zoning agencies destroy the mom and pop shops with or without Walmart. But Walmart is capitalism and hence evil, plus it is an nice obvious target that doesn't require thinking to attack. you can just label them bad and because they are a big corporation, people, particularly certain groups, will just accept it and carry out the attack.
Meanwhile the root of the problem that kills off mom and pop shops goes unnoticed and sneaks on by. With or without Walmart, or other big chains, P&Z will continue to kill the small shops.
And despite your claim, putting a Walmart in instantly raises the "value" of the land because now there is a specific name to draw people to the area, which in turn makes the area appealing to other businesses. A basic education and understanding of economics, or a trip to the local assessor's office or real estate agent willing to share the reality of prices with you will tell you that. But yes it is much more fun to just sit and type without doing real research, isn't it? When you combine Walmart's location appeal with the local P&Z outfit limiting the places you can run a business, the local property tax agency is in hog heaven.
Despite your unfounded assertion, the reality is that most people in the lower income brackets *DO* in fact move up. The lower end of the scale is where untrained, inexperienced workers start. It is also home of high school kids and college students. Over the last several decades every single study of income movement bears this out. Why? It is unavoidable. People with no education, no experience, and no training do not start out in middle or higher income brackets. It truly is amazing how you "educated types" can have such a lack of understanding of reality, I agree. Starting in the lower bracket and moving up *is* the "norm", not the other way around. It doesn't matter what the minimum wage is as long as people value quality work over shoddy or low quality work.
As far as your comparison of "don't shop there" with paying your taxes, what unadulterated tripe. The Waltons don't show up at your bank and take your money, the local courthouse and take your possessions, or your door and take your freedom (or ultimately your life if you continue to resist) if you don't shop there. But the government will be more than happy to do those things and more if you don't pay your taxes. Yet another example of you educated types not grasping what we "norms" understand.
My Suburban burns less gasoline than your Prius.
My family picked up and moved, even with two kids, multiple times.
It's not easy, but it's not especially difficult either.
I don't read AC A human right
There are many in the US who believe there shouldn't be a minimum wage at all. You see, a minimum wage is a prohibition on low-value labour, and forces people into joblessness for no good reason. If a mentally handicapped person could make $2.00/hour picking up garbage, why not let them? Of course, you'll say "why not pay them a living wage". Well, because it's simply not worth it. But if they are willing to work for spending money while their family or the government puts them up, why not let them?