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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."
The fun part, Let's see if they try it on MySpace and expect a different result.
They might actually have a modicum of success of myspace, unlike Facebook . Facebook users are more socioeconomically advantaged 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.
SEO Copywriter. Just Say ON
When my girlfriend worked at wal-mart last year she made $8.50/hour, while the minimum wage was $5.15. Before that she worked for a small business downtown which paid her $5.50. Six years ago when I worked at wal-mart they paid me $7.50/hr. So yes, wal-mart does usually pay significantly better than other retail businesses.
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...
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.
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.
Labor unions only have power as long as the companies that sponsor them are willing to blank-out the law of supply and demand. I remember a piece by George Reisman about the auto industry back when Japan was seriously kicking the American companies' asses (Ok, still true), and it's not even that the pay was significantly lower (about 5 or 6 dollars different, IIRC, in an industry where 25-30 dollar wage rates aren't uncommon). In a union shop, employees don't compete with each other for a higher spot on the food chain, don't cross train (their job is their job, and they're not going to sweep floors or mount tires if their job goes a little slow that day), and any attempt to swap benefits plans for something more economical requires a union vote. The non-union Japanese shops were able to save considerable money both on benefits and man-hours.
Jesus is coming -- look busy!
Perhaps you should go to the "Career Preference Dashboard" on the WIRE. It's easy: sign on to the WIRE, click on the green "Life" tab and finally click on "Career Preference" in the "My Career" box. Now research some of what you are saying. Electronics is not pay grade 6. Electronics salesfloor is pay grade 4. Electronics department manager is pay grade 7. Assuming you started as an Electronics salesfloor associate at $8.30, and assuming you had previous work experience for extra credits that bumped your pay (the difference between pay grade 3 and pay grade 4 is $0.20 or $0.30, so if you are making $8.30 per hour, you must have had some extra credits), then your cap will be higher than $10.00. I'm afraid I don't remember the exact formula, but the cap for pay grade 4 would be (for you) around $13.00 to $14.00.
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.
Don't like the wages? Take a few night courses and move up. Or just work somewhere else. Wal-Mart destroys locally run "mom & pop" stores, lowers the real estate value of business districts, and as a result Wal-Mart is one of the few businesses left. People don't choose to work at Wal-Mart; they're forced to. Furthermore, corporate executives of some areas even ask that its employees go onto welfare, medicare, and medicaid. (See "Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price"). I'd think more people would jump on the anti-Wal-Mart wagon if they knew our tax dollars were being used to give Wal-Mart a free ride like that.
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.