by Octarine Prince 29 Replies latest social current
I try not to shop at Asda a wholly owned subsiadary of Wal Mart in the UK, for two reasons
1 In the USA i beleive they were there sued in a class action for not paying the women the same as men - innately wrong imo.
2 They are anti trade union. In West Germany they tried to set up an operation and falied due to the German Govermnets insistance that they allow trade union s.
Regards David
And yes i am willing to pay more if needed tpo have my principles
llbh,
Good for you. You should be proud. You are just a better human being than me and I'm sure you probably sleep better at night.
Preston,
The only reason they are now providing any kind of semi-decent benefits for their employees, is because they have received so much pressure from so many sources.
I don't doubt the pressure, my response shows how big of a stake Wal-Mart has in the election cycle. - Preston
Not a Walmart supporter either. It's a stop of last resort and I will drive out of my way not to shop there.
Their religious trumping of the Walmart cheer seems far too reminiscent of dub land. Always right at any cost and don't doubt us.
I'm also much appalled at the dress of people shopping there. Why is it that Americans think others care to look at their soiled jeans, underwear, t-shirts, tank tops, etc.? Take a bath people.
I've now developed my own rating system for Walmart shoppers. "The Walmart feet" > on a scale of one to ten, with ten being the worst. Rate the dirty feet of the shopper next to you. You won't shop again at Walmart without looking for "Walmart feet". Barf bags not included.
SadElder,
You reveal a typical bourgois attitude toward the hard working proletariat with dirty feet who are simply trying to clothe themselves and their children within their limited means. WalMart is providing goods at reasonable prices and pay their employees an honest wage. Of course the union goons and thugs would like to stick their straws into the jugular veins of these hard working people and suck out as much of their precious body fluids as possible.
By the way, you don't look so savory yourself for a snob.
Ok 2 things,
I work for Wal-Mart as a dept manager over fine Jewelry.
It is probably the best job I have ever had. the benefits are great. where else can you go where the company starts a 401k account the day you start and don't ask you to put any of your money in it unless you want to. Wal-Mart is the biggest sponsor for Children's Miracle Network.
Let me ask you this, where else can you go where you are given bonuses quarterly based on sales and not in upper management?
Yes, Wal-Mart does not believe in the Union. They believe that their associates can come to any member of managment and talk to them without having a third party, or better yet paying for that third party.
Amanda
Wal Mart is a true American success story. Sam Walton opened a dime store and through excellent customer service, smart business decisions, ambition, and fortitude, he turned it into the larges corporation in the world. Wal Mart is very good at supplying what consumers want to buy. Furthemore, Wal Mart contributes a lot of money to charities and buys local products to put in their stores. A few years ago, Wal Mart owners made one of the largest private donations to a University in history.
Are there bad aspects? You betcha. Are there any businesses that don't have both positive and negative effects? Probably not. Is Wal Mart successful at what they do? Unquestionably.
If everybody keeps wanting cheap.They will all be standing in the breadlines together.
I'm pretty sure it's too late already.
Gregor, call me an elitist all you want. I make no apologies for my opinion, just as you have a right to yours. Americans have gotten fat, slovenly and lazy. Hence our children are consuming weight loss medication at an alarming rate.
Poor is poor, but there is no excuse for filthiness. I don’t care how poor one is, soap is cheap. Thus I make my tongue in cheek analogy of “Wal-Mart feet”. BTW, we’ve been poor and may again be given the state of today’s economy. Poor is not a dirty word.
I do believe that the whole Wal-Mart mentality is indicative of the economic problems we face today. Read about the man (Snapper lawn mowers) who said no to Wal-Mart. We’ve become so enthralled at the absolute bottom line lowest price but fail to really count the cost of the throw away mentality. Is that lower Wal-Mart priced drill really the same one you saw elsewhere, or is it a Wal-Mart built exclusive? You might be surprised.
Wal-Mart has crawled to the top on the on the backs of great hard working people. And yes they do provide some benefits. But ask that Wal-Mart worker who would like to go full time in order to receive those elusive benefits about the fight for full time status. I did. Happy staff does not seek union representation.
Our put your money where your mouth is philosophy. We may not always be able to afford this, but we’ll go down trying. Our staff member programs:
100% company contributed profit sharing plan – no staff member contribution required.
100% company paid life and health insurance plan after one month of service. We want staff members healthy. After insurance starts we encourage each member to have a check up. If they can’t afford the co-pay for the visit, we’ll pay it.
After one year of service, a staff member can apply to purchase a company vehicle that is being retired. We’ll finance the loan at no interest for two years.
My soap box is now closed. Enjoy your Wal-mart day.
I hate Wally World myself, I used to work there. They screwed me over big time, plus the prejudice from upper management is unbelievable. I've never made more than 20 hrs a week with a pay scale of 6.25 an hr back then. There's no way you can make a living on that pay scale nor the hours. I had to get a second job to get more hours.
The benefits for the lowly class workers is a joke. Sure upper management gets better benefits, but for us lowly workers, we had to work a year before we get any benefits. So during that time, if I get very sick, I'm screwed with the big med bills.
When I say prejudice, I mean they roll their eyes at me when I have to remind them that I am deaf and I need to read their lips when they talk to me. The customers hardly ever give me a hard time when I let them know, thank goodness management did let me use a button on my vest to notify my customers that I am deaf.
Management changes every so often, specifically store managers, Wally World rotates them around their stores alot. One store manager questioned whether I should be working at WM since I am deaf. Thank goodness I was still there when he got shipped off to another store. I was a nervous wreck.
Unfortunately, at the store I worked at, the SM decided to lay off workers after he did a sales projection for the new year after the year end holiday sales. He saw slow sales at the store for the next 3-4 months (winter and early spring season when it's still cold, which means less customer traffic), so to save the store money, they laid a bunch of us off.
That's when I ended up homeless for 11 months and jobless for 5 months. JWD regulars here knows my story regarding that time.
I'm not the only one that faced prejudice from upper management, many went through that too from various stores across the country. A lot of cases was filed through EEOC, the store I worked at was hit with EEOC and I've seen their court ordered posting on the wall in the back room by the time clock about their charges and what the judgments were. One was about a case with an employee with a very special medical condition and management asked her some very embarrassing and private medical questions that wasn't in line with the medical privacy laws. That store got fined big time, it didn't say how much, but stated it was fined and ordered not to violated any privacy medical laws ever again, plus the order was to be posted for all employees to read for a certain time frame before they're allowed to take it down.
Wal-Mart Watch dot com has documented cases of discrimination, bigotry, safety violations, etc. Even documentations of shit they tried to get away with. For example, a life insurance policy scam they've done with their employees without their knowledge......
Wal-Mart secretly takes out life insurance policies on its employees. Known as “dead peasant” insurance, Wal-Mart took out Corporate-Owned Life insurance (COLI) policies on unsuspecting employees until 1995. Even thought Wal-Mart stopped taking out new policies at this time, it continued to cash in on them years later. In Texas and Oklahoma, Wal-Mart paid $15 million to settle claims it did not have an insurable interest while taking out these policies. Michael D. Myers, an attorney who has represented workers on these types of cases, had this say about employers using these types of policies: “Creepy's a good word for it...If you ask the executives that decided to buy these policies and the insurance companies that sold them, they would say this was designed to create tax benefits for the company, which would use the benefits for benevolent purposes such as buying employee medical benefits.” [Tampa Tribune, 7/3/07 and 3/10/8]
An employee got screwed out of her health insurance policy through WM....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tewQvODCcGY&fmt=
Another situation with a forklift operator who got killed while he was backing up from the trailer rig as the truck driver was pulling it out of the bay. The driver tried to bail out, but it was too late. He went down with the forklift with him going down to the pavement first followed by the forklift that crushed his neck as it landed on him. They tried to cover it up. The fuck up was that receiving never took the driver's keys as a precautionary measure for the safety of the forklift operators and to give the keys back when they know it's 100% cleared for the drivers to leave. This was at a Sam's Club, one of the few Wal-Mart store branches. (source: http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:8RhqPTDRwIsJ:www.clevescene.com/2002-09-04/news/the-wal-mart-menace/+walmart+forklift+accident+killed&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=9&gl=us)
I could go on with what and why Wally World sucks, but I think that's the gist of it.
Yiz
