A Brief Wal-Mart Discussion I had with my Mom

[Jamaal510]

Last edited Wed Aug 7, 2013, 10:53 PM - Edit history (1)

Less than an hour ago, my mother was helping me move some boxed appliances to my bedroom in preparation of me moving out of town in less than 3 weeks. She had suggested that I go shopping at Wal-Mart for an alarm clock, and I told her that I would feel guilty about shopping there after hearing all the horror stories about how the owner underpays his employees and is hostile to unions. In my entire life, I have only shopped once or twice there, and the last time was maybe half a decade ago.
She told me I was crazy, and that the main thing that the employees are concerned about right now is that they at least have a job. She essentially went on to say that the workers there can't be held responsible for the foolishness of the owner, and are all working-class people like us.
So anyway, what are everyone's thoughts? As for me, I'm now sort of torn on this issue.

Edit to add: I already have an alarm clock on my iPod Touch, but my mother didn't know this, and I thought I'd share this discussion, anyway.

[Ilsa]

1. I have no interest in putting another dime of profit

into the bank accounts of the WalMart owners when they treat their employees so poorly. There are other places to shop that bring profit to employers who treat employees well.

[Brickbat]

2. Why does the fact that they "at least" have a job mean they can't make that job better?

It's like putting a bowl of plain oatmeal in front of someone, and when they ask where the sugar or milk is, saying, "At least you have something to eat!"

[Brigid]

7. "Please, sir, may I have more gruel?"

The one-percent treat us all like Oliver Twist.

[hatrack]

24. Follow that logic straight to Bangladesh . . .

Well, people in the garment factories may make only $40 a month, and their buildings tend to fall over and catch on fire, crushing or incinerating hundreds at a time, but at least they have a job!

[earthside]

27. I hate that 'argument'.

It is essentially the "they should be happy with the scraps from the table" argument.

In my city in Colorado we are having a battle over the building of a Supercenter -- and it is the most disgusting and arrogant thing those of us against it hear.

"Those people should be happy to have a job at all."

This usually from the same people who rail against food stamps, welfare, subsidized housing, etc., ... you know the kinds of government programs that so many Walmart employees have to utilize just to survive.

Of course, Walmart is also getting a direct $6 million sales tax rebate from the city government for building here.

Welfare for the rich -- Walmart is NOT about capitalism or free enterprise, it is very much about a transfer of wealth from the working class to the eight or nine members of the Walton clan.

[politicat]

28. If you're on the Front Range, Lafayette is the example of Why A Supercenter kills.

We had an eyesore of an abandoned old one for YEARS, and the tenant in the building now is not actually much help. (A mega-church, so very little business for the surrounding businesses during the week, plus ridiculous traffic.)

Lafayette has other problems, but that ¥~}#*+ Supercenter made all of those problems worse.

[riderinthestorm]

3. I can guarantee you that WalMart employees are not "mainly" concerned @ just having a job

Your mom is sorely mis-informed if she thinks that's their "main" concern.

In fact, being employed at such a severe minimum wage compounds all the rest of your concerns exponentially - like childcare, health care, buying basic necessities etc. Those other concerns become so much bigger because having to work that minimum wage job means you have no time, energy or ability to make a living salary. Life working a 40 hour job at minimum wage AND battling for social services is eternally horrific.

The stressors of those other aspects of your life become so much harder because of that job, that the job becomes secondary.

[Link Speed]

4. Why in the world should you trade a bit of your soul to save a dollar on a clock?

Buy local, spend your money in a store that you would like to walk into next year.

Thank your mother for her input and go with your conscience.

Don't worry, those people's miserable existence/jobs do not hinge on some purchase of an alarm clock.

I hope your move is seamless.

[ceonupe]

6. Do they make clocks in America

That aren't supper high end anymore available from local vendors?

Seriously even if you local mom and pop has that same RCA alarm clock it's still made in china/other low wage country.

And the worker at the cash register still makes Walmart level wages or less and still has no real shot a manufacturing or step up job.

Not trying to cynical but if all we do is sell stuff other countries make are we really going to solve our economic problems. We lost the good paying manufacturing jobs that built the middle class. The jobs that could raid a family of 4 on and live a decently comfortable life style.

I'm not a huge Walmart fan myself but the problem is very deep and comes back to one main thing. We don't make stuff anymore. And making stuff is what give your people good paying jobs.

We complain about the jobs going to other counties but these jobs are building those countries economies like ours was once built in the golden years. Look at China people are buying cars and owning homes/apartments and while maybe not American standards they are improving their life. Same thing happening in India and in Brazil and other developing countries and emerging markets. All these countries make stuff and have growing middle classes.

[HiPointDem]

15. Walmart is bigger than all its competitors combined; it's a price-setter & its practices become

industry standards. That's the main reason that 'anywhere but walmart' is a good motto.

You seem to be saying that in order to improve living standards for the rest of the world, american living standards must be reduced and americans must lose their jobs.

That's so much bullshit.

[ceonupe]

16. No I'm just saying

That is how it happens not that I think it right.

But America's decline in manufacturing coincided with these countries making the stuff we used to and now those step up and blue collar jobs are gone and while our middle class is rapidly shrinking theirs is rapidly growing.

Yes Walmart is the big king but Clinton's most favorite nation trade status to china and nafta/other trade agreements paved the way.

Let's not forget for a while we had trade agreements that atleast protected some industries (chicken tax on trucks for example) but even our current president is trying to end that so forgien built trucks can be sold here without the 25% tax. In exchange we want Japan to losses their restriction on us cars. But the fine print is we aren't requiring these cars to be fully built in the USA that will be sold in Japan. Many of the cars to be sold in Japan won't be built here if this passes.

I could go on forever but sometime I feel we fall for the trap of blaming Walmart when its out own government that allows and encourages this behavior.

The reality is we can't compete with cheap labor unless their are rules that favor our workers in our economy.

As for all the latest high tech phones supposedly being built in the USA now look at the fine print. We are just assembling part kits here and its mostly a PR move combine with local/state/federal government incentives.

You are right Walmart is huge and its size helps set market/industry trends but its the consumer that still has the power to make change the question is are we ready to pay more lots more for many of the gadgets and products we buy? I ask because I don't see the owners of these firms taking less money in profit so in the end it will be up to the consumer to pay more. I don't agree but I also see it for what it is currently.

[HiPointDem]

22. Behind Walmart were people like Jackson Stephens, who owned politicians like Clinton. There's

plenty of blame to go around, & "Walmart" = Jackson Stephens as well as the walton family, etc.

Boycotting walmart & supporting strikes against it, bad-mouthing walmart, etc. are all fine ways to pressure walmart into changing its practices. I don't know why the hand-wringing about 'well, it's not really walmart, it's these policians' matters. It's all of it, but that doesn't mean that boycotts are useless.

[Kingofalldems]

25. You defend WalMart as if they weren't intrinsically evil

I say they are evil money grubbers who exploit humans for profit. There are no excuses.

[olddots]

5. you can't change your mom's mind in a minute

it took you years to realize what walmart is about ,she will the it eventually because she'll watch you not take the easy way out.

[Brigid]

8. I may be able to help. Check your PM's.

[RedCappedBandit]

9. They would have better jobs if Walmart didn't exist. A moot point. nt

[Squinch]

10. Walmart cannot pay their employees any less, so the employees' plight will not get worse

if the profits go down.

As it is, they are paid literally less than slave wages. Walmart does not provide enough to feed, clothe, house, and care for the children of their employees, which means that you and I have to subsidize them in the form of Medicaid, food stamps and the like. Keeping workers alive is a cost of doing business, which Walmart is not meeting. You and I are subsidizing Walmart profits by paying part of their labor costs. In the high unlikelihood that they went out of business, they would hopefully be replaced by retailers who do cover their costs of doing business and don't reach into your pocket or mine to cover their costs.

If Walmart went out of business, it would likely be replaced in each locality by a number of stores, all of which would be likely to treat employees better than Walmart. Also if it went out of business or left the area, it would be replaced by retailers who actually pay municipal taxes (which Walmart seldom does) so the services in a given town would be better funded. That means education, infrastructure, fire and police services would be better funded.

Your mother is wrong. You are not doing the workers any favors by shopping at Walmart. They would have a better job and better lives if no one shopped at Walmart.

[Jamaal510]

13. Thanks, even I didn't know all of that.

"Walmart does not provide enough to feed, clothe, house, and care for the children of their employees, which means that you and I have to subsidize them in the form of Medicaid, food stamps and the like. Keeping workers alive is a cost of doing business, which Walmart is not meeting. You and I are subsidizing Walmart profits by paying part of their labor costs. In the high unlikelihood that they went out of business, they would hopefully be replaced by retailers who do cover their costs of doing business and don't reach into your pocket or mine to cover their costs."

[Squinch]

19. In a sense, Walmart expects its employees to live at a standard that is

lower than slave owners expected. Slave owners at least had a financial incentive to keep their slaves fed and relatively healthy, and to keep their kids somewhere to free the adults to work their asses off.

(Please, please, I am in no way suggesting that slavery was better. I am just pointing out the fact that minimum wage workers today are not being paid wages that allow them to live and eat and care for their children.)

Check the classifieds in your area and try to find an apartment and childcare and transportation and food that costs less than a month of minimum wages, figuring on a 50-60 hour work week. Where I live, there is no way to do it. That means they are not paying their labor costs, because you can't keep body and soul together on what they pay. And we are subsidizing them. THIS is the real welfare, and it costs us billions. The $160 a month in food stamps to keep a kid from starving is not the problem.

[rurallib]

11. Walton's underpay their help so they must get government aid

the money the Walton's don't pay is money in their pocket from you subsidizing their employees health coverage and food stamps and low taxes. This makes the Walton family the biggest cheats on the welfare system in the country.

You don't want to encourage them by buying at their store, do you?

[dickensknitter]

14. Amen. Amen. Amen

There's not much of anywhere else to shop for many things in my town anymore, and the alternatives aren't any better regarding pay or scheduling or security. Even though I get a discount (on everything but food, which is most of what I absolutely have to buy), I shop wherever else I possibly can as much as I can.

[ceonupe]

17. Would you say the same think

About lower ranking military service members with families. They too get their pay subsides because they aren't paid enough. Child care subsidy, food stamps and WIC are quite common among lower level military with family's.

I live in a military town and I see it often.

The big problem we have is for many people their is no upward mobility. Making 10-12$ an hour for a partime extra income job or when transitioning is not great but if you have a chance to advance into new career or change jobs to a higher paying one its different than what we have now. We have these McJobs that for many are their only semi permeant employment option so they are stuck. It's years and years at these low wages mainly because there is no other jobs that math these people's skills that pay any better than crappy Walmart/fast food/retail jobs.

These business have designed their business to require the least skill required to achieve there goals that way they can hire people with few other options and try don't have to pay them much. From staples to chain stores to most of big box retail the actual jobs don't require much skill. The systems (computer and processes) are setup to take the thinking away and to centralize and control it. In most retail the employees only stock shelves check you out and "handle" customer service. We are a long way from former department stores that paid their workers commission and you had good help and staff that went out of their way to help u have great shopping experience that level of service now can only be found in the few mom and pops left and higher end retail.

[brewens]

12. Witnessed and old couple questioning a young woman employee, maybe ten years ago.

I could instantly tell where they were coming from. No doubt they LOVE Wal-Mart and I'd guess were devout Paul Harvey fans. So they were pissed off at some of the criticism Wal-Mart has always gotten and wanted to see for themselves. They were asking her how she liked the job and if the money and benefits were okay and she of course said yes. I wanted to jump right in the middle of that and say, "WTF do you THINK she's gonna tell you? If she doesn't tell you what you want to hear and you rat on her, she's fired!" For all I know they may have been stooges doing that for management. Who knows? I left it alone.

About that time I was was delivering their dairy. Their shipping and receiving manager Jim was a great guy and really liked me. My deliveries didn't take long and that was a good thing. Their company drivers are assholes! Maybe they are forced to be that way. If an independent driver is at the dock in the middle of a delivery, they will make them move and wait until they are done before the guy can finish his delivery. Jim used to make them wait and even help me get my stuff off the truck. Then I would pull out of the way, go back in and finish my work.

After ten years there, Jim hooked up with a Frito Lay delivery job. You know what those bastards did? They called the Frito Lay distributor and told them Jim was not allowed to deliver any of their stores in the area! Blackballed him! He as usual in that business, was starting out as a vacation route driver. That would mean his managers would have to rearrange everything to let him work. At least half the routes at that company had at least one of three Wal-marts in the area on them. I'd like to see him again and find out how things worked out. I don't think very well. I would have seen him out there.

They screwed me too. My delivery to them was just a spot restock delivery in the middle of the week. My dairy distributor just subcontracted their deliveries for Meadowgold. The Wal-Marts in this area were out of range for the main Meadowgold distributor to cover without having drivers out overnight. They paid us rather than motel and food costs and everything for their guys. Wal-Mart corporate sent out an order prohibiting that. Everyone was happy with us and the owner of my company couldn't even get through to anyone at their corporate HQ to discuss it. What sucked for me, being a remote depot manager/sales/driver was that I had just watched two trucks go by on Mondays and Fridays to drop big orders there and got commission on all those sales! I just put the orders through and never had to touch any of it! They would just drop enough for me to go in on Wednesday and top them off to make it to the next delivery.

What was really funny was that their grocery manager told me they all of a sudden started getting customer complaints about the new milk. It wasn't new milk. What we delivered for Meadowgold was the same stuff, just with our local dairy label on it! They started getting the regular Meadowgold label milk and didn't like it anymore. Freakin' morans!

[Orrex]

18. What do you think of conditions at the factory that manufactured your iPod Touch?

Ultimately, I'd say you're both right, in part. You're mother's certainly correct that the average worker at Walmart isn't responsible for the labor-crushing policies, in much the same way that the average shopper isn't responsible for Walmart's business decisions.

But you yourself are also right in that many of the company's policies are horrible, so it's reasonable for you not to elect not to supprt the company.


There's no quick or easy answer. Even if you and I and everyone we know decides to boycott Walmart, it won't make even an atom of difference to the $450 billion dollar annual intake. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't support better conditions for Walmart's employees even when we choose to shop elsewhere.

[hobbit709]

20. I've NEVER been so glad to have a job that I was willing to eat shit to keep it.

[reusrename]

21. Blaming the customers for what management does is a non sequitur.

And if the customers happen to be poor on top of everything else, it's more blaming the victim crap, since they hardly have a lot of options.

[eomer]

23. Walmart's competitors employee people.

Go to the competitors instead.

[Samantha]

26. I am proud to say I have never spent a dime at a Walmart

How about something like this (made in the USA):

http://www.ebay.com/itm/VINTAGE-GE-GENERAL-ELECTRIC-LIGHTED-DIAL-ALARM-CLOCK-MODEL-7413-4A-MADE-IN-USA/151091361923?_trksid=p2047675.m1986&_trkparms=aid%3D555003%26algo%3DPW.CAT%26ao%3D2%26asc%3D7%26meid%3D435573389294348509%26pid%3D100013%26prg%3D1004%26rk%3D4%26rkt%3D15%26sd%3D121152647540%26

Sam

[Liberal_in_LA]

29. your shopping at stores other than walmart help them to be profitable places for employees