Asda Wal-Mart: Cutting Costs at any Cost

[Wind Dancer]

Wal-Mart is the world's largest retail company and is more familiar in the UK as the supermarket chain Asda. Wal-Mart has built a global empire of supermarket stores on an image of 'always low prices'. This obsession with prices has led to poverty wages, ever-worsening sweatshop conditions and the destruction of local businesses and communities. These policies are well known but now new evidence has emerged on how Asda senior management are planning to deliberately "chip away" at workers' rights and working conditions in the UK.

War on Want has seen a leaked document titled "Warehouse Chip Away Strategy 2005" that outlines how Asda senior management are planning to drastically undermine labour standards. Asda management plan to breach these rights despite openly acknowledging the risks of trade union opposition and health and safety violations.

Work breaks are to be cut, grievance mechanisms removed and health and safety conditions weakened. The document also proposes removing the right to take individual grievances to external arbitrators. Asda management plans to include "single man loading" despite the fact that their own "risk assessment says 2 men (are) required for loading". Line managers are advised to "lead by example, not taking all the breaks that hourly paid colleagues get" in order to "take credence away from breaks".

Of the ten richest people in the world, four are members of the Walton family, heirs to the Wal-Mart fortune. Wal-Mart documents released in April 2005 reveal that the company's CEO Lee Scott was paid over $17.5 million in total during 2004.

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http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=10&ItemID=8886

[NewJeffCT]

1. Wal-Mart is directly responsible for the decline in our manuf. base

My wife's old company was basically forced by Wal-Mart to open up operations in China. They could have done a lot of their work just as cheaply here in the US, as it is often done by machine and not hand work.

However, WM wants their suppliers to send EVERYTHING through Wal-Mart China. So, even if you can make something cheaply in the US, you would then have to ship it to Guangzhou, China for shipment back to the US.

If you are a small to mid sized manufacturer, you will either go out of business or comply, as WM is just so huge. Most of them cannot afford to lose WM as a client.

[Wind Dancer]

3. I'm sorry to hear about your wife's company.

WalMart has destroyed small towns all across the country and are now seeking their own banking institute. Vermont has been the only state to successfully stop them from opening more than a few stores. I'm not surprised to hear WalMart wants everything sent through China, they demand wholesalers lower their price affecting every product sold. The consumer doesn't save money, WalMart profits and wholesalers go out of business eventually because they can't compete.

More info on their banking scheme:


Wal-Mart: Your New Banker?
Wal-Mart can't be or own a full-fledged bank -- yet -- but its partnerships and in-store financial services are giving the industry jitters

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (WMT ) didn't get to be the world's biggest retailer by giving up easily. So despite being twice thwarted by lawmakers in its efforts to buy a bank, it has quietly but tenaciously expanded its foothold in financial services. In its latest move, announced on Jan. 21, the retailing giant is introducing a no-fee Wal-Mart Discover credit card that offers 1% cash back, which it will launch with GE Consumer Finance (GE ) in March.

The retailing giant's relentless push into financial services is starting to send shivers through the banking industry. Few believe Wal-Mart will stop with basic services as it applies its low-price, high-volume formula to yet another business category. And while other companies, from Nordstrom (JWN ) to General Motors (GM ), have bank and thrift charters or hybrid Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.-insured industrial loan companies (ILCS) in tow, no one trips alarms like Wal-Mart. Many community bankers are convinced the behemoth won't rest until it has obtained full banking powers. "It's not a question of if Wal-Mart's going to be a bank, it's a question of when," says D. Anthony Plath, a finance professor at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.
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http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/05_06/b3919046_mz011.htm

Robert Greenwald has a new documentary coming soon.



http://www.buzzflash.com/premiums/05/10/pre05140.html

[Village Idiot]

2. Why in the heck do people shop there?

It's very strange. I have never heard anyone say a single good thing about Wal-Mart, yet every single time I am near a Wal-Mart store, it is PACKED.

Wake up, people!!!