And while we’re on the subject, why didn’t they call 911? They HAD phones…
Whats the deal here spooje. Do you not believe that WalMart is doing this? Do you not believe that it is a problem? If not what about the other charges in the article such as locking employees inside for 5 hours after their shift ended, chaining fire doors shut or the forced overtime without pay?
I am not interested in sitting here and nitpicking what the workers could or should have done. WalMart created a dangerous situation by locking the doors and threatening whomever opened the fire door with termination. Not to mention the false fire alarms this policy must have caused. This is flat out wrong and immoral. I will not support a business that has policies as reckless and cruel as these.
So where are your “cites” then? Those figures that you pulled out of your butt are supposed to be more accurate than a study? Your estimate of $35,000 is better than their report that the average non-management Wal-Mart worker takes home only $12,000 a year? Where did you come up with the 35 hours, did you do a survey of Wal-Mart workers? How big a survey?
And can you argue that Wal-Mart doesn’t coach its workers on how to apply for welfare and food stamps, when the “biased sources” have copies of Wal-Mart documents from their human resources department with step-by-step instructions?
I will gladly admit to being biased myself, having had almost all good experience with unions, and being glad for having their protection when supervisors have tried to get rid of me for insisting on following proper safety procedures.
I have also never found Wal-Mart to be particularly cheaper than everybody else on a consistent basis, so it makes it easier for me to boycott them. I just buy in quantity when items are on sale, like the butter I just bought for $1.99/pound. I have never seen it at that price at Wal-Mart. (Your region may vary.)
It is also easier in a larger city like Cleveland. I have four or five discount stores within a 5-mile radius. In a smaller town, it may be more difficult, and more of a sacrifice to boycott.
But hey, whatever your conscience tells you.
Do you also take up arms against people who work in movie theaters? You know they are open regular hours 365 days a year, including Easter, Thanksgiving, and Christmas.
If you have a job in retail, weekends, nights, and holidays are part of the gig, and you know this going in, so it’s not like it was a surprise to anyone. Or did you think Wal*Mart is the only retail business open on an Easter Sunday?
Where in my post did I even hint that I thought of anyone as a robot whose sole purpose is to satisfy me or treated them with disrespect? I’ve worked retail, I know what the deal is, and how customers can be. I’m always very pleasant to people whose job it is to serve me, in whatever capacity. I smile, I say “please” and “thank you”. Yeah, “please” and “thank you” even though their job description is to do what they’re doing.
asking another question: “Does anybody go out of their way to shop at a MORE expensive store?” In my opinion, WALMART offers low prices, and generally, low quality stuff. I think that they (WALMART) have recognized that with commodity products, people do not want anything more than cheap prices, and a minimum amount of time to shop. Consequently, WALMART stores are just big boxes. Nobody wants to stay in them for any more time that it takes to locate what you want, pay for it, and get out. Contrast this with a Rodeo Drive clothing store…you walk in to a magnificently decorated store, and are greeted by a friendly, classily-dressed salesperson. You might even be offered a drink. You will be catered to in any way…for this privilige, you will pay probably 100x what WALMART would charge for a similar item of clothing. Are the two shopping situations the same? Not emotely. Its just that WALMART does things so as to appeal to the low end of the market (a segment that Beverly Hills doesn’teven know exists).
I used the figures bandied about in this tread by the anti-Walmart crowd. Several people have bemoaned the fact that Walmart employees are unable to work more than 35 hours a week, so I used 34 hours. The average Walmart wage has been stated to be $9.68 from several sources, among them Walmart’s CEO, if you’re saying that’s wrong, then show me data that contradicts it. The rest is simply math.
I don’t know if they do or they don’t, that whole thing was a non-issue for me, however, if they do, then they get extra props because of it. Kudos to Walmart for recognizing that some employees may be eligible for government assistance and for taking the time and money to train these people how to apply for it. That’s showing a lot more concern for their employees as people than the typical retail store that only cares what work they can get out of them while they’re on the clock, or the typical union steward who only cares that his dues are stolen from worker’s checks regularly.
There are plenty of choices here in Baltimore too, and as a point of fact, I don’t shop at Wally World much at all. When I do, however, my conscience doesn’t bother me a wit, however, because I realize that there is nothing inherently “evil” about Walmart, they are just a big target for petty people.
What about the forced unpaid overtime, locking in of workers, sexual discrimination, counterfiet merchandise, the hiring of illegal workers etc. ** Weirddave ** do those bother you in the least?
Ah good thing the shining knight of WalMart is there to save the workers from the evil scofflaws in the unions. All jesting aside WalMart has consistantly skirted around laws and sometimes breaking them in regards to its workers. The general welfare of their wage employees in my opinion is only a concern to WalMart when it involves avoiding fines and bad publicity. Sure the CEO came out and said that they pay a good wage and have full time workers but unfortunately he was full of shit.
http://slate.msn.com/id/2113954/
Frankly for as much accusation of blind hatred for WalMart there is an awful lot of blind support. It simply amazes me the number of illegal and unethical practices that are just ignored. Illegal workers, Child Labor, Locking in workers, Unpaid overtime, Sexual Harassment, Discrimination, Counterfiet Merchandise. I guess most people just don’t care.
The way I see it, there are a couple of things going on here. Number one, a good portion of things that Wal-Mart gets called “unethical” on are simply a matter of opinion. A good example is full time versus part time workers. Wal-Mart often elects to hire a large number of part timers so it doesn’t have to pay benefits. You can yell and scream about how unfair this is, and in principle I’ll agree with you, but it’s hardly *unethical *and it’s a practice that has been widespread in this country for decades in all manner of industries. Singling out Wal-Mart like they invented this practice is unfair and misleading.
Number two, they are the big kid on the block, and as such, they are the number one target of everyone. It’s the same with Microsoft. Read any message board and you’ll be convinced that MS is a totally evil conglomerate that uses it’s economic muscle to force shoddy products onto a public that’s begging for just a little functionality and not getting any. Sounds horrible…until you realize that MS products are running on probably 95% of home and business machines out there, and Windows is the OS that brought simplified computing to the masses. ANY mistake, real or imagined, that a company like MS or WM makes is going to be picked up upon and amplified and added to and embellished beyond all resemblance of reality simply because of their position in the marketplace, while at the same time any good they do is going to be downplayed mightily. People need to have corporate villains to hate. Reality is going to have very little to do with who winds up filling the role of evil corporation.
Finally, there is a great deal of what I call the Audi 5000 syndrome. Remember back in the mid 80s when there was a great flap about what was know as “SAI” or Sudden Acceleration Incidents? People were convinced that their cars were taking off on them suddenly without warning or control. In reality what was happening was that Joe Ledfoot was stepping on the gas petal instead of the brake and winding up in his neighbor’s swimming pool. Well, 60 Minutes ran a story on the “phenomenon” in which they named the Audi 5000 as the type of car most likely to suffer a SAI. In the four years prior to the story only 13 SAIs involving Audis were reported to the NHTSA. In the single month following the 60 Minutes story, over fourteen hundred SAIs involving Audi 5000s were reported. You can draw one of two conclusions from this data: Either 60 Minutes was smart enough to break a story at the exact moment in time when every Audi in America was about to malfunction, or people are generally extremely susceptible sheep. I know which one makes the most sense to me.
Applying this to Wal-Mart, we have a situation where one overzealous manager scaring his employees about the exit doors becomes a company wide lock down policy, a situation where a dozen illegal warehouse workers becomes a pipeline from Mexico underground to every Wal-Mart in the U.S and Canada. Suddenly you have sweatshops where Sam Walton’s ghost beats pre-teen children for pennies and workers are tortured if they complain about their $.05/hr wages. In short, what you have is an awful lot of smoke and not much fire, and a brilliant example of unthinking mass hysteria.
Does this mean that I think Wal-Mart is completely blameless of anything? Of course not. However, in order to make the case for the evil of shopping at Wal-Mart, you’re going to have to do several things. First, you’re going to have to accept that legal business practices that you personally find disagreeable are only a reason for one person not to patronize Wal-Mart, and that’s you. Don’t expect everyone else to share your indignation because frankly most of us don’t. So sorry, but you have no right to force your moral outlook and outrage onto us. Second, realize that some of us don’t think that a successful company is by definition a bad thing. Many of us actually admire a well run business without looking for ways to produce or invent evidence that it’s ruining the neighborhood, sabotaging the environment and abusing it’s workers. Your anti-business bias is a non-starter from day one, leave it in the coffee houses and on the communes. Finally, in the cases of actual illegal activities by Wal-Mart ( You list was, I believe, “Illegal workers, Child Labor, Locking in workers, Unpaid overtime, Sexual Harassment, Discrimination, Counterfeit Merchandise”), you’re going to need:
Proof that the illegal activities actually occurred as advertised
Evidence that said activities were Wal-Mart policy, and not the actions of one or two rogue employees
Lacking a standing as official policy, evidence that Wal-Mart knew what was occurring and turned a blind eye to and helped conceal these activities from the authorities
On any occasions where the above conditions were met, evidence that Wal-Mart refused to make the corrections required by law and that they additionally refused to put in place policies that would ensure that the illegal activities would not reoccur.
More than one or two examples of the above. A definite, repeating pattern of behavior would be nice.
If you can demonstrate the above on anything even close to a regular basis, why then I’d be happy to join with you in boycotting Wal-Mart. Until then, as far as I’m concerned, most of the anti-Wal-Mart folks are just sheep bleating against the wind, impressed with the sound of their own voices.
Your wish is my command good sir:
Illegal workers:
http://money.cnn.com/2005/03/18/news/fortune500/wal_mart_settlement/
WalMart settled this and of course added the standard non-admission of guilt disclaimer. However I think its safe to say that the government had good evidence if WalMart was willing to settle for 11 million dollars.
Child Labor:
http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/retail/2005-02-18-wal-mart-child-labor_x.htm
Again WalMart denies the claims but paid out a settlement. This apparently was a minor violation which probably isn’t anything to get worked up about.
Locking in Workers:
http://www.dsausa.org/lowwage/walmart/2004/Workers%20Assail%20Night%20Lock-Ins.html
The cover story was that the doors were locked to protect workers in high crime areas but the real reason was to prevent workers from taking breaks outside or leaving.
Unpaid Overtime:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/12/20/national/main533818.shtml
Certainly doesn’t seem to be an isolated incident. A settlement involving 69,000 workers and 37 class action suits indicts a pattern to me. There is also some stuff in the article about employees being locked in. In order to keep the employees at 34 hours a week their shift ended at 1 am but couldn’t leave till 6 am becuase the doors were locked.
Sexual Harassment:
I couldn’t find a main-stream news source but there was at least one case of a WalMart being found guilty of sexual harassment. This one also probably isn’t anything to get worked up over.
Discrimintation:
http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2004/06/22/ap1426888.html
A pretty large class action suit but this is still in its formative stages.
Counterfeit Merchandise:
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0EIN/is_1999_August_16/ai_55460690
Best article I could find. Its about an online retailer being sued but it mentioned the WalMart suit. But again WalMart was found to be violating the law and paid a fine (or settlement I am not sure the article isn’t clear).
As to your points:
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As you can see I limited my complaints to (hopefully) obvious violations of business ethics, morals or the law. I never ventured into whether or not WalMart harms or benefits a community.
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Not getting into the Microsoft issue (becuase they have done some shitty things too) but if you think this is the case show me similair things happening at the other big box retailers. I can assure you that I do not have an axe to grind nor am I filling a villian void in my life. My decision was a gradual one. I read a few articles in the paper about the various lawsuits and immoral worker relations. Coupled with the shitty wages they pay their employees and what they are doing to American manufacturing I said the hell with them. They will no longer get my money.
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I certainly do not remember the mid 80s as that was a wild time in my life with being born and all
. I see your point about panicky and stupid consumers but we aren’t talking about panicky and stupid consumers. We are talking federal prosecutors and juries that convicted WalMart numerous times. We are talking about reputable news orginizations doing investigations. Even WalMart knows they have done these things evidenced by their large settlements.
I have presented you with my reasons for not patronizing WalMart along with citations. Certainly none of this will ever be proven beyond a reasonable doubt by any of us. However as consumers we have a choice to make. Do we buy into WalMarts plausible deniability? If we do then I must ask how many lawsuits and news articles do we need? Unfortunately the problem is that the majority of Americans either don’t know about these violations or don’t care becuase they get stuff for cheap.
Setting aside these issues and assumin WalMart was a squeaky clean company I would still be very worried. We have had our share of monopolies with companies controlling supply but I fear WalMart in the near future might control demand. I do not want a situation where one company can control the fate of a large portion of the manufacturing in this country. If we get to the point where WalMart pulling out of a deal will bankrupt most of the companies it does business with we are going to have a serious problem.
After all that is really how WalMart keeps its prices so low. It goes to its suppliers and beats them over their head threatening to take their business overseas. WalMart currently has a pretty big club (i.e. marketshare) to beat their suppliers with but for the most part the suppliers can survive it. If WalMart gets a big enough club I fear that they will pound American manufacturing into the ground. But thats just me being a little paranoid. However I am willing to bet that within my lifetime WalMart is going to be broken up into BabyMarts ala AT&T.
PBS did a series of interviews about WalMart for a series they did. Some pretty interesting stuff in there. Its worth a read just for the quasi behind the scenes look at WalMart.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/walmart/interviews/
treis, now you’re making sense. The shine is off WM, but I’m not ready to hate them yet. These people that suffer the abuses aren’t entirely innocent here, though. You can’t be abused unless you offer yourself up for abuse.
You seem to be pretty reasonable in your reasons for not liking the company, in that you actually spell out what you hate rather than just saying “Yeah, but they do everything they can to kill the people!” I’ll still shop there, but I now, in no way, see them as angels of commerce. (Sometimes it takes a while to hit me over the head enough to notice.)
Of course the personal insults require I buy twice as much for the next week. 
This is funny. Someone posts an interesting study by Penn State that would lead one to believe that despite the obviously lower prices for merchandise, there is a hidden cost to communities that host a Walmart.
How do most people respond? “But that’s where I can get cheapest boxes of Sugar Crunch and plastic-coated particle board furniture!” Yes it is indeed. Price vs. cost.
The reason for Walmart’s success is right here in this thread. It isn’t the prices. It’s the chronic short-sightedness of the consumer.
Will I subsidize someone’s shopping at another store and spot them the difference, as has been asked here? Sure. That someone is me. If you want the cheap Sugar Crunch, go for it, but at least understand what you really end up paying.
Another reason could be that Walmart increased inequality in a community while increasing total economic growth. If Walmart causes 10 people to be $100 richer and 5 people to become $100 poorer, then it would show up in the Penn State study.
The balance between equality(socialism) and growth(capitalism) is a difficult one but it doesn’t neccesarily follow directly from the Penn State study that Walmart has a negative effect on the community.
In many ways, the debate about WalMart resembles what went on in the early 1950’s, with he rise of supermatket chains. Before WWII, most Americans bought their food at small family-owned markets. These little stores charged high prices, and had limited choices. In addition, as most people didn’t have a car, they had little choice in where to shop. Then along came the national supermarket chains…these stores were much larger, hasd better choices, and lower prices. Did they drive the "mom and pop " grocery stores out of businss? Yes-these stores only survive today in big cities or gehtto areas. They are "economically inefficient"because they operate at low levels of activity. They cannot offer you lower prices because their operating costs are high. They cannot offer you a big selection, because they are physically small. About the only thing they can offer yu is physical location, and if you are a city dweller (without access to a car), you are essentially forced to shop there.
People forget just how lousy most of these little markts were…they had low turnover, so your chances of hgetting sour milk, spoled meat, etc., were pretty high.
ralph124c, there are many people that don’t understand why evolution applies to life forms but not business. Please don’t confuse them.
Thank you. Apparently the message got through to at least one person.
You know treis, I’ve been thinking about this all day. I really appreciate your taking the time to list those cites, they are exactly the type of thing I was asking for, but what I’m struggling with is my reaction to them. I don’t want you to assume that I’m going to blow off anything you post, because I’m not, or that I’m a huge Wal-Mart apologist and am going to take the stance that they can do no wrong, because that’s not the case either. However, my reaction to your list of cites is basically…“That’s it? That’s what all the fuss is about?” I mean, look at it objectively: You provide six examples. This is the largest retail outfit in the galaxy, and you can only dig up six different violations in a twenty year timespan? That’s a record the Catholic Church would say a Dark Mass to have. It’s not just the number, however. Six strong violations would be pretty damning. It’s the nature of the allegations. Two of them you yourself admit are probably “nothing to get worked up about”. One of them is a settlements of specific charges, from which you conclude “its safe to say that the government had good evidence if Wal-Mart was willing to settle for 11 million dollars.” That paltry settlement tells me the exact opposite. 11 million dollars is five minutes revenues for Wal-Mart. It’s nothing. Being offered that deal with the proviso that no guilt need be admitted will save Wal-Mart money verses the cost of taking the case through a full court proceeding, and is a way for the government to save face with a weak case. They can point and say “We got a settlement”, regardless of how strong ( or not ) their evidence was. You list a couple of class action lawsuits. Class action lawsuits are almost never about guilt or wrongdoing, they’re about “hassle the corporation until it pays us to go away”. As evidence of wrongdoing, a CAL is worthless. It’s a moneygrabing scam, pure and simple. Finally, you’ve got the famous “locking the workers away” case, which happened over 15 years ago, and is certainly not Wal-Mart policy at this current time, so any validity that that one might have had at one point has been addressed by the corporation since. Isn’t that a desirable thing, anyway? A company that fixes problems when they are brought to their attention?
As I said, I appreciate your posting that list, I’m not belittling it in any way and whatever decision those incidents lead you to make WRT your shopping habbits is 100% correct for you and I support it completely. For me, however, my reaction was “Eehhh, big deal”.
Not to stir things up, but I am reasonably certain that treis could come up with a lot more examples if s/he were so inclined…
Im reasonably certain that when places like Sacs 5th Ave, Nieman Marcus etc open up in an area, the stats show an increase in the relative income levels of the local population over time; am I to assume its because the poor in the area got richer? Or are they just no longer there?
As spooje said those examples were just from memory. The child labor law and the sexual harassments were just ones I came across in finding cites for the other examples. I am a bit surprised that you find that these violations are no big deal.
Let me first address the settlement issue. The government claims that they have WalMart executives on tape showing that they knew about this issue. WalMart decides to pay 11 million dollars many times the cost of any legal defense to settle this case. I see two possibilities here. WalMart is guilty as charged and they know it. Knowing they were nailed they settled to avoid admitting guilt, the bad publicity of a trial or whatever their reason was. The other option is that WalMart was innocent of these charges and the government is lying or mistaken about the tapes. If you believe that the second case is what happened then I believe that this discussion is ultimately fruitless.
The two main violations that stick out in my mind are the unpaid overtime and locking in of workers. By not paying overtime WalMart not only takes advantage of the poorest of society but they gain a competitive advantage over their competitors. If WalMart forced their workers to work even 3 hours of overtime a week they reduced their labor costs by 10%. That is a pretty big sum when you are talking about hundreds of people at each store.
It just blows my mind that people can support an orginization that effectively steals money from the poorest of society. Your average WalMart drone has no chance of supporting a family on their wage. To go ahead and steal from them and then have the audacity to give them information about food stamps? How bout paying them the money they earned?
It seems to me that this problem is endemic to WalMart and not the work of franchise owners. 37 Class actions suits across 30 states. A settlement already for 50 Million dollars that they stole from 69,000 of the poorest people in society. This is a company we want to support?
The locking in of workers in my opinion is a terrible practice. First in case of any non-fire related emergency it is a waste of Fire Department resources to respond. I would imagine a fire alarm at a WalMart would bring out at least a few trucks due to its size. Each time the department rushes to a scene its firemen are in danger from the way they have to drive. WalMart effectively is putting the firemen in danger and me in danger by consuming department resources that it shoudln’t. All in the name of saving a few bucks by stopping workers from taking smoke breaks.
It is also a clear danger to worker health. All though I will give them credit for ratcheting back their reckless behavior by no longer chaining fire doors shut. Of course all it took for this to happen was for a worker to die becuase paramedics could not get in to save him. But hey WalMart saved a few bucks becuase the rest of the workers couldn’t take a smoke break. I take solace in the knowledge that the wrongful death suit probably cost them more money than they saved.
Imagine if you would that you are at work and you become ill. Now you need to make a decision if you are sick enough to risk losing your job by going out the fire exit and sick enough to endanger the lives of others. Replace becoming ill with any number of situations, a child becomes sick, your father passes on or any sort of emergency. Is that really a situation that you want anyone to be in? I know that I sure don’t.
I for one don’t have a problem with your typical big box retailer. WalMart is ridiculously efficient at stocking their stores which ultimately is a good thing. A wider selection and lower cost is what most consumers want. Meeting those demands is good for the economy and makes peoples lives better.
Those few pennies you save at WalMart vs. Target, Walgreens etc etc. are coming from the above practices. Are those few pennies really worth supporting a company that robs the poor and endangers their lives?
11 Million in a class-action suit? How much do you think made it into the pockets of the workers? Class-Action suits are about money. Guess who makes the money? You populist, you.
I’m so sick of this tired assertion. Imagine the type of person that would accept extra unpaid hours and being locked in a building. In most cases they’d have a social worker taking them to and from work. The other’s? If they don’t understand that imprisonment and slavery are banned, do you really want them working in a store that has rifles and ammo?
They’re guilty of theft? I had no idea! And supporting an employee by calling them a drone is very classy. Very classy. We can see you care about the downtrodden.
Whatever it seems to be, you’ve proven yourself a shrill hyperbolic nut. Endemic? 37 suits in 30 states is endemic? Couldn’t have anything to do with the lawyers that take 30% could it? I seem to remember the figure of 11 million mentioned somewhere.
If it’s endemic, why are there 20 states left out? That worries me more than some idiot leaving his child to die because he doesn’t want to open a fire exit.
Trust me, I’m imagining it. I’m imagining my new Ferrari, my new island resort and what I’ll name my next 43 Pugs.
Um, I thought poor people shopped there, buying goods. And if you can tell me how a few pennies will feed my family, please do so.