Shopping tips and the whore of Bentonville

The BBQ Pit
61

If your argument is that you shop at walmart because they have better prices, stick to that, don’t try to use an analogy that suggests that others are outdated, or not as innovative and that that also is a valid reason. Your analogies WERE focused on that, and did suggest that.

My beef in the case of your analogies was with your anologies PERIOD. They weren’t supporting your opinion and were therefore inaccurate and not useful insofar.

Then why were you using them as analogies? It’s not as if Walmart’s competitors ARE handsewing and/or being slower and so on.

They’re cheaper because they’re raping their suppliers and treading VERY close to unfair trade practices, NOT because they do things better. Again, your arguments above suggests that they’re cheaper because they’ve found a better way. No, they’ve found a way to be cutthroat to the detriment of many other companies, and eventually many of your fellow consumers.

Well, it has mine, and as I said, when I was still shopping there, I took back many items.

Only my own, friends and family members. But hard data? No, I don’t have any, I suppose I could look it up, but reallly that’s a hijack and wasn’t the main point of the OP.

As I said in my post, that was a hijack and just my personal practice. AS far as illegal activity? I’ve read of lawsuits brought against them for unfair/unethical overtime practices, and IIRC, one of our own, a doper who posts fairly regularly had a thread on their treatment of employees a few months back.

Also, in my personal experience, back when I did shop there, at least every other visit I’d see some manager reaming out a hapless employee in front of God and everyone. Not only unprofessional and ineffecient, but if I’m not mistaken, harrassment too.

62

I very seldom shop at WalMart. As far as I concerned, they only stand out in the grocery section, nowhere else.

They may be cheaper, but they’re good example of how cheaper isn’t always better.

63

For the longest time (years) I did not shop at Cub Foods here in Decatur because they were being picketed by the grocery-store employees’ union, and the National Association of Letter Carriers was “supporting” their picketing, and thus as the wife of a letter carrier, it was non-U for me to shop there.

Years later, when Hubby asked me idly why I never bought groceries at Cub Foods, and I told him, he was amazed. “You remembered when I told you that? It was years ago! Nobody else at the post office paid any attention to that,” he said.

I said, “Well, are they still picketing? I never see anyone out there with signs, not for a long time now.” He said, “I have no idea. But go ahead and shop there, it’s old news. It’s history.”

So much for “making shopping decisions based on how the store treats its employees”.

It’s not the customers’ problem to see that employers treat their employees fairly–it’s the employees’ problem.

64

“It’s not the customers’ problem to see that employers treat their employees fairly–it’s the employees’ problem.”

But, union protesting plus a well thought out boycott can be a VERY powerful combo. The fact that Wal Mart can be among the worst in terms of treating their employees is one of the reasons why I seldom shop there.

65

My former employer has outsourced my job. Ya know what I did?

I got another job.

And my former empoyer? They went under. They no longer exist. It wasn’t in the same industry, but the priciple is the same. They outsourced to save money. Not to help tighten the ship and offer a better price to their customers, but to pad their own pockets. They acted stupidly for a long time and then they paid the price, as companies that act stupidly should. Me? I’m fine, as are all the other folks whose jobs were outsourced. None of us landed on the street.

Oddly enough, we all had skills that OTHER employers were willing to pay for.

Bottom line is that no companies are obligated to do business with Walmart. They are free to tell Walmart to stick it. If they are in a position where they NEED Walmart to stay afloat, it’s probably because they acted stupidly in the past. That’s not Walmart’s problem, and it’s not my problem.

66

I guess you’re right. It is so much easier to go through life not having a rat’s ass of concern for anyone other than oneself. So long as I’m safe, secure, and happy, the rest of the planet can go bugger off. Their problems are not of any concern to me.

Call my thinking old-fashioned if you will, but I’m hopeful that those who view things from my perspective outnumber those who share yours, otherwise this handbasket is going to get much warmer.

67

Your thinking is not old-fashioned. It’s merely naive.

68

I understand your point that the situations are not the same, but there are many more similarities between the situation faced by the Wal-mart situation and the blacksmith. It was not merely a new product or set of products that pushed the balcksmith out of the market. Hell, they were pretty much gone by the time the car arrived anyway. It was the industrial revolution that spelled the end for blacksmiths - and all artisans really.

Within a blink of the proverbial eye, the entire business world was turned around, especially in America. Sure, the IR started in Britain and spread to Germany, but in America it really took off. Entire social dynamics were shifted; entire ways of life were destroyed. Artisans of all stripe saw the products they had crafted with skill and care being produced in factories much more rapidly and much more cheaply. Suddenly, and it was sudden, they could not support their families in the style of life to which they had become accustomed. Just as suddenly, they could make more as a laborer in a factory than they could as an artisan. But they gave up more than their tools when they moved to the factory - they gave up their independence, their identity, their way of life from generations back.

It was a time of rapid change, as the old ways were lost and new ways of life sprang up. There was a considerable period when factory owners would make their machines out of wood rather than metal - not because they lacked the skill or capital to make metal machines, but becuase they knew that by the time the wooden machines wore out a better design would be had.

It is this adaptability, this spirit of embracing change rather than fearing it, that brought America through this period. I fail to see why it can’t bring us through another revolution in business modes. To say that workers are unable to adapt, to learn new skills, to reach for new jobs, is, in my opinion, the height (or depth) of pessimistic thought on the state of humanity.

I’m not a Wal-mart fan. I’ve worked at two stores, in a number of positions, and have seen how things are done there. I will only shop wal-mart if the value they are providing on a product is sufficiently large (I have a rather tight budget, otherwise I would only shop there is I could get the product no where else). However, I fail to see how anything that the article linked in the OP alleges that wal-mart does is so inherently evil. It just sounds like good business to me.

69

akennett

There can be no question as to the great success of Wal-Mart. I am disturbed by the trend these immortals practice. For instance, hiring sooooo many part-time workers, not because there is little work to be done, but because they can avoid paying health benefits and avoid the traditional salary increases that good, long term, employees typically work themselves into. In addition, they are moving so much of the work to places where wages are so very low and the rights of workers are nonexistent. The success Wal-Mart is experiencing comes largely from the power they have and their ability to push costs off onto others. Maybe I am a pessimist. I suspect that many of the adult, middle-aged folks that are working at Wal-Mart will continue to find themselves with fewer appealing opportunities. I would guess that many of them have no college and are in a difficult spot when it comes to finding educational / training opportunities that they can manage to pay for and experience. I am sure that this country will have fewer and fewer low skilled and medium skilled jobs available. I know we must embrace change. Meanwhile, these multi-nationals are finding cheap labor to exploit. I do think it is exploitative. Laws in the U.S. have been passed to address the greed and power of business. If these laws are necessary, and I think they are, shouldn’t they be followed everywhere? I am in favor of free market forces with a mix of laws and interventions to force humanistic practices… like worker safety, no child labor, etc.

70

It seems to me that there is a distinction between advocating economic inefficiency (1) to protect jobs that are becoming obsolete; and (2) to protect labor standards.

If Mr. Livery is losing his job because automobiles are catching on, it is painful but I can accept it. (Although I believe it is proper for government to soften the blow with unemployment insurance, vocational training, etc.)

If Mr. Livery is losing his job because a 12-year-old is going to work (instead of school) and working without the benefit of minimum wage laws; overtime laws; workman’s comp laws; unemployment insurance laws, etc., that’s a big problem to me.

71

You should probably qualify your whiny little rant a little better. You need to substitute “Americans” where you said “the rest of the planet” since, you know, those outsourced jobs are being done by people in other countries, not robots or magicians, who are happy to now have jobs …

72

America grew into an economic powerhouse in part because of child labour, no benefits or environmental protection, etc. As your standard of living grew, you passed these laws… It seems unfair that you complain about other countries doing the same so they can become prosperous.

73

Thank you so very much for your condescension. While I was aware that Americans were losing jobs, I thought that those pretty animals were making clothing and products when they weren’t being featured in National Geographic specials. I never realized that people were working for 18¢ per hour as they ride the wave of prosperity sweeping the Third World countries now supplying goods to Mall-Wart. :rolleyes:

It’s so much better to spread the screwing around. Put Americans out of a job, and have people on the other side of the world working in conditions akin to those of the late 1800s. How globally responsible! :wally

74

Right. I trust you’ll agree with me that these same people are not leaving $30K/yr jobs to work for $0.18/hr. It seems to me that no one would take that job unless they were currently earning less than that. So explain to me why this is bad?

They are advancing their standard of living. While it is beneath what you are used to, well, not everyone can be lucky enough to be you.

Right back at ya.

75

There’s a purely capitalistic way to solve this problem. Consumers need to realize that when they buy goods made by countries with lower standards for wages, working conditions, and industry regulation, they’re effectively demanding that anyone who wants to compete to get their business had better lower their standards in the same way. In the USA, this means workers must be willing to have the same quality of life as in these other countries. It seems pretty apparent to me that the workers aren’t the only people whose quality of life will decrease if either of these situations occurs on a large scale in the USA.

Personally, I’m very big on the idea that the person who offers a product with the best cost vs quality proposition should win, but most people have a very narrow view of the cost of a product. When you buy goods made in lousy working conditions, you’re paying the face value of the product, but you’re also (at best) lessening the value and conditions of American manufacturing jobs, which will probably come back and affect you whether you’re one of the people who needs those jobs or not.

What we need is something akin to the old “buy American” campaign which amounts to “buy things made in working conditions comparable to the USA’s.” The benefit is twofold: first, you’re supporting companies and nations who treat their workers right, which is obviously a socially nice thing to do. Second, you’re raising standards to the point where US standards are not a hindrance to successfully competing in the free market.

You don’t have to stick it to WalMart. They’re not evil. If we tell WalMart that what we want is products made in the USA or in comparable working conditions, that’s what they’ll sell us. They’ll still use their massive size to squeeze the heck out of their suppliers and mold them into lean, mean, razor-thin-margin machines, but at least the suppliers won’t be at an inherent disadvantage to overseas companies any more.

There’s nothing anti-capitalist about this approach. Vote for good working conditions with your wallet just like you’d vote for good customer service. The critical thing you have to realize is that paying for good working conditions for the workers who produce your goods is not an altruistic act. It’s a long-term benefit to yourself.

$0.18/hr may be better than nothing, but American workers won’t see it that way when that’s what they have to get paid to compete.

76

Sorry, I reread this and realized that I edited it so it doesn’t make sense. The two situations originally referred to are 1) workers must be willing to suffer a decrease in quality of life, and 2) jobs leave the USA for places where workers already have a lower quality of life (which is obviously already happening). Both are bad for the US.

77

America has many things in its past to be proud of and many things that could be considered regretable or even shameful. In the case of historical economic growth, most of the factors of production were owned by Americans. So the profits grew the American economy, even though the labor practices were inhumane. Here the situation exists where American investors are using cheap labor from other countries but most of these profits are not being reinvested in these foreign economies. The workers are getting these low wages but how many of them will be able to accumulate enough wealth so they will be able to purchase capital goods? If they are not able to make these kinds of investments, I think their economies will not grow and opportunities will be very, very, slow to appear.

78

How do you think that they are providing goods at cheaper costs? Walmart has been very innovative in the fields of distribution, inventory control, price negotiations, and other operations fields. Sure, these innovations are not tangible, but that does not diminish their innovativeness.

79

The fact remains, though, that they could not fill these positions with part-time workers unless there are people willing to work as part-timers. In fact, Wal-Mart does offer similar benefits to part-timers as to full-timers. The benefit levels are not the same, and a part-timer does have to work longer with the company before enrolling, but the benefits are there. Likewise for salary increases - which are laughable even for the full-time employees.

There really is only so much labor that wal-mart can move. Being retailers they must remain in the area they are servicing. Or are you refering to their purchase and subsequent retail sale of cheaper imported goods?

Sure, that is a description of much of the labor force that Wal-Mart hires. They also hire a good number of high school and college age kids looking to save a little money for education or a car, empty-nest former housewives looking for an easy job to fill the now vacant hours left after her kids have grown, and retirees trying to work just enough to make ends meet without decreasing their pension payouts and social security checks.

How is it that Wal-Mart (or any other big business icon) is to blame when people don’t take it upon themselves to become skilled? These corporations often are the ones who provide the only reliable positions for the unskilled and somehow that makes them the devil in cases like this.

Can you define what “humanistic practices” are? Giving examples, as you have already done, is not giving a definition. I suspect that without resorting to value judgements this will be a very difficult task. Are we then to export our own values to every culture with which we have contact? Or is it just in this or certain cases? Can we even agree what our values are in our own society?

I do not pose these questions to avoid yours. My answer is no, I do not think that our laws and practices should be followed everywhere. I think that each society needs to determine for themselves what practices, laws, regulations, etc. are best for their unique situation. Are the practices and laws of a fully developed country really the best things for a small impoverished nation trying to build up an economic infrastructure? I doubt it.

80

Can you define what “humanistic practices” are? Giving examples, as you have already done, is not giving a definition. I suspect that without resorting to value judgements this will be a very difficult task. Are we then to export our own values to every culture with which we have contact? Or is it just in this or certain cases? Can we even agree what our values are in our own society?

I agree that finding a definition for humanistic practices leaves room for value judgement. And no, I do not think that everyone should follow all of our laws. However, there should be some minimum standards followed. Wal-Mart plays a part in this increasing trend of moving manufacturing, low to medium skilled jobs to countries where cheap labor is available. They play a significant role but I know that most of their retail employees are in the U.S.

To be more specific in regard to markets for cheap labor and the minimum standards that should be followed -

  1. Child labor for starters… nothing wrong with a kid working part - time, but they should not be full time employees. The problem is that this is a symptom of poor economic conditions. So, if child labor is to be outlawed, there really must be a fundamental change in the society. Should the U.S. take a blue print in and set all of this up? No. Good grief, the U.S. is already hated enough. But multi-nationals could be given some attractive incentives that would encourage them to make some investments in these societies so the economic system could grow.
  2. Health and safety of the work force should be addressed. Some sort of workman’s compensation for folks that get disabled or injured on the job.
  3. Environmental standards - I think this should be uniform. Whatever environmental laws are followed in the U.S. should be followed elsewhere. Companies should not be able to dump stuff in rivers etc.

There are obviously different ways to frame this issue. On one hand, you can say, if this set of laws are passed, the $2.00 a day job will be taken away and the job will go with it. On the other hand, you could look at the underlying causes. Corrupt governments, years of conflict, farm subsidies, property rights, banking and finance, etc… the list goes on. Multi-nationals should not be allowed to exploit these conditions and engage in business practices that perpetuate this condition. In the short term, you can’t deny that it serves their interest to have this cheap labor available. And, yes, I benefit from this too, when I can go and by a 27" tv for $180.00 at Wal-Mart. It is a complicated issue and if resolved, will require a new approach that is forward thinking.