Originally posted by Ghosthunter
besides the big competittors comepteing agsint eachother is not what this thread is about but I guess the mom & pop shops against walmart your company dont sound like a mom & pop shop
I have taken the time to talk to some of the employees at my local target before I decided to shop there. Not only were they happy, but pretty well paid for a retailer check-out personal.
ever look at someone who works at walmart? they look ragged and ripped apart.
besides, big competitors CANT compete against walmart. Suppliers cant compete against walmart.
Did you know that walmart helped inflate the 1990's?? The low prices they offered off-set inflation for the whole freaking country. Because of walmarts cost cutting blood-sucking ethics, interest rates were kept low? Gee, that sounds great; however, what took place to allow them to do that? I'd call that POWER. They are not merely a large corperate retailer, they are a HUGE powerhouse of control that doesnt care about you.
I hope you never work there. I hope you never get injured on the job, cause you're F*CKED. they'll do everything in thier power to screw you.
the National Labor Relations Board has filed more than 40 complaints against Wal-Mart, accusing managers in more than two dozen stores of illegal practices, including improperly firing union supporters, intimidating workers and threatening to deny bonuses if workers unionized. Of those, the board found illegal practices in 10 cases; 8 cases were settled and the rest are pending.
Fact:
The local newspaper in Carroll County, Arkansas conducted a test of Wal-Mart's low price claim. Surveying a list of 19 common household items at six Wal-Mart stores over a one month period, the newspaper staff found that Wal-Mart was cheapest on only two of the items . The lowest register receipt for all 19 items was $12.91. The highest total for all items came from Wal-Mart at $15.86. The Real Story is the high cost of Wal-Mart's prices: lower wages, more imports, lost U.S. jobs, lower community living standards.
Myth:
Wal-Mart's presence in a community generates tax revenues.
Fact:
Studies conducted by small towns on the impact of proposed Wal-Mart stores have shown that tax revenue reductions are more likely to occur after a Wal-Mart moves into an area.
A Maryland study showed that in the years following the arrival of Wal-Mart, "town tax receipts from personal property and ordinary business corporation taxes grew but at a declining rate." The study said that "the expected growth in income taxes may have been offset by low-wage jobs offered by the large retailer and by the loss of employment in competing businesses. . . ."
Of the 10 richest people in the world, five are Waltons—the ruling family of the Wal-Mart empire. S. Robson Walton is ranked by London’s "Rich List 2001" as the wealthiest human on the planet, having sacked up more than $65 billion (£45.3 billion) in personal wealth and topping Bill Gates as No. 1
Behind this manufactured cheerfulness, however, is the fact that the average employee makes only $15,000 a year for full-time work. Most are denied even this poverty income, for they’re held to part-time work. While the company brags that 70% of its workers are full-time, at Wal-Mart "full time" is 28 hours a week, meaning they gross less than $11,000 a year.
Wal-Mart is an unrepentant and recidivist violator of employee rights, drawing repeated convictions, fines, and the ire of judges from coast to coast. For example, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has had to file more suits against the Bentonville billionaires club for cases of disability discrimination than any other corporation. A top EEOC lawyer told Business Week, "I have never seen this kind of blatant disregard for the law."
Likewise, a national class-action suit reveals an astonishing pattern of sexual discrimination at Wal-Mart (where 72% of the salespeople are women), charging that there is "a harsh, anti-woman culture in which complaints go unanswered and the women who make them are targeted for retaliation."
Workers’ compensation laws, child-labor laws (1,400 violations in Maine alone), surveillance of employees—you name it, this corporation is a repeat offender. No wonder, then, that turnover in the stores is above 50% a year, with many stores having to replace 100% of their employees each year, and some reaching as high as a 300% turnover!
NLC interviewed workers in China’s Guangdong Province who toil in factories making popular action figures, dolls, and other toys sold at Wal-Mart. In "Toys of Misery," a shocking 58-page report that the establishment media ignored, NLC describes:
13- to 16-hour days molding, assembling, and spray-painting toys—8 a.m. to 9 p.m. or even midnight, seven days a week, with 20-hour shifts in peak season.
Even though China’s minimum wage is 31 cents an hour—which doesn’t begin to cover a person’s basic subsistence-level needs—these production workers are paid 13 cents an hour.
Workers typically live in squatter shacks, seven feet by seven feet, or jammed in company dorms, with more than a dozen sharing a cubicle costing $1.95 a week for rent. They pay about $5.50 a week for lousy food. They also must pay for their own medical treatment and are fired if they are too ill to work.
The work is literally sickening, since there’s no health and safety enforcement. Workers have constant headaches and nausea from paint-dust hanging in the air; the indoor temperature tops 100 degrees; protective clothing is a joke; repetitive stress disorders are rampant; and there’s no training on the health hazards of handling the plastics, glue, paint thinners, and other solvents in which these workers are immersed every day.
As for Wal-Mart’s highly vaunted "code of conduct," NLC could not find a single worker who had ever seen or heard of it.
Of course, among the unnecessaries to him are the use of union labor and producing goods in America, and Scott is unabashed about pointing in the direction of China or other places for abysmally low production costs. He doesn’t even have to say "Move to China"—his purchasing executives demand such an impossible lowball price from suppliers that they can only meet it if they follow Wal-Mart’s labor example. With its dominance over its own 1.2 million workers and 65,000 suppliers, plus its alliances with ruthless labor abusers abroad, this one company is the world’s most powerful private force for lowering labor standards and stifling the middle-class aspirations of workers everywhere.
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