Via Prometheus 6, an article on TomPaine.com points out that Wal-Mart – praised by Republicans like Dick Cheney as an ideal example of the free market at work – could never exist in a genuinely free market.
Putting aside the morality of forcing people to work in slave-like conditions, the so-called free market does not exist in China when it comes to wages. China artificially suppresses wages by anywhere from 47 to 85 percent below what they should be, according to the AFL-CIO’s complaint about China’s labor policies filed with the United States Trade Representative last year. With Wal-Mart as its willing customer, an authoritarian regime ruthlessly warps the market for wages by enforcing a system that controls where people can work and imprisons and tortures people who attempt to organize real unions or strike. Maybe the rock-bottom labor costs are really behind Wal-Mart’s slogan “always low prices,” but the company is certainly not an example of how to win in a free market economy.
It’s easy to see why Wal-Mart and its conservative defenders discard ideology: money. By ignoring free market principles, the left-wing Harvard Business School estimates that Wal-Mart reduces its procurement costs by 10-20 percent, primarily by taking advantage of the artificially suppressed labor market in China. One can’t help note the delicious irony that Wal-Mart’s “free market” leadership is powered by an authoritarian regime that still refers to itself as communist.
Back at home, Wal-Mart’s free market mantra stops at the water’s edge of the public till. By one estimate, Wal-Mart has pulled in $1.5 billion dollars in taxpayer funded subsidies (see www.walmartwatch.com) . And that’s at the low end, because subsidies are sometimes hard to track based on the lack of public reporting requirements. Wal-Mart is happy to cash in on government largess like property tax abatements, infrastructure support, free land and just straight-out cold cash…all of which are the antithesis of “free market” ideology. […]
Truth is, Wal-Mart could not survive in a real free market: It would, for example, have to pay Chinese workers more (which would ruin its low-wage business model) and spurn any offers of government subsidies. Indeed, it’s fitting that Wal-Mart, the business model fawned over by free-marketeers, exposes the so-called “free market” as a lie, no more than a crude…albeit effective…marketing phrase. By offering the seductive promise of prosperity through something “free,” we’re told we have to hand over control of our communities to some mystical “market” force. But that’s just an illusion conjured up to hide from us real-life actors who exploit the sweat of our brows, deplete our natural resources to make huge profits and take handouts funded by our hard-earned incomes.
The article has more, including a look at how Republican commitment to “local control” evaporates when local control conflicts with Wal-Mart’s goals. The article doesn’t discuss another way Wal-Mart depends on the public dole to get by: Wal-Mart relies on welfare and food stamps to subsidize its ultra-low wages.
Interesting material. I have some qualms about Wal Mart myself.
I am drawn to the tale of a Wal Mart document instructing associates on how to apply for social service benefits. I am familiar with such documents; I saw them as a dependent in the military for the first mumble years of my life.
I acknowledge that I do not see into the heart of hearts of Wal Mart management (or anybody else). But is it not conceivable that some Wal Mart HR executive ran some numbers on some of the company’s marginal employees, and said “you know, some of these working moms coming in here for 15 hours a week to make ends meet probably qualify for government help but don’t know it, or are too proud – maybe we should put together a resource sheet for them on how to get the things they’re entitled to.”
From my own, admittedly finite, time in the trenches of hippy leftist activistism, I know that non-corporate fuzzy organizations do that all the time. They’re routinely given huzzas for that kind of thing in the alternative rags. So why is that suddenly evil when a company does it?
This seems like a case of mindless company (or capital) -bashing – Wal Mart did it so it’s evil! Never mind that I was planning on doing the same thing next week.
Wal Mart’s crimes are not, in my view, its oppression of its workers. (At least, those aren’t its important crimes.) Wal Mart’s employment practices fill a valuable social hole. In agrarian and industrial days, there were plenty of jobs for people who weren’t that bright, or weren’t that motivated – not the best jobs in the world, but honorable tasks that you could feed yourself or a family with. Those jobs are all gone – something has to replace them, or you end up with a huge class of uberslackers, which always just turns icky.
It would be great if everyone in society had an IQ of 168 and huge creative drives and the ability to be the best confounded knowledge worker in the whole happy buzzy global economy – and maybe someday they will. But right now they aren’t, and SOMETHING has to be done for us. I mean, them. ;) Wal Mart surely isn’t perfect, but it’s honest work at wages that are not grossly inappropriate for the caliber of performance you are expected to deliver.
By all means, Robert, ignore the half of the article that condemns Wal Mart for slave labor, firing people who even discuss organized labor, intentionaly hiring illegal imigrants to undercut cleaning, ripping off employees who work overtime, etc…
Wal Mart is not only creating poverty, it’s STEALING by failing to pay overtime, forcing employees to nort report overtime hours, and firing whistleblowers.
Perhaps you can start defending the PRC’s labor practices next.
I worked at Walmart for a few months when I was in college. You never hear about the brainwashing session you go through when you start working there – literally hours and hours of presentations and videotapes bashing messages like “unions are BAD” into your brain. I felt like Alex in “A Clockwork Orange” – doors are locked, get ready for the quiz. If I didn’t need the money at the time I would have quit on the spot.
I quit shopping there when its employees started killing cats.
Amp, I’m so glad you posted this!
Robert, I didn’t take this as free-market-bashing. I have always argued for REAL free market economics, and Wal-mart ain’t it. I’m not talking about its US business practices (although those are surely unethical), I’m talking about its practices abroad.
Republicans argue against free trade with Canada for prescription drugs because Canada’s price controls would be imposed on us. That’s a valid capitalist argument. But the same argument then works with all kinds of free trade — for example, China is imposing its Communism on us.
“Free market” doesn’t mean that an employer can do whatever he wants. In a free market economy, all contracts must be voluntary, and physical coercion is not allowed.
And regarding China’s wage -fixing… that’s like having a maximum wage instead of a minimum wage. How does that go along with free market ideology?
Okay, after reading the entire article, I think there is an anti-market tone to it. I’ll give you that one, Robert. But I still stand by everything else I said! ;)
But the Free Market relies on low wages in China. It’s not just Wal-Mart using Chinese labor, it’s also Nieman Marcus, Target, and Sears. Is it really an American company’s responsibility to thwart Communism when 1 billion people seem content enough about it that they haven’t revolted?
I agree that most companies use “anti-market” labor, not just Wal-mart. Is it the responsibility of one company? Not really. Few companies can compete without the low-wage labor. Once one company does it, they all “have” to do it.
So whose responsibility is it? That’s hard to say. My initial reaction is to blame all the so-called “pro-lifers” who are perfectly fine with companies murdering employees who try to form unions. We, as consumers, have some responsibility. Definitely.
But our options are surely limited. It’s nearly impossible to know what products come from ethical labor practices.
Then again, what is the government’s role? In my opinion, it should have a limited role, but it should protect us against murder and physical abuse. So then I have to ask myself if it should protect citizens of other countries from those things. In general, no, it shouldn’t. But should we allow American companies to participate in murder/abuse? And should we allow those who murder and abuse to trade with us? That’s a deeper question.
So for my part, I don’t shop at Wal-mart. Put in economic terms, it reduces my “utility” to do so. It is worth it for me to pay a little more. Still, I’m sure I buy sweatshop products. But I make an effort to avoid it as much as possible. And if everyone did that — if we adhered to Adam Smith theory of “enlightened self-interest” — then sweatshops would not exist. Ahh, but most people don’t really care, and I can’t make them care.
It’s a tough dilemma. I don’t shop at Wal-Mart and neither does my 70-year old Midwestern mom. OTOH, I have no problem going to Whole Foods, which is as anti-union as Wal-Mart.
I shop at Costco. AFAIK, they’re OK with unions, price comprably to WalMart and have a better selection of goods.
Free markets allow competition. Some capitalists win the competition, become oligopolies or monopolies, and competition is suppressed. Free markets are unstable and temporary, by nature. That’s before you get into the little problem that capitalists also dominate the state, and the state sees itself as the agent of the capitalists above all else. Free markets end because capital becomes concentrated in a few hands — before “cheating” and fraud and politics even enter the equation.
The amount of state intervention it would require to make a free market a permanent condition makes democratic control of the means of production look simple and easy by comparison.
Robert-
WTF?
Where to start? First in foremost, how is it not important that workers are getting oppressed? I think oppression is a very important thing to worry about, thank-you-very-much. Secondly, “people who aren’t that bright or motivated”? You have a very arrogant view of the lower class. How about “People who are trying to work their way through school” or “People who lost their jobs and ran out of unemployment” or “Mother re-entering the workforce after a divorce/death”. There are a lot of reasons why people work at Walmart, stupidity and unmotivated is a very shallow, self-indulgent way to look at things.
“A class of uberslackers” *scoff*
This Wal-Mart story might interest you…
Deliver Us from Wal-Mart?
by Jeff M. Sellers
Christians are among those sounding the alarm about the ethics of this retail giant. Are the worries justified?
http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2005/005/17.40.html
Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickeled and Dimed was a pretty good account of her experiences in an experiment in which she limited herself to a set amount of savings and tried to support herself as best she could, claiming to be reentering the labor market after years out of it.
One of the points she made was that “unskilled labor” actually required her to learn a lot of new skills, and took a great deal of intelligence and discipline.
Her chapter on working for Walmart was also interesting in showing how working class people are maneuvered into competing with each other, and the sort of mutual antagonism that generates — something that must be overcome for labor organizing to be successful.
From my own, admittedly finite, time in the trenches of hippy leftist activistism, I know that non-corporate fuzzy organizations do that all the time.
Which non-corporate fuzzy organizations claim to offer health benefits, deliberately structure their employees’ working ours so it’s very difficult to get benefits, and then refer those employees to the state and Federal governments to fill the gap?
That’s not a rhetorical question, by the way. I’d really like to know which lefty groups rely on public welfare programs to avoid funding their own.
Where to start? First in foremost, how is it not important that workers are getting oppressed?
A man goes out every night and burns down orphanages full of sweet babies for money. On the way home, he spits on the sidewalk, kicks a stray dog, and calls a neighborhood grocer a rude name. Are public grossness, cruelty to animals, and rudeness to neighbors unimportant? No. Are they what is important about this man’s actions? No.
Yes, there are a lot of horror stories about working for Wal Mart. Many of the stories have some truth to them. Wal Mart has 1.6 million employees at almost four thousand stores. Any organization that size is going to have plenty of bad behavior even if it’s run by angels.
Secondly, “people who aren’t that bright or motivated”?? You have a very arrogant view of the lower class.
The irony of someone who consigns people into a “lower class” criticizing me on this point is somewhat bemusing.
There is a spectrum of human cognitive ability, however we choose to define or describe that ability. Individuals tend to fall somewhere along that spectrum, for better or for ill. There is a spectrum of human motivation and willingness to work hard or sacrifice in order to advance. Individuals tend to fall somewhere along that spectrum, for better or ill.
You may use whichever euphemisms you are most comfortable with; my choice of “not that bright or motivated” seems a reasonably accurate descriptor for the set of people who lie on the leftward side of one or both of those curves without being unnecessarily offensive or Pollyanna-ish.
How about “People who are trying to work their way through school”? or “People who lost their jobs and ran out of unemployment”? or “Mother re-entering the workforce after a divorce/death”?. There are a lot of reasons why people work at Walmart, stupidity and unmotivated is a very shallow, self-indulgent way to look at things.
Indeed, there are lots of reasons people work at Wal Mart. I was not examining that question; I was examining the question “where can people who are not that bright or motivated” find honest work. The answer is, among other places, at Wal Mart.
“A class of uberslackers”? *scoff*
While you’re scoffing, look into the social dynamics of the Roman Republic and let me know what you find. Large groups of people who don’t work tend to become socially pathogenic – whether they’re the unwashed proles or the nauseatingly amoral heirs of vast fortunes.
Which non-corporate fuzzy organizations claim to offer health benefits, deliberately structure their employees’ working ours so it’s very difficult to get benefits, and then refer those employees to the state and Federal governments to fill the gap?
That is your characterization of what Wal Mart does. It is not a characterization that I agree with, nor is it an impartial description of how the company operates. All they did that you can prove is hand out a resource sheet to low-level employees telling them about aid that was available for them and their families. My contention is that there is an equally compelling narrative competing with the “starve-the-workers-on-food-stamps” story – that the company knows there are people working for it who find it hard to make ends meet, and they tell them about the public services that are available.
In fact, Wal Mart associates receive health benefits at about the same rate as the employees of other large retailers. Studies have shown that about 7 percent of Wal Mart associates are on Medicaid when they join the company, and that number drops with time, down to 2 percent after two years with the company.
Of course, WalMart has a turnover rate of 40%-50%, so not too many people hit that magical 2-year mark.
(Idly, I wonder when, exactly, Studies Have Shown replaced They Say That in the national lexicon…)
Any organization that size is going to have plenty of bad behavior even if it’s run by angels.
The question is how the organization deals with its bad apples. One of the interesting arguments in the sex-discrimination case is that the lack of a policy was, itself, a policy–that is, because WalMart let each store or region set policy, it deliberately chose not to prevent bad policy choices (such as discrimination).
Whether you think this allegation is true regarding WalMart, it seems pretty axiomatic to me that there’s a difference between a large organization that has a few bad apples despite its good-faith, prompt effots to weed them out, and a large organization that shrugs and says “Whaddayagonnado?” Or encourages them.
…This particular business also pleaded that it not be considered an unusually large business when an unusually large number of employees with horror stories decided to file a class-action lawsuit.
A lot of them probably don’t hit the 3-month mark, which is the average stint in fast food I think.
I shop at Ralphs, the only supermarket around, but didn’t during the strike in 2003-04. I had shopped at Stater Bros. though I hated that chain, b/c of its racist employment practices.
I went to Food4Less which is owned by Ralphs’ parent company but is nonunion. It has later hours, hence the impromptu stop. It’s across the street from a market that’s had its workers picketing for going on three years.
And I go to Target occasionally for nongrocery stuff b/c we don’t have any other similar stores nearby.
I used to go to this cool fish store for fish stuff, but Target put it out of business.
Hippy leftist activism???? hmmmm……sounds Cliiiche…
After his stint as a “hippy-left -activist” he got sucked into the machine and now parrots the capitalist mantra of Meritocracy through Natural Selection. Hardly an isolated case.And in my opinion this argument goes round and round till it is realized capitalism, that is all markets ,”free” or controlled, are the cause of class in the first place, the exploitation that goes with class and the brainwashing of some working class members, Robert., to fight for their own oppression. It’s a remarkable system, creates lots of wealth (for some)creates desire, manufactures consent but morally is an abomination.
Oh, please. Robert, you know perfectly well what that meant. You ARE arguing dishonestly.
I note the quick ducking of thee fact that Robert’s buddies at Wal Mart are funded by slave labor in the PRC.
I guess if it isn’t happening to Americans, Robert is OK with that.
Yeah, I’m going to go with the majority opinion here. Robert is being wilfully blind to Wal Mart’s large history of bad practices, it’s policy of theft from employees, and it’s unfair labor practices. he’s arguing dishonestly. I can’t for the life of me figure out why, unless he owns Wal Mart stock, or has some sort of dogmatic fetish about disagreeing with liberals.
I’m not ducking anything, that I’m aware of.
As I’ve said, there are issues with Wal Mart. However, their treatment of their employees is not egregiously worse than other employers in similar labor markets. Their bad actions just get publicized because the company has made media-savvy enemies.
owever, their treatment of their employees is not egregiously worse than other employers in similar labor markets. Their bad actions just get publicized because the company has made media-savvy enemies.
Oh really? What proof have you got that other companies engage in statisticaly more abuses, or is this another of your emotionaly ‘right’ but logicaly nonsensical arguments?
What proof have you that other companies engage in statistically less?
other companies have unions, rather than firing the entire staff of a store when they try to unionize.
nuff sed.
Some other companies have unions, most other companies don’t. That’s not proof of anything.
No, it’s not proof. Firing the entire staff of a store and shutting it down in order to prevent a union from leagaly forming is proof. Which is what karpad said, not the straw man you put forth.
How much more blatantly dishonest are you going to get in this thread?
Please try to refrain from direct personal attacks like this. (I’m not saying you’re the only one, just the most recent one at this moment when I happen to be at my keyboard).
The main issue the original post talked about is the use of virtual slave labor in China. I’d be very curious to know if K-Mart and Target refrain from selling things manufactured in China, but I doubt they do. In that sense, WalMart is no worse.
On the other hand, since it’s much bigger than the others, WalMart presumably sells MORE stuff make with slave labor than the others. So in that way it’s worse.
And its labor policies here in the States are demonstratably a lot worse, in terms of pay, benefits and union rights, then someplace like Costco. (Then again, both WalMart and Costco have been sued for discrimination against women.)
Besides, “some other places are just as bad but don’t get the attention” isn’t a defense. I’m sure that there are serial killers who killed more people than Charles Manson & followers ever did; but that doesn’t mean that the punishments and criticissm Manson receives are unjust.
“some other places are just as bad but don’t get the attention”? isn’t a defense
It’s not a defense against the charge; it’s a defense for not caring much about the charge in the context of larger wrongs. My time and attention are finite; I try to prioritize.
Barry and Robert both kick a puppy dog on their way to work in the morning. Barry spends his working day torturing kittens with electrical shocks until they die. Robert spends his working day finding homes for orphans. On the way home from work, they both kick another puppy dog. Local journalists, who hate Robert for being handsome and brilliant, write story after story in the paper about Robert, the wicked dog kicker.
It is not right that Robert and Barry kick dogs. It is much worse that Barry kills kittens. (You bastard.) If someone brings up Robert and Barry in conversation, and someone says “yeah, they kick dogs, but that isn’t the worst thing going on”, that person is correct, and is not automatically a defender of dog-kicking.
Wal Mart’s offense against society is that it undermines the network of small businesses that make insular, tight-knit communities economically viable. This effectively alienates people from their livelihoods far more than getting screwed out of an overtime check does, and does it to far more people. I consider this to be the primary bad thing about Wal Mart, not that they are mean to unions. Being mean to unions is usually just good sense.
And the fact that “Robert” helps orphans doesn’t mean that he should get excused for kicking dogs.
Target and Kmart, ex cetera, are not torturing kittens, so you’re analogy falls flat.
Some other companies have unions, most other companies don’t. That’s not proof of anything.
The issue isn’t whether they have unions, but how they react to unions. Trader Joe’s doesn’t have a union. From all indications, their people just don’t want one. Wal-Mart, on the other hand, has closed down entire departments shortly after those departments were unionized. As the second half of karpad’s post, which you glossed over, said: rather than firing the entire staff of a store when they try to unionize.
Did I miss Robert’s explanation of which lefty companies are “just as bad as Wal-Mart”?
Did I miss Robert’s explanation of which lefty companies are “just as bad as Wal-Mart”??
No, you didn’t. Instead, you missed the part about how that isn’t what I said.
I hope you’re not planning on becoming a judge; I’d hate to have you reading my briefs.
Descents into snippiness when you don’t like how the discussion is going is rarely a feature a successful brief, so if you’re planning a legal career you might want to be more circumspect.
I asked if you had responded to my question in #15 in case I had overlooked it, rather than start by assuming you were just handwaving. My bad.
Being mean to unions is usually just good sense.
Or a one-way ticket to having the NLRB install a union whether you like it or not. There are anti-union actions an employer can take that are generally legal (such as paying your employees over union wages, telling your workers that a union will mess up their cozy relationship with you). Other anti-union actions are not so legal, and if an employer is egregious enough, the NLRB may simply decide there’s no possibility your employees could have fairly said no to a union, so now you have one.
Mythago,
I believe your reading of Robert on which you based the question in post #15 was a misreading.
Robert’s claim was not that lefty organizations underpay their employees and then get them to supplement their wages with food stamps, but that there are lefty organizations which help people (whose wages they have no say in) to get food stamps. His dubious claim was that WalMart does not structurally and intentionally underpay their workers, but merely helps their fairly paid workers to get food stamps (or medicaid) if they qualify. In support of this, he argued that while starting workers had a relatively high rate of use of foodstamps and medicaid, long term workers did not. That this ignored WalMart’s concious policy of high employee turn-over was pointed out to him, and as far as I’ve noticed, he has not responded to that point.
But the question in post #15 is (I believe) moot.
I guess Robert is the only one who can say for sure. But when he said From my own, admittedly finite, time in the trenches of hippy leftist activistism, I know that non-corporate fuzzy organizations do that all the time, it seemed to me ‘that’ referred to Wal-Mart’s policy of providing info about publicly-funded health care to its own employees, to whom Wal-Mart isn’t providing health insurance. If there are liberal hippie nonprofits doing this, I sure as hell want that publicized.
One big reason Wal-Mart is getting picked on more than other retailers is that part of its business model is using its enormous economic leverage to pressure suppliers. It’s Wal-Mart’s way or the highway. Why can’t it do the same with a health-insurance company?
Because the health insurers don’t need Wal Mart in the way that suppliers need Wal Mart.
Health insurers nonetheless need business, and large companies have better leverage to negotiate favorable insurance terms for their employees. “If we don’t like your deal, we’ll take our business to YourCompetition HMO” is much more threatening coming from Wal-Mart than from a fifty-person mom-and-pop operation.
large companies have better leverage to negotiate favorable insurance terms for their employees
Sometimes. In the case of insurance, where state legislators have erected all sorts of barriers to insurance in the form of mandatory coverage of certain treatments or levels of care, thus raising both the quality and the price of insurance coverage by fiat, there is a state-by-state differential in the ability of a given insurance company to provide coverage in the state. Since Wal Mart is emphatically a multi-state operation, this adds friction to their dealings and in at least some states puts them in pretty much the same boat, size- and influence-wise, as their regional or local peerlets.
I don’t know what the actual cost of this friction is, but it’s substantially greater than zero. Is it greater than the leverage benefit derived from Wal Mart’s size? I dunno.
And Wal-Mart does provide health insurance. At rates comparable to what I got when working at a number of non-profits.
I don’t know what the actual cost of this friction is, but it’s substantially greater than zero.
If you don’t know the actual cost, how can you confidentially say it must be “substantially greater than zero”? If you dunno, all you’re really saying is that possibly Wal-Mart would be happy to provide health benefits out of its own pocket, rather than shifting those costs to the government, if only those darn state legislatures would let them.
If you don’t know the actual cost, how can you confidentially say it must be “substantially greater than zero”??
I fail to see the conflict. We are speaking of statistical and actuarial phenomena.
I do not know the actual cost of running Oracle’s customer service helpline. I do know that it must be substantially greater than zero.
I do not know the actual number of page views that this blog receives on a daily basis. I do know that it must be substantially greater than zero.
And so on.
If you dunno, all you’re really saying is that possibly Wal-Mart would be happy to provide health benefits out of its own pocket, rather than shifting those costs to the government, if only those darn state legislatures would let them.
The language used is economics, but the thinking is not.
Wal Mart cannot shift costs because Wal Mart does not control or own costs. The “costs” of someone’s health care are what it costs to provide that health care (plus, possibly, some externalities). It is not, primarily, Wal-Mart’s concern that a particular worker have health insurance. The worker may have other rational choices. The worker may be covered elsewhere. The worker may be a Jehovah’s Witness. And so on.
I notice a similar imputation of great power in your earlier assertion that Wal-Mart pursued a policy of high turnover. Ignoring for the moment that idea that Wal-Mart would intentionally throw away its continuing investment in training, including the losses and inefficiencies caused by constant streams of new employees, Wal-Mart does not control its turnover rate. It can certainly affect it, if it wishes, by instituting hiring freezes or arbitrarily firing large chunks of people solely to prevent them from entering the benefits system, but those actions make little or no economic sense. But mostly turnover is created by the decisions of the literally millions of people involved. “Screw this job, I’m going back to college.” We’re not talking about being a QA tester for a Columbian drug cartel; these are fairly crappy jobs.
Your approach seems to take it as a given that the size and economic magnitude of Wal-Mart imbue it with unnaturally great powers of agency. And it is true that, in very narrow ways, there is something too that. In areas where the company possesses great talent, they have the ability to magnify the effects of that talent. But overall, size is a detriment to the ability of an entity to specifically and intentionally affect its environment, because size impedes communication and makes the transaction costs of widespread agency prohibitive. On the other hand, big entities can create “waves” in the economic sphere – general influences. Whales can’t pick pockets, but they can knock over your boat. Wal-Mart can predict when the sun will rise, but they can’t hasten the process.
Regarding the state legislatures, you have again misunderstood me. The state legislatures do not prohibit Wal-Mart from insuring its employees. The state legislatures have made the insurance industry a complicated mess by imposing requirements on companies that make doing business in a multistate environment somewhat challenging. This means that Wal-Mart faces significant – if unknown to me in terms of exact magnitude – costs in attempting to negotiate health contracts for its often transient, international and multijurisdictional work force.
“I hope you’re not planning on becoming a judge; I’d hate to have you reading my briefs. ”
Oooh, I feel sexually harassed here! Men, please keep your pants zipped, and your minds out of the gutter!
Promotion of High turnover was and still is a popular policy of fastfood restaurants. Why? Because since it was by-the-seat-of-your-pants-job-training(never went to hamburger school, sorry), there wasn’t any costs associated with such training besides the paycheck. People often burned out at six months, right before their first chances at a raise. Certainly, by a year, when they first became eligible for limited medical benefits IF they pulled a 30 hour/week average over the year. Sounds easy? I took two weeks off, worked 1 18 hour week and ranged from 40-45 hours every other week and only averaged 27.5 hours a week, ergo no chance to get medical benefits. I did some research and discovered they doctored the clock. I would work 2 until closing(2:30am) and the record would show I had clocked out at 11pm, but I was actually paid for the work, but not OT, which is what I was owed.
The high point of my career was when I thought I was going to start crew leader classes, only the manager had a heart attack the next day and the district manager was crushed to death by his trailer about the same time. We waited a long time for that third bad thing.
Anyway, high turnover was the key, it seemed. Don’t know about Walmart. Wouldn’t surprise me if they did it too. They and Fast food restaurants had the same love of unions and organizing, after all.
They just hired and paid a lot of people minimum wage. Then burned them out and started the cycle over again.
Promotion of High turnover was and still is a popular policy of fastfood restaurants. Why? Because since it was by-the-seat-of-your-pants-job-training (never went to hamburger school, sorry), there wasn’t any costs associated with such training besides the paycheck
Except for the administrative costs of interviewing and hiring, the costs of inefficiencies incurred by the on-the-job training, the costs of angry, alienated, or permanently lost customers due to employee ineptness, and the costs incurred by untrained workers doing a bad job and having to replace the spoiled product.
I used to manage a fast food restaurant. A restaurant managed in the way you describe is being managed by morons. (Which does not mean that it didn’t happen. )
when they first became eligible for limited medical benefits IF they pulled a 30 hour/week average over the year. Sounds easy? I took two weeks off, worked 1 18 hour week and ranged from 40-45 hours every other week…
Your numbers don’t add up.
Without any fidgeting by the employer, your time would be an average of 40.39 hours per week (assuming that 40-45 averaged to 42.5). With the cheating you describe, with 12.5 hour workdays being reported as 9 hour workdays, I assume you were working 3 12.5 hour days and one 2.5 – 7.5 hour day (to come up to 40-45). This assumption maximizes the impact of the cheating you describe. With the figures you’ve provided, the employer cheated you down to 30.5 hours per week – still within the range for benefits. What information are we missing here?
Businesses that promote a policy of high turnover are committing suicide on the installment plan (with one exception – an acquired business whose new owners discover that the employee base is rotten might do a turnover purge to clean the stables). Again, not to say that it isn’t possible that some idiot restaurant chain is doing it that way – but Wal-Mart didn’t become the most successful retailer on Earth by practicing retarded management policies.
but Wal-Mart didn’t become the most successful retailer on Earth by practicing retarded management policies.
Think of how successful they’d be if they stopped bleeding out through their high turnover rate.
“Substantially greater than zero” is pretty meaningless for reaching any conclusions. It’s a nice declarative statement that leads to nothing. That said:
But mostly turnover is created by the decisions of the literally millions of people involved. “Screw this job, I’m going back to college.”?
I was examining the question “where can people who are not that bright or motivated”? find honest work. The answer is, among other places, at Wal Mart.
Well, make up your mind. Are Wal-Mart employees slackers who stick around briefly and then go back to college, or are they folks who are not terribly bright and motivated and so are able to fit in well at a Wal-Mart job?
Turnover is an HR problem, not a force of nature like an earthquake or a snowstorm. Any company that says “gee, we’re just going to lose people because they’ll decide to quit” is, as you say, run by morons. I’m assuming Wal-Mart is not run by morons and therefore is aware that it can do things to slow turnover. (This is one reason companies offer benefits; you might not care about a 10-cent raise, but losing your health care is a big negative.) Therefore, since it chooses not to, Wal-Mart has obviously made a business decision that it is more profitable to have high turnover than to spend money on whatever it is that would take to keep those people from leaving. Such as higher wages and benefits.
Your approach seems to take it as a given that the size and economic magnitude of Wal-Mart imbue it with unnaturally great powers of agency.
There’s nothing “unnatural” about it. Size and economic magnitude mean a lot of economic leverage. And since we don’t know the exact costs of doing business in a ‘multistate environment’ (like…most large corporations?), it’s fruitless to speculate that state legislatures’ impact on the insurance industry have a thing to do with Wal-Mart policies regarding benefits.
No, Wal-Mart isn’t required to offer benefits. The problem is when their business model (should we offer benefits?) depends in part on shifting costs to the taxpayers (no, because our workers qualify for welfare–let the government pay that).
“Your numbers don’t add up.
Without any fidgeting by the employer, your time would be an average of 40.39 hours per week (assuming that 40-45 averaged to 42.5). With the cheating you describe, with 12.5 hour workdays being reported as 9 hour workdays, I assume you were working 3 12.5 hour days and one 2.5 – 7.5 hour day (to come up to 40-45). This assumption maximizes the impact of the cheating you describe. With the figures you’ve provided, the employer cheated you down to 30.5 hours per week – still within the range for benefits. What information are we missing here?”
A lot admittedly, but not enough space on this entire blog for the whole story. But your math skills are pretty good.
I worked 42.5 hour weeks, either opening and closing and often put in overtime including shifts at other restaurants in the chain, on occasion during emergencies. I wasn’t the first on that list to be called b/c of my already excessive hours(thus my needing to be paid time and a half) but no one else wanted to do the shifts ahead of me on the list.
I did quit this job after overhearing the shift supervisor tell another shift supervisor that money would be taken out of my drawer(making me short) to make up for a shortage in the safe. When I confronted them, they swore I wouldn’t be held accountable. After a year in this restaurant, I had little reason to believe them.
The manager at the time already thought I was the she-devil, because after a month in the dump, watching them violate every labor law and health code in the book, I reported the store to the CEO. Fortuntely, the day my letter came in to his office, his secretary wasn’t there to screen it, and it went directly to him. He read it, and started screaming for his brother to come to his office.
He wrote me back, said sorry and gave me free burger coupons. I figure as far as payoffs go, it wasn’t much but I thought that meant nothing would happen.
I was wrong about that. Three weeks later, I went to work and a lot of suits were there, walking around. My manager waved a letter in my face, and said “interesting story” and my file was sitting wide open in the manager’s office. Every employee was interviewed by phone, in the manager’s office with the manager present of course. I was interviewed all afternoon by the personnel and review panel, which basically consisted of the district manager, the regional director, some CEO guy and my representative, who either was humoring me or flirting with me, I wouldn’t tell. She certainly was no help at all.
Anyway, some people got fired, demoted, transferred including some shift supervisors who weren’t really breaking labor laws, but they were sexually harassing the female employees. Which came out after the replacement manager was having a meeting with the employees and he said, “well at least we don’t have to worry about sexual harassment”…silence and pointed looks…”Oh we do?”
There was also criminal activity going on, which came out in the investigation but was news to most of us. Part of it involved stealing commisary shipment items and selling them.
It wasn’t all bad. The replacement manager tried really hard on the place to make things better. The heart attack at age 33 cut him in his tracks. By the time he was better, the District Manager was dead, and his wife was unable to manage her store so the replacement manager took over.
We got two after that. Ms Nice, and Ms Grumpy. As happens often in life, Ms Grumpy, the asst., turned out to be the good one, and Ms Nice was the nice one. And she complained on the phone about me a lot from the beginning, not knowing there was a hole in the wall of her office that led to the break room. Her cousin was pulling $6.50 an hour, when minimum wage was $4.25 and bottom level employees maxed out at $5.50/hr. Someone actually confronted her on that, and she said her cousin was a crew leader, even though he only knew how to cook, not do drivethru, cashier duties, fryer, open, close, etc.
I heard the restaurant did turn itself around eventually, and won an award given annually to the top 10% of them in the company. I wasn’t there at the time.
I think the statement about “unions..not a bad thing” says everything you need to know about him. It amazes me how this country has bought in to the anti-unions as a general sentiment. I mean who dislikes unions?morons and greedy business owners is a start.
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