Re: Wal-Mart is...... -- Adilbrand Noblesword's Hall of Warriors

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Date Posted: 00:04:45 10/05/03 Sun
Author: Tomodachi
Subject: Re: Wal-Mart is......
In reply to: Adilbrand 's message, "Wal-Mart is an evil, evil empire" on 11:50:06 10/04/03 Sat

It can not be denied that there are some things grossly wrong at Wal-Mart. There are very few places of business that do not do the same things to some degree or another.

You talk about pay being so poor at Wal-mart. It is not great or maybe even that good. It is comparable or better than other retailers. Retail is just not that high paying of an occupation, especially at the level of the floor employees. It is the nature of the business.

You talk about the turnover rate. One of the reasons that the rate is what it is is that a majority of Wal-mart's entry positions are filled by high school and college students. What happens when those people gratuate? They move away to college or find work in the field of their choice. Wal-mart is an interim job to pay the bills until then. Should Wal-mart pay more and hire only those that intend on staying with the company, leaving high school and college kids with less job prospects? If working at Wal-Mart is so bad, why do I see so many return to work there after having left for other jobs?

"Despite its claim that it slashes profits to the bone in order to deliver "Always Low Prices," Wal-Mart banks about $7 billion a year in profits, ranking it among the most profitable entities on the planet." I do not recall(I could be wrong, I guess) that slashing profits was ever a claim or marketing strategy of Wal-Mart. Slashing prices and costs have been. Wal-mart, to my knowledge, has never said anything else except that they were in it for the profit.

Why should anyone be pro-union? Most unions are just another form of big business. What are unions going to do for the Wal-mart employee? They can't seem to do anything for the workers at other companies. There is news story after news story of union workers that are off the job for years because the union and the company do not agree. Do the companies shut down? No they don't. Does a union automatically mean better pay and working conditions? No, it doesn't. Can a union guarantee job security? No it can't. I saw a local grocery chain shut down in spite of the fact that it was unionized. It should be noted that this happened before there were any Wal-mart grocery stores in our area. Talk to someone at UPS and see how much a union can help. Unions nowadays do not do the job that they are supposed to do. Unions need to be revamped as well to be useful. Union membership is in decline around the country. The unions are not trying to get into Wal-Mart to help the workers they just want a piece of the paycheck of those 1.2 million workers. If there was a grass roots movement to band together by Wal-mart workers, and not by some outside group, I could definitely see a possibility of supporting that.

"A top EEOC lawyer told Business Week, "I have never seen this kind of blatant disregard for the law." "
The EEOC is such a entity itself. That is why there is an article in Readers Digest reporting that a supervisor was told to get rid of some senior attorneys because older workers lack motivation. The EEOC is supposed to be the one making sure that there is not discrimination of age. If the EEOC can not get it right themselves, how can they get it right about others?

"Then there's China. For years, Wal-Mart saturated the airwaves with a "We Buy American" advertising campaign,.."
Actually the progaram was never that Wal-Mart only buys American nor was it Wal-Mart does not buy from China. The program that you are referring to was that Wal-Mart would look to American companies first to buy products to sell in American stores.

You say that all the profits are not used locally and are shipped off to Arkansas. I would have to disagree. Our store doonates thousands of dollars(I am not sure of the exact amount off the top of my head) a year to local charities. We donate to local schools. We donate a lot of our damaged pet food to the local humane society. All they have to do is come pick it up when called. Wal-Mart donated millions of dollars of items to the people during the 9/11 tragedy. Items were not the only thing donated. Wal-Mart donated thousands of man-hours and trucks to be used to move those items donated by Wal-Mart and others to where they needed to be.

"Did you know that in various cities, Wal-mart is experimenting with new forms of marketing, and new products never sold in retail stores before?"
Why is this so wrong now? This is something that Wal-Mart has always done.

"In another large city, each item in the store carries an electronic tag, and if you're one of many customers who have registered their Visa or MasterCard with Wal-Mart and received the little electronic keychain tag or wallet card, you can simply load up your cart and breeze right on out of the store between two special upright scanners. Your purchases are automatically totaled, charged to your card, and stored in their database where government employees of some alphabet agency can see exactly what you bought and what you paid for it."
Why is this so terrible when Wal-Mart does it? When I complained to you about the cards at certain grocery stores that record your purchases and that you don't get the sale price unless you do use the card, you just wrote it off as an acceptable marketing tool. It is just used to tell what people buy and what items they buy together so that the store can plan what items to sell and to sell next to each other is what you told me.

How about "lifestyle-appropriate marketing"?
Where did you hear this one?

"Since Wal-Mart will cash your paycheck, why not just go completely cashless and let them credit your pay to your Wal-Mart card? If you need some of that old fashioned green stuff, you can always drop by the 24 Hour Teller, but since everything you need can be bought at Wal-mart. what's the point?"
So what you are saying is that Wal-Mart should not offer any extra services like check-cashing?

Wal-Mart is not all bad. There are letter after letter of customers that have been helped by Wal-Mart. Everything from a manager opening up the tire and lube department after hours to help a stranded person to Wal-Mart truck drivers being the only one to stop and help people stranded on the side of the highway to items being delivered to peoples houses at no extra charge.

You say that we should boycott Wal-Mart and shop at other places. Do these other places treat or pay their employees better than Wal-Mart does? Your answer may be that they can't afford to in order to be competitive with Wal-Mart. Most of these other places that you are suggesting that we should shop at have been around longer than Wal-Mart has been. Did they pay that much more before Wal-Mart? It seems to me that you are berating Wal-Mart for practices that have gone on before there ever was a Wal-Mart and also for practices that also go on at their competitors that you are suggesting that we shop.

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Like Best Buy and hate Wal-mart? Can we say Oxymoron? -- Mt. Healthy Mountaineer, 01:38:41 10/05/03 Sun