A Walmart in Cleveland is holding a food drive — for its own employees

[Jimzz]

A Walmart in Cleveland is holding a food drive — for its own employees


http://consumerist.com/2013/11/18/o...oyee-food-drive-for-less-fortunate-employees/


Hahahhaaa...

 

[Pocatello]

Not easy living on Wal-Mart salary.

 

[Sluggo]

By employees for employees, outrage not found.

 

[Fritzo]

But...what about those commercials about how they all get cheap health insurance, tuition assistance, and make decent wages?

 

[sandorski]

By employees for employees, outrage not found.

Really? :\

 

[sandorski]

They should send a request to the Store. Perhaps some of the Community service $ can be used to help out these Needy people of the Community.

 

[PenguinPower]

Yeah...we do the same thing for our hourly associates except they earn about 10k more annually on average.

Actually read a good article on Walmart and their wages earlier today...let me see if I can find it.

Yep...here.

 

[bradley]

If Walmart is anything like McDonald's, they likely assist their employees in filing for welfare benefits and food stamps -- how generous of them -- while paying a piddling $9 hourly base salary.

So even if you don't eat from McDonald's Dollar Menu, your taxpayer dollars are still subsidizing it. And just wait until those Chinese chickens come home to roost; you'll be paying the Chinese too for their precious stock of melamine.

 

[mmntech]

The photo was taken by a group sponsored by the United Food and Commercial workers union. An organization who stands to make a lot of money unionizing Walmart employees. So that immediately makes it suspect. Some digging and I found recent news of a few major fires in Canton that destroyed multiple homes.

Not saying that Walmart is necessarily in the right here, but I feel like we don't have the whole story.

 

[KlokWyze]

I typically avoid Walmart, but I reserved an Xbox there.... fuck....

 

[bradley]

How McDonald's and Wal-Mart Became Welfare Queens
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-11-13/how-mcdonald-s-and-wal-mart-became-welfare-queens.html

Apologies, But Welfare Payments To Employees Are Not Subsidies To WalMart And McDonalds
http://www.forbes.com/sites/timwors...s-are-not-subsidies-to-walmart-and-mcdonalds/

For the mostly lame counterargument:

Barry Ritholtz has a column up arguing that welfare subsidies to low paid employees at firms like WalMart and McDonalds are in fact subsidies to those firms themselves. Rather than being what they actually are, which is subsidies to the low paid workers. There’s a simple way to show this too.....

And it’s here that we start to have a problem with the thesis as it is. For the corporations are paying what they can get away with: yes, it really is true that rapacious capitalists will pay as little as they can for anything in order to maximise their profits. But the extension of this is that given the supply of that low skill labour in the US and the demand for that low skill labour then those companies are paying what that low skill labour is actually worth. This is definitional: in a market economy something is worth what someone will pay for it.

 

[Matthiasa]

But...what about those commercials about how they all get cheap health insurance, tuition assistance, and make decent wages?

What have you been watching????

 

[Fritzo]

What have you been watching????

They actually have "look how great Walmart is!" commercials airing now.

 

[phucheneh]

Really? :\

There are definitely conflicting thoughts that both make sense to me.

I mean, when considered in principle, it's flat-out absurd. Especially when you make the obvious assumption that management is allowing this. Possibly created the idea. How high up in management, who knows. I can't imagine it goes past that of this one store.

But there is certainly merit to the idea of people at the same level helping each other out. A wholesome 'we're all in this together' mentality. Granted, it's together under a shitty employer who would only give them 'charity' if it helped their PR in a way that subsequently helped profits. But nonetheless, people don't have to be wealthy to help each other, and all of the employees are surely in varying states of financial need.

I think the poster you were replying to was simply pointing out that asking customers to donate to the employees would be so much more utterly ridiculous.

 

[SandEagle]

I typically avoid Walmart, but I reserved an Xbox there.... fuck....

why? i shop there all the time. a lot of their deals are unbeatable.

 

[drebo]

If your job is doable by 250 million of the 300 million people in this country, your wages will be extremely low.

This is a fact of life. Get over it.

 

[Lyfer]

Surprise! We live in a fvcked up world!

 

[sourn]

Um your point? A lot of places I worked at including the military had these type of things (for employees/soldiers).

 

[pcgeek11]

Looking at this chart:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_minimum_wages_by_country

and

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_wage_in_Canada

Walmart stacks up pretty good.

Canada ranges from $9.95 - $11.00 USD per hour minimum wage.

The highest I saw was Australia @ a Whopping $16.88 USD per hour.

The lowest was Sierra Leone @ a big old $00.03 per hour about $5.75 a month.

I see no issue holding a food drive for employees by employees. Some people cannot manage money regardless of how much they are paid, Fact. Some employees may have had a stroke of bad luck ( house burned etc... ) we don't know.

 

[WhipperSnapper]

Quoting an article: But the extension of this is that given the supply of that low skill labour in the US and the demand for that low skill labour then those companies are paying what that low skill labour is actually worth.

...and thus welfare to low wage workers is not really a subsidy (or so the argument goes).

But what if we do some critical thinking? Is it possible that these mega corporations may have done things to influence the market for labor and depress wages? What if large corporations lobbied for policies that allow and promote Global Labor Arbitrage, effectively dramatically increasing the supply of labor (for the production of goods and services for domestic American consumption) and thus decreasing American wages?

 

[pcgeek11]

...and thus welfare to low wage workers is not really a subsidy (or so the argument goes).

But what if we do some critical thinking? Is it possible that these mega corporations may have done things to influence the market for labor and depress wages? What if large corporations lobbied for policies that allow and promote Global Labor Arbitrage, effectively dramatically increasing the supply of labor (for the production of goods and services for domestic American consumption) and thus decreasing American wages?

What if we all had monkeys flying out of our asses. LOL!

$9.00 an hour is a fine wage and is well inline with the rest of the civilized world. The great exception is anything over that as in Australia and some parts of Canada and a few ( damn few ) others.

 

[ThinClient]

I don't see a reason for all the hate.

Nobody's forcing those employees to work for Walmart. Nobody's forcing them to have too many kids or to rack up debt they can't pay or live outside their means. If you are an unskilled worker who works a single unskilled job at Walmart, don't expect to be able to afford your own apartment and car payment.

Why people expect to be paid more than what they're worth is beyond me. Walmart pays respectable wages for unskilled workers and offers cheap health insurance for a single person.

If you can't handle your no-skill job at Walmart, maybe you should get skills or get a second job instead of placing the blame on everyone else.

 

[Doppel]

"associates" hahaha newspeak FTL

 

[Jeff7]

"associates" hahaha newspeak FTL

It was probably some Walmart executive's brain fart of an idea to attempt to promote a sense of community in the stores, or some such thing.



Talking of which, have you ever seen or heard the "Walmart Cheer" ritual? D:

They actually have "look how great Walmart is!" commercials airing now.

I guess the PR campaign is still cheaper for the company. (Given the number of employees....yeah.) And it still functions as basic advertising.

 

[ThinClient]

Using the term "associate" to refer to employees is nothing new and Walmart didn't start it. You guys are really reaching for anything and everything to demonize this company with.