Now the Company turns it's back on the very same low income people that propelled it to the giant it has become.
I typically would start my Christmas shopping in October and use layaway and pick up the items about 2 weeks before christmas.
9-13-2006 Wal-Mart scraps tradition, ends layaways
================================================
If Americans can't afford to get to Walmart we must be heading for the Great Republican Depression faster than I thought.
8-15-2006 Walmart posts first loss in ten years, blame gas prices
The last time Wal-Mart saw quarterly profit fall was in 1996.
Chief Executive Lee Scott said sales were disappointing at Wal-Mart's U.S. stores, its largest division. Customers were making fewer shopping trips to save gas, while Wal-Mart's own bills for fuel and utilities were up, he said.
"In the United States, customers tell us they are most concerned about gas prices"
=======================================================
No surprise here, In My Opinion, Walmart high paid Lobbyists successfully pay off Federal Judge to keep Taxpayers paying for lowly paid employee health care costs.
Unless they can show no correlation between this decision and the high paid PR firm and the Lobbyists mentioned in articles just a few posts up.
7-29-3006 Federal Judge overturns Maryland Wal-Mart health care law
BALTIMORE - A federal judge on Wednesday overturned a Maryland law that would have required Wal-Mart Stores Inc. to spend more on employee health care, arguing the retail giant "faces threatened injury" from the law's spending requirement.
In Maryland, where state budget writers were looking for ways to rein in a $4.6 billion annual Medicaid tab, the Wal-Mart law was seen as a way to encourage companies to keep employees off public rolls. It became law last winter when the Democratic legislature overrode a 2005 veto by Republican Gov. Robert Ehrlich.
==========================================
The Battle over Walmart and America intensifies
May true Americans win over the Republican Corporate Whores.
7-18-2006 Wal-Mart, critics slam each other on Web
BENTONVILLE, Ark. - The brawl between Wal-Mart and its union critics is escalating as groups on both sides, fighting over whether the world's largest retailer is good or bad, launched attack-style Web sites maligning each other's motives and politics.
More than a year after unions launched two political-style campaign groups attacking Wal-Mart Stores Inc. for what they say are low wages and skimpy benefits, the language is turning meaner and more personal.
Paidcritics.com was started last week by Working Families for Wal-Mart, a group funded primarily by Wal-Mart, to reveal what it described as "the real motives of the union leaders behind the campaign against Wal-Mart."
The site is part of Wal-Mart's aggressive defense since last year against its increasingly organized critics. Wal-Mart won't say how much it is spending, but it has set up a political campaign-style "war room" staffed by consultants, hired Washington D.C. lobbyists, formed the Working Families group and created another Web site called Wal-Mart Facts.
Wal-Mart has hired a team of about 35 consultants at Edelman, which bills itself as the world's largest independently owned PR company, as well as lobbyists in Washington D.C.
In response to the new site, union-funded WakeUpWalMart.com started its own Web site Tuesday, A Bunch Of Greedy Right Wing Liars Who Work For Walmarthttp://www.abunchofgreedyrightwingliarswhoworkforwalmart.com, which attacks the retailer's public relations and lobbying figures.
"These great guys who love to stretch the truth (or what mom called liars) honed their special Wal-Mart skills on an array of right wing political campaigns," the Web site reads.
In a letter to Democratic members of congress about Wal-Mart's efforts, WakeUpWalMart said the attacks were reminiscent of a campaign by a pro-Bush group, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, that questioned Sen. John Kerry's Vietnam War military record during the 2004 presidential race.
Walmart's latest move comes right out of the Swift Boat playbook.
And it could become standard procedure for other corporations that find themselves in the center of public controversy.
====================================
Wally World in the News again big time this week.
Of course Reoublicans especially those in here would argue that the illegal Mexicans that do the job for $8 an hr are just as skilled as the legal American skilled tradesman.
Republicans are proud of their illegal cheap new Unestados De Mexico.
11-18-2005 You've got a situation here where illegal immigrants are coming into Schuylkill County and taking (local union workers') jobs for eight bucks an hour. They are working for poverty wages, and creating unemployment because our skilled tradesmen are out of work,"
ALLENTOWN, Pa. - Federal immigration agents detained more than 100 workers at a construction site for a new Wal-Mart distribution center, authorities said.
The workers, who Wal-Mart said were employed by a subcontractor and not by the retailing giant, were detained Thursday on suspected immigration violations, said Department of Homeland Security spokesman Marc Raimondi. They were being taken to Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention centers for processing, he said.
At least 120 illegal immigrants, most of them from Mexico, were detained, Schuylkill County Sheriff Frank McAndrew said. He said he began investigating the site and contacted federal officials after getting complaints from local tradespeople.
================================================
Kudos to Pennysylvania, one of the original Colony States for standing up for the original Constution version of America instead of the new Republican cheap illegal and Unconstitutional version of America.
=======================================================
They are thrilled to see so many of it's customers going by way of do do bird as the Nation continues it's slide into third world abyss territory.
This is all a PR stunt because Wally World has diversified to so many Countries, the U.S. market won't mean a thing to them.
At the same time they continue to work towards treating their employees the same as China does over there.
Real Patriots those Walton children are eh???
10-26-2005 Wal-Mart memo suggests benefit cuts
An internal memo sent to Wal-Mart's board of directors proposes numerous ways to hold down spending on health care and other benefits while seeking to minimize damage to the retailer's reputation.
Among the recommendations were hiring more part-time workers and discouraging unhealthy people from working at Wal-Mart. In the memorandum, M. Susan Chambers, Wal-Mart's executive vice president for benefits, also recommends reducing 401(k) retirement plan contributions and wooing younger, and presumably healthier, workers by offering education benefits.
The memo voices dismay that workers with seven years' seniority earn considerably more than workers with one year's seniority but are no more productive.
To discourage unhealthy job applicants, Chambers suggests that Wal-Mart design "all jobs to include some physical activity," like all cashiers doing "some cart gathering."
The memo acknowledged that Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, had to walk a fine line in restraining benefit costs because critics have attacked it as stingy on wages and health coverage.
Chambers acknowledged that 46 percent of the children of Wal-Mart's 1.33 million U.S. employees were uninsured or on the government-funded Medicaid program.
A draft memo to Wal-Mart's board was obtained from Wal-Mart Watch, a nonprofit group allied with labor unions and that asserts that Wal-Mart's pay and benefits are too low. Tracy Sefl, a spokeswoman for Wal-Mart Watch, said someone had anonymously mailed the document to her group last month. When asked about the memo, Wal-Mart officials made available the updated copy that actually went to the board.
Under fire because less than 45 percent of its workers receive company health insurance, Wal-Mart announced a new "Value" plan on Monday that seeks to increase participation by allowing some employees to pay just $11 a month in premiums. Some health experts praised the plan for making coverage more affordable, but others criticized it, noting that full-time Wal-Mart employees, who earn on average around $17,500 a year, could face out-of-pocket expenses of $2,500 a year or more.
The theme throughout the memo was how to slow the increase in benefit costs without giving more ammunition to critics who contend that Wal-Mart's wages and benefits are dragging down those for other American workers.
Chambers proposed that employees pay more for their spouses' health insurance. She called for cutting 401(k) contributions to 3 percent of wages from 4 percent and cutting company life insurance policies to $12,000 from the current level, which equals an employee's annual earnings.
Life insurance, she said, was "a high-satisfaction, low-importance benefit, which suggests an opportunity to trim the offering without substantial impact on associate satisfaction."
======================================================
This is one time I wouldn't mind using the Patriot Act.
The Waltons should face criminal charges as traitors and an enemy to the U.S.
------------------------------------------------------------
Worldwide effort to bring Walmart down on:
8-21-2005 In globalization twist, unions target Wal-Mart worldwide
A global coalition of unions is launching an unprecedented campaign to organize workers around the world at US retail giant Wal-Mart, seeking to bring a new level of globalization to the labor movement.
The Wal-Mart campaign was set to be officially launched at a meeting in Chicago Monday of Union Network International (UNI), a group that includes 900 unions in some 140 countries.
According to a statement from UFCW, Wal-Mart "pays poverty wages, ships jobs to countries where sweatshops are prevalent and, in the US, shifts enormous health care costs onto taxpayers."
"We reject the Wal-Mart way and, at Chicago, UNI will be imagining a better future for working people everywhere," added Jennings.
"We will work with the UFCW and those unions already established in Wal-Mart in Europe and elsewhere to stop a damaging race to the bottom."
Dan Cornfield, a Vanderbilt University professor of sociology, says the plan is a bold effort to reinvigorate the labor movement, and is reminiscent of the 1930s, when unions took on the growing manufacturing sector in the United States.
"UNI taking on Wal-Mart is also the classic showdown between David and Goliath," he said.
=================================================
I have to admit, it is a good machine. My sister needed a computer so I got one for her for Christmas.
12-21-2004 Wal-Mart unveils cut-price laptop under 500 dollars
The world's biggest retailer Wal-Mart is offering price-conscious US consumers the cheapest laptop on the market, priced at just 498 dollars, in a move described by some analysts as a "significant milestone."
The Balance notebook, armed with a 41.1 inch LCD screen, a 1.0 GHz processor and 128 MB RAM of memory, comes equipped with the Linux-based operating system Linspire.
It hits the shelves loaded with a Microsoft-file compatible office suite and users can access the Internet with both a dial-up modem and broadband connections.
Its price tag undercuts rival laptops on the market by several hundred dollars, with others offering starting prices around 700 dollars.
"It is certainly interesting, without Windows you can more easily bring the price down. Five hundred dollars for a notebook, I think it's a significant milestone," said Charles Smulders, an analyst with Gartner, the technology research group.
10-16-2004 Wal-Mart may close only unionized store in North America
MONTREAL (AFP) - Retail powerhouse Wal-Mart said it was "concerned about the economic viability" of its store in Canada which is the only one of its outlets in North America to be unionized.
The Jonquiere store is not meeting its business plan, and the company is concerned about the economic viability of the store.
Wal-Mart Canada believes the unresolved labor situation at the Jonquiere store is proving detrimental to improving the performance of the store.
In August, Canadian trade unionists proclaimed a "great victory" after winning the right to form the first labor union at a branch of the world's largest retailer.
Efforts are underway at other Wal-Mart stores in Canada to win labor union recognition.
Low labor costs have allowed the firm to slash prices on goods in its huge stores, which stock groceries to golf clubs and everything in between.
Only a few meat cutters in Texas have so far managed to outflank the firm's efforts to avoid unionization.
Edit: Update 10-16-04 WalMart promptly shut the Meat Cutting Dept down after they Unionized.
Thanks to the AT'r for that report.
8-11-2004 Toys R Us leaves Toy Business, succumbs to Walmart
NEWARK, N.J. - Toys "R" Us Inc., battered by price wars from discounters, particularly Wal-Mart, is considering getting out of the toy business.
CAD is going to be so sad
8-3-2004 Wal-Mart workers' reliance on public assistance due to substandard wages and benefits has become a form of indirect public subsidy to the company
California paid an estimated $86 million in pubic assistance in 2001 because workers at Wal-Mart Stores Inc. earn such low wages, researchers said on Tuesday.
"Wal-Mart workers' reliance on public assistance due to substandard wages and benefits has become a form of indirect public subsidy to the company," said the report issued by the University of California, Berkeley Labor Center.
"Reliance by Wal-Mart workers on public assistance programs in California comes at a cost to the taxpayers of an estimated $86 million annually; this is comprised of $32 million in health related expenses and $54 million in other assistance."
The report said many of Wal-Mart's 44,000 California employees in 2001 relied on food stamps, Medicare and subsidized housing to make ends meet and also need more public health care than typical retail workers.
The study said that 54 percent of Wal-Mart workers earned less than $9 an hour in 2001
In June, Wal-Mart said it gave raises to some of its workers and called on employees to counter critics who say the world's biggest retailer mistreats its staff.
8-3-2004 Wal-Mart faces first unionized work force
MONTREAL (AFP) - Quebec officials have accredited a trade union at a Wal-Mart in the French-speaking province, raising the possibility of the first unionized work force at a branch of the retail giant in North America.
The Quebec Labour Relations board gave the go-ahead for union representation for more than 150 workers at the store in Saguenay, 200 kilometres (140 miles) north of Quebec City.
"It's the first union at a Wal-Mart in North America," said Marie-Josee Lemieux, president of the local chapter of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union.
I typically would start my Christmas shopping in October and use layaway and pick up the items about 2 weeks before christmas.
9-13-2006 Wal-Mart scraps tradition, ends layaways
================================================
If Americans can't afford to get to Walmart we must be heading for the Great Republican Depression faster than I thought.
8-15-2006 Walmart posts first loss in ten years, blame gas prices
The last time Wal-Mart saw quarterly profit fall was in 1996.
Chief Executive Lee Scott said sales were disappointing at Wal-Mart's U.S. stores, its largest division. Customers were making fewer shopping trips to save gas, while Wal-Mart's own bills for fuel and utilities were up, he said.
"In the United States, customers tell us they are most concerned about gas prices"
=======================================================
No surprise here, In My Opinion, Walmart high paid Lobbyists successfully pay off Federal Judge to keep Taxpayers paying for lowly paid employee health care costs.
Unless they can show no correlation between this decision and the high paid PR firm and the Lobbyists mentioned in articles just a few posts up.
7-29-3006 Federal Judge overturns Maryland Wal-Mart health care law
BALTIMORE - A federal judge on Wednesday overturned a Maryland law that would have required Wal-Mart Stores Inc. to spend more on employee health care, arguing the retail giant "faces threatened injury" from the law's spending requirement.
In Maryland, where state budget writers were looking for ways to rein in a $4.6 billion annual Medicaid tab, the Wal-Mart law was seen as a way to encourage companies to keep employees off public rolls. It became law last winter when the Democratic legislature overrode a 2005 veto by Republican Gov. Robert Ehrlich.
==========================================
The Battle over Walmart and America intensifies
May true Americans win over the Republican Corporate Whores.
7-18-2006 Wal-Mart, critics slam each other on Web
BENTONVILLE, Ark. - The brawl between Wal-Mart and its union critics is escalating as groups on both sides, fighting over whether the world's largest retailer is good or bad, launched attack-style Web sites maligning each other's motives and politics.
More than a year after unions launched two political-style campaign groups attacking Wal-Mart Stores Inc. for what they say are low wages and skimpy benefits, the language is turning meaner and more personal.
Paidcritics.com was started last week by Working Families for Wal-Mart, a group funded primarily by Wal-Mart, to reveal what it described as "the real motives of the union leaders behind the campaign against Wal-Mart."
The site is part of Wal-Mart's aggressive defense since last year against its increasingly organized critics. Wal-Mart won't say how much it is spending, but it has set up a political campaign-style "war room" staffed by consultants, hired Washington D.C. lobbyists, formed the Working Families group and created another Web site called Wal-Mart Facts.
Wal-Mart has hired a team of about 35 consultants at Edelman, which bills itself as the world's largest independently owned PR company, as well as lobbyists in Washington D.C.
In response to the new site, union-funded WakeUpWalMart.com started its own Web site Tuesday, A Bunch Of Greedy Right Wing Liars Who Work For Walmarthttp://www.abunchofgreedyrightwingliarswhoworkforwalmart.com, which attacks the retailer's public relations and lobbying figures.
"These great guys who love to stretch the truth (or what mom called liars) honed their special Wal-Mart skills on an array of right wing political campaigns," the Web site reads.
In a letter to Democratic members of congress about Wal-Mart's efforts, WakeUpWalMart said the attacks were reminiscent of a campaign by a pro-Bush group, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, that questioned Sen. John Kerry's Vietnam War military record during the 2004 presidential race.
Walmart's latest move comes right out of the Swift Boat playbook.
And it could become standard procedure for other corporations that find themselves in the center of public controversy.
====================================
Wally World in the News again big time this week.
Of course Reoublicans especially those in here would argue that the illegal Mexicans that do the job for $8 an hr are just as skilled as the legal American skilled tradesman.
Republicans are proud of their illegal cheap new Unestados De Mexico.
11-18-2005 You've got a situation here where illegal immigrants are coming into Schuylkill County and taking (local union workers') jobs for eight bucks an hour. They are working for poverty wages, and creating unemployment because our skilled tradesmen are out of work,"
ALLENTOWN, Pa. - Federal immigration agents detained more than 100 workers at a construction site for a new Wal-Mart distribution center, authorities said.
The workers, who Wal-Mart said were employed by a subcontractor and not by the retailing giant, were detained Thursday on suspected immigration violations, said Department of Homeland Security spokesman Marc Raimondi. They were being taken to Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention centers for processing, he said.
At least 120 illegal immigrants, most of them from Mexico, were detained, Schuylkill County Sheriff Frank McAndrew said. He said he began investigating the site and contacted federal officials after getting complaints from local tradespeople.
================================================
Kudos to Pennysylvania, one of the original Colony States for standing up for the original Constution version of America instead of the new Republican cheap illegal and Unconstitutional version of America.
=======================================================
They are thrilled to see so many of it's customers going by way of do do bird as the Nation continues it's slide into third world abyss territory.
This is all a PR stunt because Wally World has diversified to so many Countries, the U.S. market won't mean a thing to them.
At the same time they continue to work towards treating their employees the same as China does over there.
Real Patriots those Walton children are eh???
10-26-2005 Wal-Mart memo suggests benefit cuts
An internal memo sent to Wal-Mart's board of directors proposes numerous ways to hold down spending on health care and other benefits while seeking to minimize damage to the retailer's reputation.
Among the recommendations were hiring more part-time workers and discouraging unhealthy people from working at Wal-Mart. In the memorandum, M. Susan Chambers, Wal-Mart's executive vice president for benefits, also recommends reducing 401(k) retirement plan contributions and wooing younger, and presumably healthier, workers by offering education benefits.
The memo voices dismay that workers with seven years' seniority earn considerably more than workers with one year's seniority but are no more productive.
To discourage unhealthy job applicants, Chambers suggests that Wal-Mart design "all jobs to include some physical activity," like all cashiers doing "some cart gathering."
The memo acknowledged that Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, had to walk a fine line in restraining benefit costs because critics have attacked it as stingy on wages and health coverage.
Chambers acknowledged that 46 percent of the children of Wal-Mart's 1.33 million U.S. employees were uninsured or on the government-funded Medicaid program.
A draft memo to Wal-Mart's board was obtained from Wal-Mart Watch, a nonprofit group allied with labor unions and that asserts that Wal-Mart's pay and benefits are too low. Tracy Sefl, a spokeswoman for Wal-Mart Watch, said someone had anonymously mailed the document to her group last month. When asked about the memo, Wal-Mart officials made available the updated copy that actually went to the board.
Under fire because less than 45 percent of its workers receive company health insurance, Wal-Mart announced a new "Value" plan on Monday that seeks to increase participation by allowing some employees to pay just $11 a month in premiums. Some health experts praised the plan for making coverage more affordable, but others criticized it, noting that full-time Wal-Mart employees, who earn on average around $17,500 a year, could face out-of-pocket expenses of $2,500 a year or more.
The theme throughout the memo was how to slow the increase in benefit costs without giving more ammunition to critics who contend that Wal-Mart's wages and benefits are dragging down those for other American workers.
Chambers proposed that employees pay more for their spouses' health insurance. She called for cutting 401(k) contributions to 3 percent of wages from 4 percent and cutting company life insurance policies to $12,000 from the current level, which equals an employee's annual earnings.
Life insurance, she said, was "a high-satisfaction, low-importance benefit, which suggests an opportunity to trim the offering without substantial impact on associate satisfaction."
======================================================
This is one time I wouldn't mind using the Patriot Act.
The Waltons should face criminal charges as traitors and an enemy to the U.S.
------------------------------------------------------------
Worldwide effort to bring Walmart down on:
8-21-2005 In globalization twist, unions target Wal-Mart worldwide
A global coalition of unions is launching an unprecedented campaign to organize workers around the world at US retail giant Wal-Mart, seeking to bring a new level of globalization to the labor movement.
The Wal-Mart campaign was set to be officially launched at a meeting in Chicago Monday of Union Network International (UNI), a group that includes 900 unions in some 140 countries.
According to a statement from UFCW, Wal-Mart "pays poverty wages, ships jobs to countries where sweatshops are prevalent and, in the US, shifts enormous health care costs onto taxpayers."
"We reject the Wal-Mart way and, at Chicago, UNI will be imagining a better future for working people everywhere," added Jennings.
"We will work with the UFCW and those unions already established in Wal-Mart in Europe and elsewhere to stop a damaging race to the bottom."
Dan Cornfield, a Vanderbilt University professor of sociology, says the plan is a bold effort to reinvigorate the labor movement, and is reminiscent of the 1930s, when unions took on the growing manufacturing sector in the United States.
"UNI taking on Wal-Mart is also the classic showdown between David and Goliath," he said.
=================================================
I have to admit, it is a good machine. My sister needed a computer so I got one for her for Christmas.
12-21-2004 Wal-Mart unveils cut-price laptop under 500 dollars
The world's biggest retailer Wal-Mart is offering price-conscious US consumers the cheapest laptop on the market, priced at just 498 dollars, in a move described by some analysts as a "significant milestone."
The Balance notebook, armed with a 41.1 inch LCD screen, a 1.0 GHz processor and 128 MB RAM of memory, comes equipped with the Linux-based operating system Linspire.
It hits the shelves loaded with a Microsoft-file compatible office suite and users can access the Internet with both a dial-up modem and broadband connections.
Its price tag undercuts rival laptops on the market by several hundred dollars, with others offering starting prices around 700 dollars.
"It is certainly interesting, without Windows you can more easily bring the price down. Five hundred dollars for a notebook, I think it's a significant milestone," said Charles Smulders, an analyst with Gartner, the technology research group.
10-16-2004 Wal-Mart may close only unionized store in North America
MONTREAL (AFP) - Retail powerhouse Wal-Mart said it was "concerned about the economic viability" of its store in Canada which is the only one of its outlets in North America to be unionized.
The Jonquiere store is not meeting its business plan, and the company is concerned about the economic viability of the store.
Wal-Mart Canada believes the unresolved labor situation at the Jonquiere store is proving detrimental to improving the performance of the store.
In August, Canadian trade unionists proclaimed a "great victory" after winning the right to form the first labor union at a branch of the world's largest retailer.
Efforts are underway at other Wal-Mart stores in Canada to win labor union recognition.
Low labor costs have allowed the firm to slash prices on goods in its huge stores, which stock groceries to golf clubs and everything in between.
Only a few meat cutters in Texas have so far managed to outflank the firm's efforts to avoid unionization.
Edit: Update 10-16-04 WalMart promptly shut the Meat Cutting Dept down after they Unionized.
Thanks to the AT'r for that report.
8-11-2004 Toys R Us leaves Toy Business, succumbs to Walmart
NEWARK, N.J. - Toys "R" Us Inc., battered by price wars from discounters, particularly Wal-Mart, is considering getting out of the toy business.
CAD is going to be so sad
8-3-2004 Wal-Mart workers' reliance on public assistance due to substandard wages and benefits has become a form of indirect public subsidy to the company
California paid an estimated $86 million in pubic assistance in 2001 because workers at Wal-Mart Stores Inc. earn such low wages, researchers said on Tuesday.
"Wal-Mart workers' reliance on public assistance due to substandard wages and benefits has become a form of indirect public subsidy to the company," said the report issued by the University of California, Berkeley Labor Center.
"Reliance by Wal-Mart workers on public assistance programs in California comes at a cost to the taxpayers of an estimated $86 million annually; this is comprised of $32 million in health related expenses and $54 million in other assistance."
The report said many of Wal-Mart's 44,000 California employees in 2001 relied on food stamps, Medicare and subsidized housing to make ends meet and also need more public health care than typical retail workers.
The study said that 54 percent of Wal-Mart workers earned less than $9 an hour in 2001
In June, Wal-Mart said it gave raises to some of its workers and called on employees to counter critics who say the world's biggest retailer mistreats its staff.
8-3-2004 Wal-Mart faces first unionized work force
MONTREAL (AFP) - Quebec officials have accredited a trade union at a Wal-Mart in the French-speaking province, raising the possibility of the first unionized work force at a branch of the retail giant in North America.
The Quebec Labour Relations board gave the go-ahead for union representation for more than 150 workers at the store in Saguenay, 200 kilometres (140 miles) north of Quebec City.
"It's the first union at a Wal-Mart in North America," said Marie-Josee Lemieux, president of the local chapter of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union.