from the getting-management's-attention dept.
Bloomberg Businessweek has published a story on efforts by Walmart to track and spy on employees after management felt threatened by a union-backed protest group, the Organization United for Respect at Walmart (OUR Walmart):
In the autumn of 2012, when Walmart first heard about the possibility of a strike on Black Friday, executives mobilized with the efficiency that had built a retail empire. Walmart has a system for almost everything: When there's an emergency or a big event, it creates a Delta team. The one formed that September included representatives from global security, labor relations, and media relations. For Walmart, the stakes were enormous. The billions in sales typical of a Walmart Black Friday were threatened. The company's public image, especially in big cities where its power and size were controversial, could be harmed. But more than all that: Any attempt to organize its 1 million hourly workers at its more than 4,000 stores in the U.S. was an existential danger. Operating free of unions was as essential to Walmart's business as its rock-bottom prices.
[...] Internally, however, Walmart considered the [OUR Walmart] group enough of a threat that it hired an intelligence-gathering service from Lockheed Martin, contacted the FBI, staffed up its labor hotline, ranked stores by labor activity, and kept eyes on employees (and activists) prominent in the group. During that time, about 100 workers were actively involved in recruiting for OUR Walmart, but employees (or associates, as they're called at Walmart) across the company were watched; the briefest conversations were reported to the "home office," as Walmart calls its headquarters in Bentonville, Ark.
The details of Walmart's efforts during the first year it confronted OUR Walmart are described in more than 1,000 pages of e-mails, reports, playbooks, charts, and graphs, as well as testimony from its head of labor relations at the time. The documents were produced in discovery ahead of a National Labor Relations Board hearing into OUR Walmart's allegations of retaliation against employees who joined protests in June 2013. The testimony was given in January 2015, during the hearing. OUR Walmart, which split from the UFCW in September, provided the documents to Bloomberg Businessweek after the judge concluded the case in mid-October. A decision may come in early 2016.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 01 2015, @01:13AM
OUR Walmart is a shill organization backed by competing grocers such as Kroger and Wegmans (who, coincidentally, don't pay their low-level employees $15/hr either). Sometime around the turn of the century, Wal-Mart became the nation's largest grocer and pushed prices to levels where other grocers couldn't compete. A lot of this was due to Wal-Mart pioneering the field of data science in the 1980s and developing complex algorithms to best determine store layout and supply chain management. There is actually a reason that the beer section is visible from the diaper section, for example. Wal-Mart invented modern retail psychology, and crushed everyone else for years. OUR Wal-Mart was created as retaliation by their competition, who really just want to limit Wal-Mart's efficiency through negative press and legislation. I would fucking investigate them too.
Wake me up when Kroger is paying the bag boy $15/hr.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Eristone on Tuesday December 01 2015, @01:27AM
You wouldn't happen to have any documentation or... what is the word kids use these days.. ah... proof... about your statement? Now if you had said the unions (which do have large presences in your named "shill") you might be a bit more believable. But complaining about the bag boys not getting $15/hr when the cashiers at Walmart are making close to the minimum wage - apples to apples comparison, Ms Anonymous.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 01 2015, @01:44AM
The summary does mention OUR Walmart splitting from UFCW, ie the union at most (I know some, I assume most) grocery stores...
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday December 01 2015, @02:34AM
Shill is right. "pushed prices to the lowest levl" "due to Wal-Mart pioneering" "developing complex algorithms" You do sound like a shill.
I have witnessed Wal-Mart's unethical business practices. They've pioneered little if anything. Wal-Mart uses the ages old tactics of underselling the competition in a local area, driving those competitors out of business, then jacking prices up enough to support another locale underselling the competitors. Wal-Mart also uses the ages old tactic of exploiting prison labor, sweat shop labor, child labor, and slave labor in underdeveloped countries. "Complex algorithms" in the supply chain, you say? That means buying the very cheapest shit they can find, and worrying about publicity and damage control AFTER a garment factory fire kills dozens or hundreds of young women who were locked into the plant.
Old man Walton seemed to have some ethics. It's pretty damned obvious that his ethics ran down his leg when he impregnated his wife. There is no evidence of ethics at Wal-Mart today.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 01 2015, @03:50AM
The old man did have some ethics. The only thing keeping his heirs alive is the fact that it would be illegal to kill them. I'm not sure how long they can rely on that.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 01 2015, @05:00AM
> "Complex algorithms" in the supply chain, you say?
Regardless of walmart's societal failings, the OP is right about the algos - before the dotcom era walmart was the pinnacle of operations research through IT. Legendary, if you were in the right circles to hear about it. Amazon and others have taken the wind of walmart's sails, but they are still no slouch. Coincidentally Amazon's been accruing a reputation for being just as shitty as walmart, especially when it comes to the peons in the warehouses.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday December 01 2015, @12:31PM
Come back and say that with a real username and we *might* think you're not just another sock puppet following the COINTELpro playbook of having another AC account come to the defense of the first.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 01 2015, @05:35PM
Oh please. Recognizing that they put a lot of engineering into their IT systems is not "defending" anyone. You can acknowledge that the nazis were really effective at some engineering without actually defending the nazis. Especially on a site with a focus on those particular fields. Don't be a conspiracy nut.
(Score: 2) by arulatas on Tuesday December 01 2015, @02:55PM
So have most organizations decided that workers are a resource to be used and tossed away. It is the workers who need the job not the company who needs the workers. The balance has shifted from the workers to the corporations. Which is why they do not under any circumstances want a union in place to shift the balance of power back to a more even setting. I had a manager at a store I worked at when I was younger actually say to his employees "I could get any monkey off the street to come in and do your job". I think today's prevailing work environments are worse than that and much more blatant.
----- 10 turns around
(Score: 3, Informative) by VanessaE on Tuesday December 01 2015, @07:42AM
My mother claimed* to know Sam Walton to some degree, and used to say that in fact the man DID have integrity. According to her, Sam would be incredibly upset if he were alive and aware of what Walmart had become.
I worked at a Walmart once, about 20 years ago. It wasn't so bad then, but they were not at all happy if you moved a bit too slowly (regardless of how hard you worked). On the other hand, they didn't have that "how to get public assistance" training video that others here have mentioned, or at least the store I worked at didn't. Guess a lot has changed since then.
* Yeah I know, [citation needed], but good luck finding anything, as she's long since passed on.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 01 2015, @02:18AM
Where is the obligatory link to Manna. Where are the idiots jizzing themselves over the privacy-violating spinal implant. Come on, you dickweeds. Post the fucking meme.
(Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Tuesday December 01 2015, @10:19AM
Tell you what Anonymous Coward, let's save everybody some time and effort shall we?
Every time anybody talks about, posts or even thinks about the Manna story, you just assume that they think that the first part of the story (the bit where human beings are gradually transformed into unthinking and disposable cogs in an inhuman system) is the bit worth reading, and the weird Australian "utopia" bit at the end needs some work. OK? That way we don't have to keep explaining it to you, and you don't have to keep posting your objections.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by edIII on Tuesday December 01 2015, @02:20AM
Walmart doesn't exist. Simple.
Now, I know there are big huge buildings with "Walmart" on *them*, but they're owned by fucking sociopaths who have billions and can't part with pennies for their employees. Truly rotten to the core pieces of shit, that family that owns Walmart.
Walmart:
- Fucks the environment. EPA violation, after violation, after violation. They're simply one of the worst polluting corporations in America, leaving crap out in the parking lots to be rained on without a care in the world where the runoff is going. Watch the documentary about how Wallmart has treated America the last 30 years.
- Fucks local economies and towns. Walmart will whore itself for the "sweet, sweet, tax payer dollars", and when their obligations to the community come due... abandon Walmart properties and just move to avoid obligations. I forget how many schools can be housed in empty Walmart buildings. They DO NOT participate in good faith with their local communities.
- Fucks the consumer. Sorry, but shitty consumerist crap from China isn't exactly great quality product. Whether the consumer understands it or not, Walmart pushes down quality across the board by gutting the local economies and leaving you with *only* the choice of cheap, consumerist crap from China. One of the reasons you cannot find any good tools anymore, and just the cheap Chinese shit, is the devastation Walmart has caused across the smaller local businesses. I know I'm not better off with Walmart in the local market, but worse. Local businesses in order to survive, are also resorting to inventories of cheap Chinese shit. The days of the local hardware store with high quality parts and tools are over. Thanks, Douchenozzles.
- Fucks their employees. Granted, not much more than other corporations like Staples, but they're damned notorious about it, shameless, and extremely anti-union. They are *the* poster boy for the slave wage corporation trying to compensate their employees to the *least* possible amounts.
I could go on, but there is only one truly sane solution to dealing with corporations like Walmart: don't. Walmart simply cannot exist with your wallet. Stop shopping at Walmart period, and give your patronage to other local businesses if possible, and vetted online providers where it isn't. Or keep opening up your wallet to Walmart, and then paying extra in taxes we need to for regulators to attempt to stop their anti-consumer, anti-employee behaviors.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday December 01 2015, @02:37AM
I agree 1000%, Ed. You might want to scroll up to my post.
(Score: 4, Informative) by digitalaudiorock on Tuesday December 01 2015, @03:16AM
Just to add to the list:
- Fucks good companies that actually make good stuff: At best Walmart forces companies that have made good products (maybe even for centuries) to make crap or go out of business because they must have Walmart's business to stay alive. At worst Walmart can single-handedly puts them under outright. Read up some time about how they killed Rubbermaid in spite of the fact that, at about the same time, Fortune 500 considered them one of the best companies in the country. Walmart refused to budge on prices (while Rubbermaid's other customers did) when the price of Vinyl was through the roof.
Pure evil just doesn't cover it. You can't be the world's largest company, in spite of producing nothing at all, without doing something purely evil. I just don't believe it's possible. And never mind the Walton family controlling more wealth than the bottom 40% of the rest of the country [politifact.com]. How can that possibly be justified.
And yea, vote with your wallet and never even walk through the fucking doors.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Fnord666 on Tuesday December 01 2015, @05:23AM
Read up some time about how they killed Rubbermaid in spite of the fact that, at about the same time, Fortune 500 considered them one of the best companies in the country. Walmart refused to budge on prices (while Rubbermaid's other customers did) when the price of Vinyl was through the roof.
Consider the opposite case though of Snapper mowers [fastcompany.com]. When Simplicity bought the company, the CEO, Jim Weir, decided that Walmart was incompatible with their desire to build a quality mower with performance and longevity. So he pulled the Snapper line from the stores. Weir did have one big advantage. He had a large distribution chain of independent lawn equipment sales locations that carried the Snapper line. Walmart was only 20% of Snapper's sales at the time. That was in the early 2000s and Snapper is still around today, so it is possible.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by terryk30 on Tuesday December 01 2015, @10:47AM
Read up some time about how they killed Rubbermaid in spite of the fact that, at about the same time, Fortune 500 considered them one of the best companies in the country. Walmart refused to budge on prices (while Rubbermaid's other customers did)...
What? They can kill a company genuinely interested in quality?! OTOH, maybe the truth here's somewhere in the middle. From the Wikipedia page on the current Newell Rubbermaid [wikipedia.org]:
The original Rubbermaid had risen to enormous market share and profits by making Wal-Mart the near-sole distributor of its products...
...FWIW.
Anyway, I don't shop there if I can help it, even if it means paying more. The whole place is just... ugly, ugly in the experience, ugly in the sense of not even having a pretense about caring or being knowledgeable about any class of goods. (Like I'm going to buy my food there.) Sure, one could say the more specialized stores and chains I get my crap from are also ultimately only interested in getting my money, but at least they're trying to do so with some knowledge and service.
Footnote: can't help but also mentioning a bumper sticker I saw: "Mall-wart: Your Source for cheap plastic crap"
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday December 01 2015, @12:34PM
Well if it makes you guys feel better I saw an article recently about how Walmart is scrambling to counter the inroads Amazon has made against them. So there you go, one evil crappy company taking down another.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 01 2015, @03:43AM
I'm not a Wal-Mart hater. Sure, they busted up a lot of town centers, but now Amazon is doing the same to them AND what was left of the town centers.
It's capitalism - it destroys the old wave as collateral damage of creating the new wave.
What happened to Wal-Mart was that the old man died, and nobody could take his place. That, and Jeff Bezos came along. It's comforting to think that the same will happen to Amazon after Bezos moves on after a serious illness or whatever. It's not that Sam W. or Bezos was such a genius, but they were ruthless and relentless *and* had economics on their side (at least during their primes).
Besides, whenever I'm in Wal-Mart I pick up a pack of Bic Atlantis pens for much less than CVS sells it for. And a six-pack of legal pads, which I use to to take notes with.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 01 2015, @04:35AM
Jeff Bezos came along
You overlooked a few decades of Reaganomics.
whenever I'm in Wal-Mart I pick up a pack of Bic Atlantis pens for much less than CVS sells it for
Ah, the race to the bottom.
I take it that that hasn't yet caught up with you at your job.
I assure you that it will.
They pick off their targets one at a time. [wikipedia.org]
The antidote is SOLIDARITY.
...and an alternative to the race to the bottom is to patronize worker-owned businesses. [google.com]
-- gewg_
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 01 2015, @03:53AM
> ... One of the reasons you cannot find any good tools anymore, and just the cheap Chinese shit, is the devastation Walmart has caused across the smaller local businesses.
While it's not top quality like Snap-On, I've been quite impressed recently with the Chinese tools brought in by Harbor Freight at very low prices.
Back when China was starting to open up (20 years ago??) it was common to say something like, "In 20 years they might get it together to do a decent job". For some products, that day is here now.
(Score: 2) by dyingtolive on Tuesday December 01 2015, @09:28AM
A lot of my tools are harbor freight too. Won't last your lifetime, but it's enough to get you through the job you're doing now.
Don't blame me, I voted for moose wang!
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Friday December 04 2015, @02:53PM
So I recently moved to an area where Harbor Freight exists...figured I'd give them a try when I needed some security bits I couldn't find elsewhere, so I bought a big set of bits there. Broke three of 'em, with a hand screwdriver, within about a week of buying the things. Two of them were plain Phillips! Not even small ones! How the hell do you screw that up?? First and last time I ever shopped there. I don't even want to *think* about the likely quality of the power tools or welding equipment I saw in there...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 01 2015, @03:59AM
Walmart simply cannot exist [without] your wallet
In case anyone mistook the direction of your soliloquy.
extremely anti-union
It's worse than that. They are anti-worker.
The model for the Walton heirs is Simon Legree (Uncle Tom's Cabin).
Walmart's Pico Rivera[1] "Plumbing Problem" [citywatchla.com]
[1] South of East L.A. [metrolyrics.com]
-- gewg_
(Score: 5, Informative) by http on Tuesday December 01 2015, @07:09AM
They'd rather close a store than let unions exist at all. http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/quebec-unionized-wal-mart-workers-win-supreme-court-victory-1.2689646 [www.cbc.ca] It was totally illegal and nobody buys the fairy tale that the store was unprofitable to begin with, but so what? That union local is broken, and a solid message was sent to the following waves of associates hired in the Saguenay area: talk union and you will have no job.
I browse at -1 when I have mod points. It's unsettling.
(Score: 2) by quacking duck on Tuesday December 01 2015, @05:25PM
Sounds like there's a halfway decent strategy for driving a Walmart out of your community, assuming it's small enough that they won't just open a new one across town. The trick is to do it before too many local shops or smaller franchises in your community are forced to close.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 01 2015, @08:39PM
driving a Walmart out of your community
The citizens and city fathers of some places have figured out that not ever allowing them into their town in the first place is the best strategy.
The municipality makes it clear that they simply won't ever grant a business license to that entity.
-- gewg_
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Hairyfeet on Tuesday December 01 2015, @07:01AM
You forgot bleeds the taxpayers by making them pay for their employees through welfare and food stamps. Look it up, one of the first "training vids" that a Walmart employees sees is how to file for benefits so that Walmart doesn't have to pay them shit. I actually had met and talked to Sam Walton on several occasions and I can promise you that you could power the south with the amount of revolutions that man is turning in his grave right now, he was a VERY big America First guy that treated his employees well, its his spoiled as fuck kids that are ruining his legacy.
That said you can't really bitch when folks end up shopping Walmart because in the small towns they move into? They quickly wipe out the competition. They are also pretty ruthless when it comes to pricing and with so many in this nation now at the poverty line or damned close to it? Well its easy to have principles when you have the money, when you are literally counting pennies (which Walmart now has change counters that spit out Walmart gift cards, at least in the poorer towns around here) to make it to your next check? Yeah not so much.
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday December 01 2015, @12:51PM
It astonishes me that it's no longer reflexive in this country for poor people to attempt to grow their own food or do for themselves. My grandparents grew all their own veg on their land, and it wasn't even that large a parcel. They canned whatever they couldn't eat fresh in season. When I was a kid in the 70's we did the same.
My grandparents also passed along many other lessons in thrift that they learned during the Great Depression. For example they sent away for catalogues from Sears and what-have-you and used them as bricks to burn in their fireplace. When I was 5 my job was to straighten bent nails so they wouldn't have to buy more.
The disposable culture the poor practice now was incomprehensible to them.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by Daiv on Tuesday December 01 2015, @04:24PM
I hate to say it, but even the poorest people I know (aside from a couple homeless cronies, but they've got other circumstances) carry a $100+/mo cable tv bill as well as a ~$80/mo cell phone bill. Growing their own food? These are also people who rent so they have no land to grow anything on.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 01 2015, @06:56PM
If you have arable land, then you probably aren't all that poor. If you're in an apartment in a city, where are you going to grow food?
(Score: 2) by edIII on Tuesday December 01 2015, @08:03PM
Right there with you. All of my family have veggie gardens, and I'm also raising chickens and rabbits. When you look at the price of fresh organic (read no chemical fertilizers) non-gmo produce, I'm apparently working with a couple grand worth of squash. We've replaced two days a week with rabbit, two days with veggie only meals, and one fish. Our bill for meat at the grocery store plummeted. I know some places have ordnance against it, but chickens and rabbits are easy animals to raise for slaughter. For places that are cold, you can actually make rabbit fur blankets for the winter. We're now trying to do that.
Almost everybody right now could be growing at least a 1/5th of their own veggies. My grandmother is German and grew up in World War II. I bet you can guess what her opinion of young people today is? :) She's says we're weak and soft, and have no idea how to survive without a grocery store. The disposable consumerist culture is anathema to her.
I guess a good deal of the poor are so because they're truly stupid and/or undisciplined. It's not hard to throw a bunch of veggies in a basket in one hand, a $100 bill in the other, and figure out that you can be saving hundreds a month. Where I'm at the prices are so sky rocket insane, I'm honestly wondering if I should still be programming and not farming :)
Yeah, it blows my mind too, but also remember that many poor people have atrocious diets because the cheap food available to them is all processed crap with fillers. If we could make a Ho-Ho/Twinkie plant, or MountainDew Bush there might be progress.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday December 01 2015, @08:23PM
I must say I'm torn. Should I/We try to teach them about self-reliance, or not bother? People who have learned dependence generally cannot stand on their own. They will always rather die waiting for others to take care of them, than to stand up and do for themselves.
What you do now, many, many people could also do. But they don't, because unless it passes through the magic portal of the supermarket doors, it is inedible. It seems crazy to me, whose grandparents would regularly pick wild edibles and feed them to me while we were walking through the woods.
I know that if catastrophe ensues I will have at least a couple weeks' lead time foraging in Prospect Park, simply because 90% of Brooklyn's residents will sit in their apartments wondering why nobody comes to deliver their take-out.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by edIII on Tuesday December 01 2015, @08:06PM
You're correct, and thank you for pointing that out. I've been to some places in the south where you're 90 minutes away from the nearest Walmart, and the only things in between we're really small convenience type stores along the highway. For those people choosing something other than Walmart is too expensive.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 3, Touché) by PizzaRollPlinkett on Tuesday December 01 2015, @12:44PM
"Wal-Mart" does exist. It's a Platonic ideal. Every company would be "Wal-Mart" if it could be. The problem is that other companies can't be because they can't get out of their own way. K-Mart is going out of business and is only around because it's a real estate trust. Target is essentially "Wal-Mart," doing everything that Wal-Mart does with a different color scheme. Amazon and Wal-Mart are the same company, only one started online and is expanding to regional and local distribution, while the other one is doing it in reverse. The Platonic "Wal-Mart" is a retailer who has squeezed all inefficiency and margin out of its supply chain. It puts other retailers out of business, and operates in the vacuum by doing a high volume of sales. All retailers want to be this "Wal-Mart" if they could. Only Target has seemed to become "Wal-Mart". Everyone else is either gone kaput or in the process of going kaput. Because "Wal-Mart" is inevitable as long as people make logistics more efficient. Some company would be "Wal-Mart" sooner or later. It's impossible to have computers, algorithms, and so on and not have a "Wal-Mart" emerge. This fuck-filled diatribe (hi, Negan!) is ignoring the inevitability of "Wal-Mart". The smiley-faced Wally World we know and love just did it first and better than anyone else. We could be seeing these fuck-filled diatribes about "Sky City" or "K-Mart" if another retailer had been able to pull it off.
You don't have Wal-Mart, the sprawling store with one checkout open out of 30 with a line that goes back to the frozen food section, you hate "Wal-Mart" the squeezed-efficient logistics chain that is basically impossible to stop without stopping progress itself.
(E-mail me if you want a pizza roll!)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 01 2015, @05:28PM
You're right. And the solution to this, to the extent that either the current Wal-Mart or the next Wal-Mart is "bad," is to support the non-Wal-Marts until they become the new Wal-Marts, and then cut off support. There will always be other companies trying to ascend to that position, but they have to conduct themselves slightly better as they do.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Tuesday December 01 2015, @08:18AM
Forget the FBI, goverment agency and so not under the full range of options. The Pinkerton Detective Agency used to handle this sort of thing with great aplomb. The ran intel for the Union during the Civil War, and kept track of all the dirty migrants, like Italians, Serbs, Irish, Swedes, especially catholics, looking for both Anarchists (found a couple, or at least framed them as such, Sacco and Franzetti? Ring a bell?) and Union organizers (or Communists, same thing). Great work while they could get it. But things went sour at the Homestead Strike, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homestead_Strike [wikipedia.org] where Andrew Carnegie called in the Pinkerton dogs, and they did their anti-union best at the behest of Henry Clay Frick. Do you know where the term "fricking" comes from? Did you think it was a substitution for some other f*** word? Not.
After the disaster at Homestead, Carnegie turned his attention and wealth to charities. Not easy for a Scot. Even harder for a Micro$oftie! I imagine there is a reason it is the "Bill _and_ Melinda Gates Foundation". See Spike Lee's new movie! So will the Walton heirs be able to make the same transition? The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace has done great things. I know many young people in small towns who benefited from a Carnegie library. So at some point, all the evil and destruction of America that the Waltons have wrought will be repaid in charity. Or we could hang them all.
(Score: 2, Disagree) by khallow on Tuesday December 01 2015, @12:45PM
Fucks the environment. EPA violation, after violation, after violation. They're simply one of the worst polluting corporations in America, leaving crap out in the parking lots to be rained on without a care in the world where the runoff is going. Watch the documentary about how Wallmart has treated America the last 30 years.
That's not a very serious reason to believe that Walmart is "one of the worst". Litter happens to be a very easy pollutant to fix, should a local government decide to enforce laws on littering.
Fucks local economies and towns. Walmart will whore itself for the "sweet, sweet, tax payer dollars", and when their obligations to the community come due... abandon Walmart properties and just move to avoid obligations. I forget how many schools can be housed in empty Walmart buildings. They DO NOT participate in good faith with their local communities.
This is a town problem. Either there's corruption going on (which is illegal and something you can punish Walmart for when it happens, right?) or the town is a terrible negotiator. Either way it's a serious town problem. It doesn't become a Walmart problem until there is actual evidence of crime. Merely complaining that Walmart is a bad actor ignores that being in good faith with local communities is not Walmart's job. Further, there's been many years of this behavior going on. Why are these towns supposedly still falling for it?
Fucks their employees. Granted, not much more than other corporations like Staples, but they're damned notorious about it, shameless, and extremely anti-union. They are *the* poster boy for the slave wage corporation trying to compensate their employees to the *least* possible amounts.
What were these employees doing before that they decided working for Walmart was a better deal?
Fucks the consumer. Sorry, but shitty consumerist crap from China isn't exactly great quality product. Whether the consumer understands it or not, Walmart pushes down quality across the board by gutting the local economies and leaving you with *only* the choice of cheap, consumerist crap from China. One of the reasons you cannot find any good tools anymore, and just the cheap Chinese shit, is the devastation Walmart has caused across the smaller local businesses. I know I'm not better off with Walmart in the local market, but worse. Local businesses in order to survive, are also resorting to inventories of cheap Chinese shit. The days of the local hardware store with high quality parts and tools are over. Thanks, Douchenozzles.
The "consumer" disagrees. And I would take their understanding of the problem over the poster's understanding of the problem any day.
Fucks good companies that actually make good stuff: At best Walmart forces companies that have made good products (maybe even for centuries) to make crap or go out of business because they must have Walmart's business to stay alive. At worst Walmart can single-handedly puts them under outright. Read up some time about how they killed Rubbermaid in spite of the fact that, at about the same time, Fortune 500 considered them one of the best companies in the country. Walmart refused to budge on prices (while Rubbermaid's other customers did) when the price of Vinyl was through the roof.
Then Rubbermaid made bad choices. It's not Walmart's responsibility to coddle weak manufacturers any more than it is my responsibility. This is a common theme. There are these ridiculous expectations about what Walmart should do.
You overlooked a few decades of Reaganomics.
[...]
Ah, the race to the bottom.
In other words, there are superior economic competitors eating our lunch, but we'll continue to blame long dead economic policies for our failure to compete. The story is about Walmart's anti-union stance which people think is a bad thing. But there's this from the story:
For Walmart, the stakes were enormous. The billions in sales typical of a Walmart Black Friday were threatened. The company's public image, especially in big cities where its power and size were controversial, could be harmed. But more than all that: Any attempt to organize its 1 million hourly workers at its more than 4,000 stores in the U.S. was an existential danger. Operating free of unions was as essential to Walmart's business as its rock-bottom prices.
So it's a matter of survival for Walmart to not have these unions or so it is claimed. That seems to justify a lot of the Walmart anti-labor tactics right there. I don't see a single person in comments acknowledging this really important assertion, even if just to dismiss it as fantasy. Since when has motivation and consequence become irrelevant?
I have witnessed Wal-Mart's unethical business practices. They've pioneered little if anything. Wal-Mart uses the ages old tactics of underselling the competition in a local area, driving those competitors out of business, then jacking prices up enough to support another locale underselling the competitors. Wal-Mart also uses the ages old tactic of exploiting prison labor, sweat shop labor, child labor, and slave labor in underdeveloped countries. "Complex algorithms" in the supply chain, you say? That means buying the very cheapest shit they can find, and worrying about publicity and damage control AFTER a garment factory fire kills dozens or hundreds of young women who were locked into the plant.
Walmart is not the only retailer out there. You have other retail chains who can compete head on with Walmart even when they play games like this. Second, we have a typical downplaying of Walmart's remarkably supply chain management. That's the primary innovation of Walmart right there.
You forgot bleeds the taxpayers by making them pay for their employees through welfare and food stamps. Look it up, one of the first "training vids" that a Walmart employees sees is how to file for benefits so that Walmart doesn't have to pay them shit. I actually had met and talked to Sam Walton on several occasions and I can promise you that you could power the south with the amount of revolutions that man is turning in his grave right now, he was a VERY big America First guy that treated his employees well, its his spoiled as fuck kids that are ruining his legacy.
Then we have the calumny that Walmart is "subsidized" by welfare without the corresponding awareness that in a slightly different ideological context (without the black hat, Walmart to confuse the narrative) creating subsidies to employ poor people would be applauded.
In all, I see several frequent delusions here. First, the knee jerk reaction to Walmart and ridiculous expectations for what Walmart should be doing. Second, a huge gap in understanding motivations (here, Walmart and "consumers" with a heavy preference for lower prices). Third, ignorance of economics (the assertion of a few decades of "reagonomics" and "race to the bottom" which has worked out amazingly well for those on the "bottom"). Finally, there is a complete ignorance of consequence, particularly of the unintended sort (complaining that Walmart enjoys "subsidies" without any inkling that the welfare and labor regulatory environment creates giant businesses like Walmart rather than many small, efficient businesses). Finally, there is the regrettable futility of this entire discussion. What is the point of complaining about Walmart when the real problem is the society which has created Walmart and which will create a new Walmart should the old one fall? Until something positive is done about the dynamics which creates Walmarts, we'll still have them no matter how much they misbehave.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 01 2015, @03:04PM
Then Rubbermaid made bad choices. It's not Walmart's responsibility to coddle weak manufacturers any more than it is my responsibility. This is a common theme. There are these ridiculous expectations about what Walmart should do.
Ah I see you have never had the privilege to be a 'vendor'. Their term for any external entity they work with.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1560358/posts?page=56 [freerepublic.com]
This is NOT an atypical story. I have heard it from dozens of other people who have the privilege to work with them.
They have greeters at their local airport. Wearing Walmart blue vests. Which is just surreal.
They have run company after company out of business over 2-3 cents per item. If you see your favorite brand show up in a walmart start shopping for a new brand. The quality will go to crap in a few years or will be totally gone.
The stores I go into (when I do) are chronically understaffed (3 of the 40 checkout lines open). Items on the shelves are chronically poor quality. That is if you can find the item. Many times the shelf is just empty but the other junk is WELL stocked.
I step foot in them *only* if I have to. My wife is not as picky. However her last purchase there was a tank top. It was the first and the last bit of clothing she buys there. It lasted 2 days before it came apart. That is typical of most of the quality in that store. I tell her 'if it is not name brand AND you can buy it everywhere else it might be safe'. Even then it can be ify. Most 'vendors' make special 'walmart versions' and then the version they sell everywhere else.
I had the 'privilege' to work with them. Most of my customers were rather relaxed and easy going. But walmart? We spent more time with that one account than all of the others combined it was an easy decision to let them go. They constantly used threats of money to bully us. Were other retailers a pain? Sure. But not like them.
They sell cheap lowest bidder Chinese junk. I can get that by the metric ton from Alibaba and probably cheaper with a custom logo on it if I want. There is a reason they only have cheap junk. Most of the big names have stopped dealing with them and then it is because they are basically bigger than walmart and walmart can not bully them and have consumable items. The few who dared to deal with them usually end up burned with months of inventory they cant move. You see walmart does not own most of the junk on the shelves. The other companies do. It is the IGA model taken to an extreme.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday December 01 2015, @11:03PM
Ah I see you have never had the privilege to be a 'vendor'. Their term for any external entity they work with.
[...]
I step foot in them *only* if I have to.
[...]
it was an easy decision to let them go.
Sounds like there is a solution to the problem of Walmart being jerks to their vendors and customers, and it is easy.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday December 01 2015, @07:30PM
Fucks the environment. EPA violation, after violation, after violation. They're simply one of the worst polluting corporations in America, leaving crap out in the parking lots to be rained on without a care in the world where the runoff is going. Watch the documentary about how Wallmart has treated America the last 30 years.
That's not a very serious reason to believe that Walmart is "one of the worst". Litter happens to be a very easy pollutant to fix, should a local government decide to enforce laws on littering.
You don't pay fines of $81 million, $110 million and $27.6 million for litter. These weren't settlements, either, they plead guilty.
2 seconds of google shows what they were actually fined for: Improper disposal of Insecticides, Rodenticides, Hazardous Wastes. You know, actual poison!
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday December 01 2015, @11:53PM
2 seconds of google
And a few seconds of copy/paste means I wouldn't even have to do that. When I did do it [colorlines.com], I found there was only one such fine, not three. The $81 million plus the $27.6 million is the $110 million fine broken down as federal and state levels (since the dumping violated both federal and state laws, they ended up with both federal and state fines). I also found that they put corrective measures in place (training, procedures, etc). So are they still one of the worst polluting corporations? I don't see it, unless Walmart reneges.