Wal-Mart

[Conspire]

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My dues are 0.45% of my gross earnings. Those funds are used to develop new apprentices, create training centers for members to hone their skills, etc. I honestly laugh out loud when I hear people talk about how evil labor unions are stealing from their workers. Those people have no idea, or choose not to recognize, how much American workers (union or non-union) have benefitted from the labor movement.

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.45 is extremely low on a nationwide scale. As for where the money goes, you seem to be purposefully ignoring the places that a large portion of dues end up.

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Could u elaborate more on where that money goes and to who?

[daveT]

Conspire, your brain is wired properly to answer your own question:

The Mafia.

[mattsey9]

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My dues are 0.45% of my gross earnings. Those funds are used to develop new apprentices, create training centers for members to hone their skills, etc. I honestly laugh out loud when I hear people talk about how evil labor unions are stealing from their workers. Those people have no idea, or choose not to recognize, how much American workers (union or non-union) have benefitted from the labor movement.

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.45 is extremely low on a nationwide scale. As for where the money goes, you seem to be purposefully ignoring the places that a large portion of dues end up.

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Enlighten me. I receive financial statements from my local and national offices. I am aware that money is spent on officers salaries, PACs and the like, but you seem to be implying something much more sinister.

[Myrtle]

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If you think they put small stores out of business, you're right! That's what COMPETITION is!

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If that's all competition is then I wouldn't piss on it to put out the flames if it was on fire.

This is not competition - this is removal of competition in order to create a monopoly. This is reducing everything to the lowest common denominator. Exactly the same result as communism.

Competition is very important and it should not be removed either through banning it or via monopolistic practices.

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How is Wal Mart removing competition? Getting rid of mom and pop stores doesn't get rid of Target, Office Depot, Best Buy, etc. (IOW, there is no actual "monopoly" because there are plenty of places where one can buy a competing product.)

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There is a lot more to it than meets the eye.

The monopolistic practices are often used to squeeze suppliers more than opposition. The knock on effect hits the opposition of course, and ultimately the consumer. Choice is removed.

Practices like hitting suppliers for goods on consignment +10% cash up front. Like making suppliers either in or out. You want to supply someone else - goodbye. You want to let a free market operate - goodbye. It gets even more insidious when a large retailer uses it's dominance in one market to cross subsidise and screw over another market. Using say, grocery dominance to subsidise entry to alcohol and fuel retailing. Get it under one banner, reduce the services (and any choice) to the lowest common denominator and cash in.

Monopolistic practices like creating false barriers to entry through manipulating suppliers or cross subsidisation are anti-capitalist and anti-competitive. But as long as people look at the short term (my next shopping bill) and not the long term (what will this all be like for my kids) then we probably deserve the screwing we are receiving.

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....Very well written, and accurate IMHO.

It's the yin/yang of low price/short term gain vs. lower quality/long term harm.

[trevorwc]

Have you noticed that much of Wal-Mart's advertising is shifting away from the bouncy smiley yellow guy and low prices, to promoting their more "upscale" brands? Even Wal-Mart is struggling to compete on price alone, and they're smart enough business people to realize it. Problem is - it's going to take a LONG LONG LONG time to get the fact that Wal-Mart is the "cheap" place out of people's minds. We just don't think of Wal-Mart as having high end stuff.

Also, I cringe when people talk about the awesome new HDTV that they bought at Wal-Mart for so cheap. Those manufacturers definitely make two different models, the "real" one and the cheap one that they sell at Wal-Mart. And there IS a difference, but the people who buy thing there don't know it until it's too late.

[mattsey9]

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I am just going by what he told me, and my less than perfect memory.

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No problem. $2400/year is insanely high, though.

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I bashed very specifically into the UFCW and AFI. I did say that unions are obsolete for the fact that the country has caught up, and surpassed, the thinking that created them in the first place.

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I'm not intimately familiar with the two unions you mentioned, so I can't comment on their policies. If you've got examples of how they're harming their workers, I'd be glad to hear them. I'm not saying that the history of organized labor is lily-white, but I can't imagine where this country would be had it not been for the original men and women who fought and sometimes died for their rights.

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I think that both sides of the argument have their good point. Take, for example, the Dockworker's strike. It is no doubt that these people are very powerful. That this entity can sever all imports has allowed the employees to make more than six-figures. But there is no denying that the port companies are willing to cut workers pay. Look at the truck driver's, classified as owner operators, that earn 12 per hour.

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Exactly. The workers possessed a skill that was desirable. They held out for what they thought was right, and settled somewhere in the middle. Nobody WANTS to strike. They sustained short-term losses for what they felt were long-term gains.

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I once worked in the construction trade.

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You should go back. It's booming!! [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

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I have seen that the construction union has managed to suficate itself. That they are requiring people to earn over 30, while there is a push to have employees work for less than minimum wage, is creating a bad work environment. The union workers are losing jobs left and right.

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I'm not sure where you live, but for the great majority of the U.S. and Canada this simply isn't true. Take for example the pipefitters & welders. There is such a scarcity of qualified welders right now that demand for their services is through the roof. Can't weld? Go swing a hammer for FEMA down south. Carpenters are making tons of money down there.

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There is no reason why an uneducated dingo pushing a broom should start at 20 and hour.

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If the dingo in question finds someone willing to pay him that, why shouldn't he take it? Should he volunteer to return some of the money?

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I don't believe in the extremes of one opinion or the other for the unions. There needs to be a balance.

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Agreed. Unlike many, I tend to tip the scales towards the labor side of the equation. To each their own, though.

[Myrtle]

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Also, I cringe when people talk about the awesome new HDTV that they bought at Wal-Mart for so cheap. Those manufacturers definitely make two different models, the "real" one and the cheap one that they sell at Wal-Mart. And there IS a difference, but the people who buy thing there don't know it until it's too late.

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....correct, and that's just the tip of the iceberg.

Have you ever heard of the term "Captive Vendor"?

For most vendors, selling a product or two to Wal-Mart is the ultimate wet dream. Most vendors will do virtually anything to crack the line up and get in the game.

Once there, they enjoy the fruits of huge sales increases.....life is very good.....for a while.

They ratchet up production, increase staff & overhead and the future looks great......until the phone call comes.

"We can buy a product like yours of equal quality for $X.00 less" says the buyer. "Either lower your price to us, or we'll switch".

....and it starts.

Where does it end? In most cases the vendor/supplier will end up taking the quality out of the product in order to maintain their sales numbers with Wal-Mart, since Wal-Mart biz now represents a disproportionately large percentage of their overall business, they have realized that they will go out of biz without Wal-Mart.

In other cases, a vendor finds out too late that they've locked themselves into a box canyon, and they end up out of business.

So.......Who ultimately ends up taking it in the shorts?

Not Wal-Mart, because they know that there are vendors standing in line to do biz with them.

The consumer ultimately takes it in the shorts. The quality that they were once able to get in a certain product has now eroded.

This is particularly evident in consumer electronics, where consumers generally do not have enough information to make an informed decision. (See the other string here in the Lounge titled "Help me buy an LCD TV")

Please be aware that all of this does not happen in a vacuum.

Other vendors are forced to do the same thing as the marketplace is a dynamic organism, where selling price is most often the most important equalizer.

Gordon Gekko's famous quote from the movie Wall Street was.......

... "Greed is Good".

He was wrong.

The type of unchecked greed practiced by those in a position to exert that kind of leverage causes harm to many and results in rewards to few.

This fact is evident to anyone who has real-world experience in the field surrounding the dynamics of how things actually work in the real world.

Here's the brutal truth.........

As consumers, most of us in the good ole US of A are absolute morons.

We have been trained to let price be the most important determinant factor affecting our purchasing decisions.

We are both greedy AND intellectually lazy.

We have the attention spans of 5 year olds, and are not willing to invest even a minimum of time educating ourselves before we purchase most products.

We'd rather let the advertising agencies do it for us.

Pretty hilarious if it didn't have so many negative consequences for all of us.

[Conspire]

Myrtle u have just proved why I do not like wal-mart. Very well written.

[punkass]

I saw the documentary on cable.

I don't have a problem with a well run company expanding huge in the name of profits. I don't necessarily have a big problem with them using economic strategy regarding small towns and small businesses. Them getting government subsidies to build new stores? Very unfair, but that's business I guess. All the pollution penalties they were levied? Obviously the penalties aren't high enough to deter Walmart, since they make so much.

The major thing I saw wrong, if true, is their manipulation of their current workers, and sexist policies.

From the documentary, a worker is told that she has 5 baskets of clothes or whatever that need to be put back. She is 30 minutes or so until the end of her shift. WalMart tells her there is absolutely no overtime, but the clothes need to go back. So she basically works "for free" for fear of losing her job. Yes, if she hates her job and is treated like crap, she should quit. But the corporation is at fault here. And as said before, if WalMart is in your small town, there might not be many other jobs available.

The part about the sexism with regards to promotions and treatment could be from how the documentary portrayed it. Obviously it's hard to prove in the movie, as lots of factors weigh in for promotions and the like. So I'm not too moved by this part, but I am skeptical.

I think the documentary was well made, but it obviously had an agenda, so I had to take it with a grain of salt. The part about the crime in their parking lots didn't faze me (except if they had all these cameras going to a room with tvs but no one recording or watching them). The uber-anti union responses by Walmart seems overkill and predatory (and funny with their anti-union videos).

I choose not to shop at Walmart, really for none of these reasons though. As others have mentioned, I just don't like it there. I have seen the unhappiness in most of their employees, so interactions with a Walmart employee is rarely helpful or cheerful. I rarely ever need to buy so much stuff to fully utilize the convenience of their selection and availability. I find their places dirty and super crowded. And their products for the most part, are of low quality.

They obviously cater to the low income shoppers. And they sometimes don't have a choice in shopping; lowest price wins. And as such, Walmart wins.

[John Cole]

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To make more money, the capitalist must make his labor more productive. He does this either by investing in training or investing in capital equipment, tools and machinery.

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C'mon, Borodog, is this the only way that capitalists make more profits? Can't they still make substantial profits doing neither?