Anti-WalMart Campaign?

[hmkpoker]

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But the harms are concentrated, while the benefits are dispersed.

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Well said. It is very easy to notice the effect of a business falling because it can't compete with Wal-Mart, but it is not so easy to notice the peripheral effect of all the other businesses prospering slightly as a result. The money consumers save by shopping at WalMart doesn't stay in their pockets forever.

[ShakeZula06]

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-Walmart really does drive a lot of uncompetitive businesses to extinction.

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Is this a bad thing?

[Overdrive]

The way walmart abuses their employees is one of the main reasons people are against them. Walmart pays slave wages and makes their workers work off the clock, and is very well known to constantly threaten and abuse their workers. Compare this to Costco where an ordinary cashier or stocker makes $40,000 after just a few years.

Also just last month Walmart announced that they are freezing the wages of their long term employees. The workers who have been there 10 or 15 years and worked themselves up to a measley $12 an hour or so were told they would no longer get any raises, not even a measley cost of living raise. So they will be making the same wage 10 years from now!! So with inflation they are losing money every year.

I don't see how anyone with a conscience can support such an evil company. And besides that the stuff they sell is crap, the customer service is non existant and laughable - after all what kind of loser do you have to be to want to work at walmart? Wendy's pays more than walmart, and frying burgers is a more respectable job than working at walmart.

[WordWhiz]

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Walmart pays slave wages ...

Also just last month Walmart announced that they are freezing the wages of their long term employees. .
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.the customer service is non existant and laughable - after all what kind of loser do you have to be to want to work at walmart?

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So what is it--is Walmart evil for paying crappy wages, or should it increase those wages even though their employees suck? In my world, crappy employees don't get raises.

[ShakeZula06]

If walmart treat and pay their employees like crap, why does anyone work there?

[BCPVP]

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Walmart pays slave wages

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>Minimum wage is considered "slave wages"? IIRC, WalMart is a fan of raising the minimum wage because they already pay more and hope to harm other businesses by making their labor more expensive.

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and makes their workers work off the clock, and is very well known to constantly threaten and abuse their workers.

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So why do they stay?

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I don't see how anyone with a conscience can support such an evil company. And besides that the stuff they sell is crap, the customer service is non existant and laughable - after all what kind of loser do you have to be to want to work at walmart? Wendy's pays more than walmart, and frying burgers is a more respectable job than working at walmart.

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Since you think it's so evil, you're welcome to start up your own company and pay them whatever you think is fair. The people working at WalMart must still like their job else they wouldn't be doing it.

[hmkpoker]

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The way walmart abuses their employees is one of the main reasons people are against them. Walmart pays slave wages and makes their workers work off the clock, and is very well known to constantly threaten and abuse their workers. Compare this to Costco where an ordinary cashier or stocker makes $40,000 after just a few years.

Also just last month Walmart announced that they are freezing the wages of their long term employees. The workers who have been there 10 or 15 years and worked themselves up to a measley $12 an hour or so were told they would no longer get any raises, not even a measley cost of living raise. So they will be making the same wage 10 years from now!! So with inflation they are losing money every year.

I don't see how anyone with a conscience can support such an evil company. And besides that the stuff they sell is crap, the customer service is non existant and laughable - after all what kind of loser do you have to be to want to work at walmart? Wendy's pays more than walmart, and frying burgers is a more respectable job than working at walmart.

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Along similar lines, but to an even greater degree, large manufacturers are known to export their labor to truly impoverished countries and have them work in squalid sweatshops for compensation that is far less than WalMart. Many people are quick to call this "exploitation," since the people of these poverty-stricken countries are only choosing to work in these sweatshops because they have no other options, and the practice of exporting labor is demonized.

However, surely you can see the problem with forbidding labor export: if the big corporations are not allowed to export their labor, the people who worked at the sweatshops only because they lived in such squalid conditions still live in squalid conditions. Usually the lack of world government (which would create other, almost assuredly worse problems if it existed) simply means that the corporation will find another impoverished country, and once again people living in terrible conditions will choose something slightly better (even if it is still, by our standards, barbaric).

I agree that working at WalMart is a terrible job, and I doubt that any WalMart employees are proud of their work, yet somehow it employs 1.6 million people. Why would so many people want to work at a place that has such disagreeable working conditions? Like the case of third world countries, this is a reflection of the current economic conditions of the country.

However, we cannot ignore what WalMart does for us. It gives us goods at very cheap prices, and apparently a lot of people want these goods. Cheap goods are very important. If you're a leftist, that may sound greedy and materialistic, but if the size of the wage on recieves is of any importance, so too is the cost of the things he can buy with those wages. Forcing WalMart to adhere to raised price floors can and will have an effect on the prices...and if the prices go up, that could (and almost certainly will) damage the economy from a different direction.

[Overdrive]

And: Walmart is currently having troubles even finding people to work there. With their new pay caps and policy of not giving any more raises to you once you have been there a couple years nobody wants to try working there except the very desperate bottom of the barrel high school dropout types.

Read this article, "Walmart Baffled by Lack of Applications"
http://www.themonitor.com/SiteProcessor....mp;Section=Loca

[New001]

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And: Walmart is currently having troubles even finding people to work there. With their new pay caps and policy of not giving any more raises to you once you have been there a couple years nobody wants to try working there except the very desperate bottom of the barrel high school dropout types.

Read this article, "Walmart Baffled by Lack of Applications"
http://www.themonitor.com/SiteProcessor....mp;Section=Loca

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I think we should write some anti-Wal-Mart legislation. We need to protect these people from making bad choices. Down with Wal-Mart!

WTF, seriously, these people must be retarded if they work at Wal-Mart since there are so many better options out there.
<font color="white"> Ugh. Over/under on how many people don't read white?</font>

[Propertarian]

Also, Wal-mart maintains a highly segregated and discriminatory workforce (mostly to keep workers from cooperating-discrimination is often profitable because of its abilty to divide workers) e.g. about 2/3 of its hourly workforce is female, but only about 1/3 of salaried management is female.

I'm not pro or anti wal-mart. I don't think it should be broken up; I think it's anti-union and other anti-worker actions should be stopped.