That's what they used to call Wal-Mart where I grew up. I worked for Wal-Mart for two years in various departments so I know first hand about their anti-union practices, among other things. When I was first hired I was taken into the HR office where I was shown some orientation videos. These were poorly written propaganda where the opinion the company wished you to have was told to you with the not so subtle undertone that your job depended on not openly disagreeing. Mostly these videos cheered how great the founder was and how powerful and efficient the company is. Next they claimed that the dead-end job you were hired into was a golden ticket to the high life as long as you keep your head down and keep your mouth shut.
The most inelegant of the propaganda videos was the anti-union video. It laid out Wal-Mart's corporate line on unions: unions will lie to you, you will pay huge dues and loose all your company benefits, unions don't help workers they are just out to run national political campaigns that are against your best interest. Even as a kid the threat wasn't lost on me. Wal-Mart was saying directly to each new hire, if you try to unionize we will take away the meager benefits we have graciously seen fit to give you. Any idiot could see that the benefits were terrible, dead peasant insurance and health care that only the management could afford. Wal-Mart is so anti union that they even closed a store where the employees voted to unionize in order to prevent the unions from getting a foot hold in the company.
The Wall Street Journal recently ran an article detailing how Wal-Mart warned its employees against voting Democratic this fall while matching that with a renewed parroting of the company line against unions. The funny thing is that these speeches are probably the first thing most of these employees heard about the Free Choice Act. From my experience working at Wal-Mart the people there aren't particularly political and would have to be pretty fed up with working there to even be considering the union option enough to know about the Free Choice Act. I know its the first I have heard of it and extra publicity for the act is probably the last thing Wal-Mart wanted. What can you expect from a company that has such an unrefined propaganda machine?
It is repeated many places on the log cabin so I wont go into much detail here but it is important to recount what is bad about Wal-Mart. The low prices at Wal-Mart aren't from some magic that Sam Walton pulled out of his ass. Lowering prices to out perform your competition is an old tactic. the problem with it is that you cant do that forever unless you have some way of making your cost go down. Two ways Wal-Mart saves cost(lowers overhead) is by getting lower prices from manufacturers and reducing labor costs. They cut prices from manufacturers first by buying in huge volume, Wal-Mart is the largest retailer in the world and has the power to negotiate(dictate) their own prices from their suppliers. The problem with this is that the suppliers and manufacturers have their own costs to cover and in order to lower prices they have to close factories in the U.S. and send them overseas. Master lock is one brand this happened to, Wal-Mart also drove the entire television manufacturing industry overseas. This is one way Wal-Mart destroys American jobs and lowers the wage of the American worker. Wal-Mart keeps its labor costs low by paying a wage that is below the poverty level (a living wage in the U.S. is over $11/hour) and offering few benefits and pricing the benefits they do offer out of the reach of their average employees. Then they force the American taxpayer to subsidize their employees by referring them to state and federal well fare programs. Think that over, you are subsidizing Wal-Marts low prices and their astronomical profits with your taxes, whether or not you shop there. At about 4:30 into the video it gives you numbers on this.
When I first started working at Wal-Mart management at the store I worked at would wait till someone punched out at the end of their shift and then tell them to clean up a department before they left. At least they weren't locking us in overnight. There was an audit by the government and that practice stopped only to be followed by a tricky hiring practice. The manager didn't hire any full time employees. That alone saved on lunches since an eight hour employee gets two fifteen minute breaks and a half hour for lunch while a four hour employee gets only one fifteen minute break. It also saved on benefits since only full time employees were eligible for them. These new employees were all hired for the lowest paying job in the store and then trained for the jobs that got paid twenty five cents per hour more. That's a small dick in the ass of each employee but twenty five cents an hour for fifty employees over a an eighteen hour business day seven days a week adds up to over $80,000 in labor cost savings a year.
So Wal-Mart comes to town playing its game of dirty pool, drives local businesses out of business, and forces self sufficient former entrepreneurs to work for poverty wages while taking dollars out of the local economy and sending them to their corporate offices in Arkansas and overseas. That's why when people suggest I shop at Wal-Mart I say, "Sorry, I love America too much."
The most inelegant of the propaganda videos was the anti-union video. It laid out Wal-Mart's corporate line on unions: unions will lie to you, you will pay huge dues and loose all your company benefits, unions don't help workers they are just out to run national political campaigns that are against your best interest. Even as a kid the threat wasn't lost on me. Wal-Mart was saying directly to each new hire, if you try to unionize we will take away the meager benefits we have graciously seen fit to give you. Any idiot could see that the benefits were terrible, dead peasant insurance and health care that only the management could afford. Wal-Mart is so anti union that they even closed a store where the employees voted to unionize in order to prevent the unions from getting a foot hold in the company.
The Wall Street Journal recently ran an article detailing how Wal-Mart warned its employees against voting Democratic this fall while matching that with a renewed parroting of the company line against unions. The funny thing is that these speeches are probably the first thing most of these employees heard about the Free Choice Act. From my experience working at Wal-Mart the people there aren't particularly political and would have to be pretty fed up with working there to even be considering the union option enough to know about the Free Choice Act. I know its the first I have heard of it and extra publicity for the act is probably the last thing Wal-Mart wanted. What can you expect from a company that has such an unrefined propaganda machine?
It is repeated many places on the log cabin so I wont go into much detail here but it is important to recount what is bad about Wal-Mart. The low prices at Wal-Mart aren't from some magic that Sam Walton pulled out of his ass. Lowering prices to out perform your competition is an old tactic. the problem with it is that you cant do that forever unless you have some way of making your cost go down. Two ways Wal-Mart saves cost(lowers overhead) is by getting lower prices from manufacturers and reducing labor costs. They cut prices from manufacturers first by buying in huge volume, Wal-Mart is the largest retailer in the world and has the power to negotiate(dictate) their own prices from their suppliers. The problem with this is that the suppliers and manufacturers have their own costs to cover and in order to lower prices they have to close factories in the U.S. and send them overseas. Master lock is one brand this happened to, Wal-Mart also drove the entire television manufacturing industry overseas. This is one way Wal-Mart destroys American jobs and lowers the wage of the American worker. Wal-Mart keeps its labor costs low by paying a wage that is below the poverty level (a living wage in the U.S. is over $11/hour) and offering few benefits and pricing the benefits they do offer out of the reach of their average employees. Then they force the American taxpayer to subsidize their employees by referring them to state and federal well fare programs. Think that over, you are subsidizing Wal-Marts low prices and their astronomical profits with your taxes, whether or not you shop there. At about 4:30 into the video it gives you numbers on this.
When I first started working at Wal-Mart management at the store I worked at would wait till someone punched out at the end of their shift and then tell them to clean up a department before they left. At least they weren't locking us in overnight. There was an audit by the government and that practice stopped only to be followed by a tricky hiring practice. The manager didn't hire any full time employees. That alone saved on lunches since an eight hour employee gets two fifteen minute breaks and a half hour for lunch while a four hour employee gets only one fifteen minute break. It also saved on benefits since only full time employees were eligible for them. These new employees were all hired for the lowest paying job in the store and then trained for the jobs that got paid twenty five cents per hour more. That's a small dick in the ass of each employee but twenty five cents an hour for fifty employees over a an eighteen hour business day seven days a week adds up to over $80,000 in labor cost savings a year.
So Wal-Mart comes to town playing its game of dirty pool, drives local businesses out of business, and forces self sufficient former entrepreneurs to work for poverty wages while taking dollars out of the local economy and sending them to their corporate offices in Arkansas and overseas. That's why when people suggest I shop at Wal-Mart I say, "Sorry, I love America too much."
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