Walmart= evil...

...as some poeple will have us believe but it seems that Walmart is trying to help us.

Wal-Mart puts the squeeze on food costs
The retailer is using its clout with vendors to hold onto its everyday low prices.
By Suzanne Kapner, writer

(Fortune Magazine) -- With gas, grain, and dairy prices exploding, you'd think the biggest seller of corn flakes and Cocoa Puffs would be getting hit by rising food costs. But Wal-Mart has temporarily rolled back prices on hundreds of food items by as much as 30% this year. How? By pressuring vendors to take costs out of the supply chain.

"When our grocery suppliers bring price increases, we don't just accept them," says Pamela Kohn, Wal-Mart's general merchandise manager for perishables.

Read the rest here and thanks Sam.

money.cnn.com...


Roper


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[edit on 2-6-2008 by Jbird]

This only means the suppliers take the extra hit and in some cases may close down if they can't absorb the costs. In the short term this may seem to be good for the average consumer. But, long term, this will probably lead to more regional shortages as suppliers close down or refuse to sell to Walmart.

Originally posted by TheComte
This only means the suppliers take the extra hit and in some cases may close down if they can't absorb the costs. In the short term this may seem to be good for the average consumer. But, long term, this will probably lead to more regional shortages as suppliers close down or refuse to sell to Walmart.

I don't think so Comte. Walmart is in business to make money, they need those suppliers.

Roper

with me wal-mart seems both good and evil.

i have an insider's prospective on some things, tho i don't work the grocery end the same tends to apply across the board. wal-mart does tend to be hard on those wishing to sell their products with them, i have even heard of "fineing" for late or understocked items from manufactures. in one case i remember when we stopped carrying a spacific name brand object that many people ask for and realy want because we always had problems getting that object in to sell.so wal-mart basicaly told them that since they couldn't apparently deliver what we needed that we just wouldn't carry their item anymore. simple and sweet, deliver what we need or don't bother at all. that makes perfect business sense as far as i can see.

now we all know the old saw about wal-mart paying and treating employees (excuse me assosiates), like garbage. in all honesty they do tend to. but on the other hand so does every retailer. i know of people who got fed up with wal-mart and went to other retailers. one i know went to home despot (depot), and worked there for a little bit more an hour. he came in a few months later and told us that he was treated even worse there than at wal-mart. another thing at an old store i worked at had a grocery store oin the lot, while cashing out there one day in their little restraunt area the grocery store employee that was in line to pay ahead of me was counting her change to come up with enough to pay commented to the casheer "can you tell tomorow is payday?". i chuckled and said that that sounded like us across at wal-mart day before payday, they looked at me with kind of shocked expressions and told me that they had heard that we made more then they did, well we compared pay rates and guess what, they were right identical to each other.

now one thing wal-mart does do at least up north is that we actualy get our discount on food items, (it is a supercenter). no other grocery retailer gets a discount on food. and let me tell you that makes a differance. and again makes sence as that means that wal-mart gets back even more of our pay, good for both sides as far as i can see. so perhapes the "wal-mart reputation", is just something that got blown out of proportion. as far as i can see they act just like every other retailer.

I agree, most retailers pay their employees very little above minimum wage and that's one reason Wal-Mart can sell products more cheaply than others. Wal-Mart and others pay so poorly that many of their workers have to get government benefits like food stamps and medicaid in order to survive. These benefits are paid for by our taxes, so the American people end up paying for what Wal-Mart should but doesn't.

There should be a union for retail workers; that would raise wages and improve benefits and working conditions. I understand, though, that Wal-Mart will fire anybody who even mentions the word and spies on its employees to make sure they aren't organizing. I think unions like the AFL-CIO would probably accept retail workers if they asked to join.

Unionizing wouldn't necessarily have to increase the prices consumers pay, though the retailers probably would make the customers absorb the cost of their employees' benefits. They probably wouldn't want to cut into their enormous profits and their CEO's might not be able to afford another yacht or vacation hideaway in the Carribbean.

The benefits to America if retail workers were unionized would be great. Retail workers would eventually receive enough in wages and benefits to gradually rise to the middle class, where they would have more purchasing power to shop at Wal-Mart or Home Depot or etc. themselves.

Go union!

Walmart here is paying 7 to 8 dollars/hr, that is above minimum wage.

I have been in Agriculture for a long time and I am not a fan of Unions.

I turned down a job because it was union.

Roper

[edit on 10-6-2008 by Roper]

I work at wal-mart and I think I get treated and paid pretty well. I am an overnight cashier and I make $10.30 an hour. That is pretty good for a cashier. Before when I was a day cashier I made $7.40 an hour which was quite a bit more than when I worked at another grocery store in the cities.

As far as treatment, I used to do collections and I was treated horribly because I wouldn't resort to some of the levels that my fellow employers would to get my customers to pay up. I wasn't even in 3rd party collections, I did soft collections, directly for the company. Yeah sometimes my bosses aren't fair, but I get treated way better at wal-mart than I did at those offices. If I see my manager before I leave she always thanks me for helping out that night.

If Walmart went union it wouldn't be long until they started closing stores and laying off thousands of employees. I personally would boycott them for such a disgusting move. Unions intentionally harm individuals for the benefit of the union. F-that.

I don't buy food at Walmart anyway but good for them for pressuring their vendors to find ways to cut costs. Walmart is a gold mine for anyone who can get their products on their shelves. Vendors will do whatever they can to keep their goods moving.

Want to know what motivates true innovation? It's not government taxes and mandates. It's profit. If the only way for Vendor X to keep their business with Walmart is to find some new revolutionary method of transporting their orders... get ready for the flying car!

I think that there are certain types of businesses that actually benefit from unions. I worked for a phone company, we had a union and I really feel that if there wasn't a union we would've been treated poorly by the company and we wouldn't have been getting paid as well as we were.

However there really is no point in a business like wal-mart having a union. Most jobs at wal-mart are a dime a dozen. I mean if I lose my job at wal-mart I can easily go to another store and get one just like it. Also many employees at many stores like wal-mart see it as a transitional job anyways.

I think your logic is a bit backwards. Only the employees (and the union orchestrators) benefited. The business and their customers suffered. If the positions would have been paid less without the union, then the union was artificially forcing wages above what the jobs were worth. If a company fails to pay their employees an appropriate wage for their time, or fails to treat them well, the company will soon find they don't have any employees.

Your observation of your ability to find another job after Walmart applies to every job on the planet. Rather than exercising such a right, unions prefer extortion. Usually coupled with the threat of violence via government. Right-to-work laws, a product of union lobbying, have made Detroit what it is today: a place to be avoided.

No... unions are a parasite. Everyone else is the host.

I don't want to name the name of the company, but believe me. They are not sufferring. Face it, there are many lucrative businesses out there who can afford to pay their employees decent wages but refuse to. I think in many cases, the more profitable a business gets, the more greedy it's ceos and presidents get.

No doubt. But a company actively refusing to pay their employees a living wage is the employee's problem. They should find another job. Companies like AT&T for example develop a poor reputation causing free marketeers like myself to boycott their products and services. However using extortion, force, violence, or the threat of such as unions utilize to modify an employment contract is a purer greed than any corporate officer is capable of.

Unions don't extort the big companies, they represent the employees in getting fair wages, benefits and working condidtions. If the employees don't organize, they get treated as poorly as their company wants to treat them.

No employer will pay fair wages or provide benefits unless they have to. They're interested in profits only. If they can get away with underpaying their workers, of course they will. If they can dispense with health insurance or pension plans they will. If they could get away with paying $3.00 an hour they'd gladly do it. It's just easy for them to find workers who will work for next to nothing, so why should they offer any better? It's the workers' fault for going along like sheep.

There was a time in America (the 1950's and 1960's) when unions were strong and people could actually live on what they were paid. The middle class was much bigger than it is now. Companies made big profits but they didn't pay their CEO's such astronomical salaries as they do now.

Retail workers shouldn't have to go on food stamps and medicaid in order to survive and provide for their families. That's making the government pay for what the companies won't. Wal-Mart won't go bankrupt from providing better wages and working conditions. But who's going to make them pay more than they can get away with? Not the workers, it seems.

Howdy Sestias,

I'm in production agriculture and I have no use for the Unions, what so ever. I know that back in the day the Unions did good things for the people but not in this day and age.

True story;

Back in the day I bought a John Deer tractor,swather and baler, right after I bought them the union at JD with on strike and the same equipment tripled in price. Now I got under the wire but a lot of ranchers didn't. Hurts!

Roper

I don't feel like I need a union working at wal-mart. For a cashier, I get paid pretty well there. Again I feel that some industries need unions and some don't. I don't think retail workers need unions but again that's my opinion.

I saw part of the documentary about walmart being evil and I definatly disagree with them saying that walmart is a monopoly. Where I live wal-mart has plenty of competitors such as Target, Cub foods, Rainbow foods, Menards and Home Depot.