Bending the Third Rail
Because We Should, We Can, We Do
Monday, October 02, 2006
Low Wages All The Time
Despite all the PR-good citzenship nonsense coming out of WalMart, they are indeed cutting wages and benefits further:
Wal-Mart, the nation’s largest private employer, is pushing to create a cheaper, more flexible work force by capping wages, using more part-time workers and scheduling more workers on nights and weekends.
But check out their rationale:
Wal-Mart executives say they have embraced new policies for a large number of their 1.3 million workers to better serve their customers, especially at busy shopping times — and point out that competitors like Sears and Target have made some of these moves, too.
Better server their customers? How is having lower paid, less loyal and less healthy "associates" (ephuemism for slave laborers) on the floor going to better serve their customers? And I love the reference to Sears and Target. Care to guess why they are scrambling to cut wages?

One word.

WalMart.

This move is all about bolstering stock share price which, despite a bull run in the market, is 10% off. Time for more Chinese goods served up by more working poor. This is the future of the jobs picture in the U.S. as further globalization equalizes wages planetwide, with our contribution to be a lower standard of living.

NOTE: Lynne and I put up this post, and the one above at EXACTLY the same time and without coordination. Not hard to find evidence of how American workers are getting screwed in the Bush economy.
Written at 9:28 AM by Greyhair.
2 comments
2 Comments:
Blogger Lynne said...
great minds....
10:00 AM  
Blogger Lynne said...
And yet Costco sets a different standard.
A 2004 Business Week study ran the numbers to test Costco’s business model against that of Wal-Mart. The study confirmed that Costco’s well-compensated employees are more productive.
10:03 AM  
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