OT Do you care were the products you buy are made

[Baron Munchausen]

If you think the place of manufacture is all you have to consider, think again!

Bill Moyers did a feature on Walmart on his PBS show "NOW with Bill Moyers" a few weeks ago.

http://www.pbs.org/now/politics/walmart.html

Wal-Mart Facts and Figures

World's largest retailer, 2003: Wal-Mart
United State's largest private employer, 2003: Wal-Mart
Wal-Mart's worldwide workforce: 1.3 million
Wal-Mart's most 2002 annual sales figures: $245 billion
Gross Domestic Product of Switzerland, 2002: 231 billion
Number of Wal-Mart stores worldwide: 4,300
Number of Wal-Mart stores opened on October 29, 2003: 39
Average hourly wage of Wal-Mart employee, 2001: $8.23
Average hourly wage of unionized supermarket workers: $10.35
Wal-Mart's price of Kellogg's Corn Flakes vs. competitors price: 56%

I had heard they had some labor troubles and lawsuits, but the truth is beyond belief! It gives new meaning to terms like 'skinflint' and 'Scrooge'... Check this out:

Their average employee working in the US makes $15,000 a year, $7.22 per hour! These employees gross under $11,000 a year. The company brags that 70% of their employees are full time, but fails to disclose that they count anyone working 28 hours a week or more as full time. There are no health care benefits unless you have worked for the company for two years. With a turnover rate averaging above 50% per year, only 38% of their 1.3 million employees have health care coverage. In California alone it's estimated that the taxpayers pay over $20 million annually to subsidize health care benefits for these employees who get none from this behemoth corporation.

According to a report by PBS's "Now" with Bill Moyer, their managers are trained in what government social programs are available for these "employees" to take advantage of so that the company can pass on those costs to the government (meaning taxpayers). It allows them to not only keep their $7 BILLION in annual profits, but to do so by substituting benefits they refuse to provide with benefits paid for with taxpayer dollars.

The National Labor Relations Board has issued over 40 formal complaints against the corporation in 25 different states in just the past five years. The NLRB's top lawyer believed that their labor violations, such as illegal spying on employees, fraudulent record keeping, falsifying time cards to avoid paying overtime, threats, illegal firings for union organizing etc., were so widespread that he was looking into filing a very rare national complaint against the company. (The company contributed $2,159,330.00 to GW Bush and the GOP in 2000 and 2002. The NLRB attorney was replaced when President Bush took office.).

They force employees to work after ordering them to punch out. In Texas alone this practice of "wage theft" is estimated to have cost employees $30 million per year. Wage theft or "off-the-clock" lawsuits are pending in 25 states. In New Mexico they paid $400,000.00 in one suit and in Colorado they had to pay $50 MILLION to settle one class-action case brought against them. In Oregon a jury found them guilty of locking employees in the building and of forcing unpaid overtime.

This company holds the record for the most suits filed against it by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. A lawyer from "Business Week" (not exactly the bastion for supporting Labor) said, "I have never seen this kind of blatant disregard for the law." They had to pay $750,000.00 in Arizona for blatant discrimination against the disabled! The judge was so incensed that he also ordered them to run commercials admitting their guilt.

Nearly 1 MILLION women are involved in the largest class-action suit ever filed against a corporation. Although women make up over 65% of this corporations work force only 10% of them are managers. The women who have become store managers make $16,400 a year LESS then the men.

The corporation took out nearly 350,000 life insurance policies on their employees. They did not tell the employees and named the corporation as the beneficiary. They are now being sued by numerous employees, and although the corporation has stopped this practice of purchasing what is known as "Dead Peasant Policies", a company spokesperson stated, "The company feels it acted properly and legally in doing this."

They practice "predatory pricing": They come into a community and sell their goods at below cost until they drive local businesses under. Once they have captured the market the prices go up. Locally owned and operated businesses put virtually all of their money back into the community which helps keep the local economies vibrant. This corporation sucks the money out of the local community, decreases wages and benefits and ships the profits out of state. This company doesn't buy locally or bank locally. They replace three decent paying jobs in a community with two poorly paid "part-timers". In Kirksville, Missouri when this company came to town, four clothing stores, four grocery stores, a stationary store, a fabric store and a lawn-and-garden store all went under. Eleven businesses are now gone. (The above information can be found in "Thieves in High Places", James Hightower, The Penguin Group, New York, NY, 2003 p. 166 - 193.)

In Contra Costa County, northeast of Oakland, the county board enacted a ban on so-called big box stores. Walmart responded with a phony voter registration drive meant to put a measure on the ballot to overturn the ban. For this they paid canvassers a higher wage than they pay their own employees.

[ January 15, 2004, 23:45: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]

[Renegade 13]

Originally posted by Loser:
No you don't really want it, you just bring it up whenever Ottawa isn't sufficiently attentive.

I've got a chick-friend like this. When she's not getting enough attention from her fellow she starts flirting with me, in fun. Like Western Canada we keep it strictly verbal and above-the-table. But apparently it works, and his jealousy gets her what she wants out of the situation. And despite his occasional threats on my life, we're pretty good friends.

Weird, I have a friend like that too....

[Loser]

Well, I don't know how it works for you, but I'd have to admit that I started it. Few things are as entertaining and without risk as flirting with married (or otherwise firmly attached) women.

Not that I'm trying to derail the topic here or anything. I'm all for calling a spade a spade and Wal-Mart the devil. This is entertaining and without risk as well, though not quite so entertaining...

[Renegade 13]

Well, no I didn't start it. Just turns out she liked me and I didn't even know it. Whenever she gets in a spat with her boyfriend, she comes to me. But I'm still in highschool, so maybe this has something to do with the weird dynamics that exist in every highschool that don't exist anywhere else.

(Edit: Sorry for getting the off topic topic farther off topic )

[ January 16, 2004, 00:28: Message edited by: Renegade 13 ]

[rextorres]

Wal-mart is a particularly bad and unpatriotic (for people who care about such things) company and I don't even step foot in one. They are driving down the wages of the average worker:

by forcing manufacturers to ship out jobs overseas so that their prices are low enough so that wal-mart will buy from them

AND

by causing competitors to lower prices and ultimately lower wages to compete with them.

It's ironic (if I may use that word) that the people whose job they are costing are the very same they expect to come in and shop in their store.

It's a downward spiral.

[narf poit chez BOOM]

Baron Munch, that's very valuable information. and i'm now boycotting walmart.

[Fyron]

I was already not shopping at Walmart just cause they have low-quality crap and are rather crowded (with ailses very narrow and such), dirty stores with products all mixed up and all over the place. And they really are not that cheaper than most places, with few exceptions.