It’s like an Onion article, but sadly real. Instead of paying these poor Wal-mart workers a decent wage, they ask other underpaid employees, to donate food to other Wal-Mart employees.
“This store has been doing this for several years and is for associates that have faced an extreme hardship recently,” spokesman Kory Lundberg told us.
Lundberg says an example of this would be a recent layoff in the family or some other financial hardship.
queue the outrage!
or… just pay them a decent wage? or give them bonus’s? Asking Wal-Mart employees who are already drastically underpaid, to help others, instead of corporate doing it themselves is lame. Their new advertising is about how well off their employees are with 401k matching and donation matching. But 90% of WalMart employees can’t afford to take a dime out for either of those since they don’t make enough to live on in the first place. It’s like asking the poorest of Americans to help with the disaster relief while the wealthiest do nothing.
The Walton family (which owns Wal-Mart) own more than 40% of Americans combined, over $110 billion. Wal-Mart as a company could give every employee $100 bonus for Thanksgiving dinner and no wealthy people would miss that money. They could make it a $50 cost by providing free coupons for food at their own stores. But hey, don’t want to dip into the net profit! Walton’s need their money!
These are workers donating canned goods at .69 cents a pop. Should we discourage their act of charity? Shouldn’t we encourage communities to take care of their own?
instead of corporate doing it themselves is lame.
Why should Wal-Mart take on the role of the state, or the family? Why are they responsible for us?
I think we’re offloading our own responsibility onto Wal-Mart.
Shouldn’t we encourage livable wages? Are they somehow mutually exclusive?
EDIT: Directed at Incendiary Lemon:
The very fact that the canned goods are $0.69 a pop is what is so galling. Leaning on people making pennies to help their coworkers is just cruel, and taking advantage of peoples’ inherent desire to help one another. Wal-Mart saves a few bucks on bennies, pushes more of their overhead onto the government via welfare, and passes on the savings to the investor class.
I’m amazed that you need to have this pointed out to you.
It seems odd that you folks are angry at Walmart for organizing a food drive.
The state takes on the role of Wal-Mart by subsidizing employees through Medicaid (They don’t even earn enough in most cases to get on the exchanges) and food stamps.
This is why we need Wal-Mart taxes on these types of employers.
I realize this is P&R, but do you not think your characterization is a little… disingenuous? I’m pretty sure you fully understand the bigger picture and why people are put off by the whole thing (not to say you have to agree with it or share the disdain).
You just drove right under the big picture, then through the big picture billboard.
I actually work part-time at a Walmart. Do they pay new employees enough to raise a family on? No, but then most other retailers don’t either, including those that have unions. So that’s not a Walmart problem, its a societal problem. And I do get bonus’s and have health care. Is it great health care? No, but its no worse then what other retailers offer. $40/mo as a premium is not unusual in retail. Again, its a societal problem, not something you can blame on one company.
Don’t you guys have minimum wages or somesuch? In Denmark we have those, regulated so that its more than possible to raise a family on any full-time job. Full time meaning 37 hours a week.
Edit: we have poor people of course, and people living on the streets like any other country. Sorry if I came off as trying to be better than anyone else.
This.
But if there was a single group of people in this entire country who could actually afford to pay people a decent wage… it’s Wal-Mart. Many other retailers would not be able to do it because they’re not private, barely break even, or worse - (hello Sears!).
Meijers here in the Midwest has had to drop wages over the past 15 years to be competitive with Wal-Mart, so Wal-Mart is THE problem and the primary driver of low retail wages. It is societal, but Wal-Mart was the runaway reaction to create the problem. Growing up in the 1970’s we had a lady down the street who was a cashier at Meijer’s and was able to raise her family on that (she owned a house to boot!). Meijer’s never had a cash-flow problem because their employees were paid a decent wage.
Razgon - People are stupid in this country. Republicans & Libertarians believe that poor people are poor because they don’t work hard enough or are “entitled”, and the fact they may work 80 hours a week to support a family of 2, have no healthcare, no way to pay for college, no retirement, no way to buy a house, never get vacations, they have nothing… it’s still all their fault. And these large corporations will spend hundreds of millions of dollars to lobby congress, billions to fund their congressional/presidential candidates, when that money could have been going to paying a decent wage - is lost on 45% of the people here. It’s sick.
I think that’s what makes me stance on this different than other people is my age. I remember, and lived through first-hand when people had decent wages. I’m not saying everything deserves it. I got paid $2/hr to work as a Caddy, and $5.00/hr when I worked at Ponderosa Steakhouse. But the people who worked for a while got a decent wage. Most people wanted to get out of restaurants to work at retail like Meijers or clothing stores.
That’s interesting, now you’d want the opposite. Waiting tables is far more lucrative than retail - unless you’re working in high end fashion and living off the commission.
If I owned Wal-Mart I would feel sick that my employees had to use food stamps or had to rely on other employees to get by while sitting on ridiculous gobs of money. I am just unforgiving in this aspect I guess. No one needs a billion dollars, nor $110 billions dollars when the country they call home is suffering so bad.
Yea I know. When you put a face to a waiter/waitress it’s a lot harder to stiff them as opposed to someone working behind a cash register or a stock person. Then again, I know a waitress who works at Denny’s and she averages $5.00 /hr because of the clientele that show up during her shifts :(
If I owned Wal-Mart I would feel sick that my employees had to use food stamps or had to rely on other employees to get by while sitting on ridiculous gobs of money. I am just unforgiving in this aspect I guess. No one needs a billion dollars, nor $110 billions dollars when the country they call home is suffering so bad/
Yea I know. When you put a face to a waiter/waitress it’s a lot harder to stiff them as opposed to someone working behind a cash register or a stock person. Then again, I know a waitress who works at Denny’s and she averages $5.00 /hr because of the clientele that show up during her shifts :(
Wal-Mart is ‘Evil’, we all know that, so this is no surprise, just ‘evil gonna be evil’ kinda thing (like that ‘Haters gonna Hate!’ meme/pic thing).
Makes me glad that states on the east coast are finally making and effort to raise the minimum wage and tie it to inflation. Its not enough, but it is a start. NJ has done it already and maryland is following suit.
I find it hard to comprehend that being corporations excuse companies from doing their duty to communities. Are they part of the community too? And see how US Supreme Court has given them the status of persons in Citizens United, they should act even more like people, seeing how they want freedom of speech? Or they just want the good parts of being in society and have nothing to do with the obligations and responsibilities?