Wal-Mart files U.S. labor charge against Union

I shopped at Walmart today and after interacting with the employees and customers, I can make a couple observations.
First of all , nobody really cares about the employees as long as they get their stuff cheap.
Second, about half of the employees could not hold a job at any other company.
My cashier was so slow I wanted to check her for a pulse. And it's called a toothbrush!
When a union comes to Walmart the prices will go up and the workforce will be cut in half.
I also have one question for the pro union people.
Do target ,McDonald's and best buy register on the evil meter ,or only Walmart?

Originally posted by dreams n chains

Originally posted by jefwane
Wal-Mart vs Unions is like watching Stalin vs Hitler in a knife fight. You don't know who to root for, and the best possible outcome is that they kill each other.

You summarized that so perfect!
Anyhow... anyone doing a little research on this union, The United Food and Commercial Workers, will quickly learn what a money grabbing scam they are. They are known for being the union that has made unions look bad and turn people off from unions. NEVER fall for that alleged "union".

I speak from personal experience with them in north Florida nursing homes. They are money grabbing useless corporate ass-kissers that could not care less about human rights.

Please list sources! to back up your opinion!

So, Walmart thinks they are dealing with a union? Wonderful.....

So are they going to start negotiating with them about wages and working conditions?

Are do they just want to call them a union when it benefits Walmart but not when it benefits labor.

You can't have it both ways.

If Walmart went bankrupt, it would put the kabosh on the downward trend we have been reeling from.
Commie Walmart needs to go the way of the dodo bird.

Originally posted by HIWATT


This company has had over 60 years to "metastasize", and boy has it ever... it's the beast that keeps on devouring.
Gluttony doesn't even begin to describe it's appetite.

If you haven't seen it, you all should watch The High cost of Low Price

I'm not a union fanboy by any means, but when a company gets to be big enough whereby it can just plow through small business and opposition at will regardless of the lives destroyed and impact that creates - something needs to be done.

To think that this started out as a five and dime is disgusting.... I see this "growth" as a disease, not success.

walmart is evil i agree . i know at least 6 women who have worked walmart for years who had to rely on medicaid to play for their childrens birth because walmart worked them one hour a week less than was required for medical benefits. when i was working construction we where ordered to clear a 10 acre lot right beside walmart for their expansion while we were clearing lot the owner of said lot showed up and asked us why we were destroying his property turns out walmart hadn't even bought the property they had planned on getting it using emminent domain but since they had started clearing the lot before they owned property they were made to pay owner his asking price.

reply to post by Jordan River


Maybe they should forget about holiday shopping and concentrate on survival?

I really hope someone cancels Christmas this year.

I've read this thread out of curiosity but as an person who started as a cart pusher 18 years ago with Walmart, now having worked in 15 different facilities, I can say without a shadow of a doubt you all are wrong.

However, you are entitled to your opinion in a free society, however ill-informed it may be.

My personal favorites are all the wrong benefit comments, including from the guy in the video. Those are priceless.

What you fail to realize is the vast majority of Walmart employees know the truth, they see these people as annoyances, you can't honestly believe Walmart got to having 1.4 million employees because they treat people poorly.

If you believe that, then I have a few more UFO links to show you.

reply to post by ripcontrol

Is there really any question as to whether some major changes are on the way as more of our rights are stripped from us? It's gotten to the point where they don't even try to hide it anymore.

With all of these monopolies (they can deny it but the power they yeild is scary) and now the attempted destruction of unions (which were originally intended to protect the average worker even though that too changed over the years) by this huge powerful beast who will probably triumph again , we're just sitting on a powder keg primed to blow.

Originally posted by jefwane
Wal-Mart vs Unions is like watching Stalin vs Hitler in a knife fight. You don't know who to root for, and the best possible outcome is that they kill each other.

Do you have any idea how many tickets you could sell? Or what you could charge for PPV access?

RE: the OP.....I am actually for Wal Mart in this case. I am fairly anti union. It isn't a bad idea, but like any group that wields power, the top is corrupt and the unions generally tend to damage. Hostess is just the most recent example of what happens when unions fail to do what they are meant to do: keep an eye on management, and ensure the workers are treated fairly. Hostess represents failures on both counts.

Originally posted by Stuship
I've read this thread out of curiosity but as an person who started as a cart pusher 18 years ago with Walmart, now having worked in 15 different facilities, I can say without a shadow of a doubt you all are wrong.

However, you are entitled to your opinion in a free society, however ill-informed it may be.

My personal favorites are all the wrong benefit comments, including from the guy in the video. Those are priceless.

What you fail to realize is the vast majority of Walmart employees know the truth, they see these people as annoyances, you can't honestly believe Walmart got to having 1.4 million employees because they treat people poorly.

If you believe that, then I have a few more UFO links to show you.

They have 1.4 Million employees because those are all the people that were displaced from small businesses that were destroyed when Wally came to town!

It's unskilled labour that had little choice but to make a deal with the Devil, or die so to speak.

Spare us the propaganda MalWart evangelist, we aren't stupid here

reply to post by HIWATT

Please forgive my confusion about your post, maybe you can help me out.

It sounds like your saying that small town America was doing perfectly well with suitable employment for everybody. Then Wal-mart arrived and put out "help wanted" ads. Workers flocked to Wal-mart from their existing suitable employment, and the store's doors opened.

The citizens of the town, who had been perfectly happy patronizing small local stores, suddenly flocked to Wal-mart instead. The local business, at which no one wanted to shop any more, closed.

I suppose it was a bad result for the small businesses, none of which were unionized either, but to scold Wal-mart in this? I don't see it yet.

Originally posted by charles1952
reply to post by HIWATT

 

Please forgive my confusion about your post, maybe you can help me out.

It sounds like your saying that small town America was doing perfectly well with suitable employment for everybody. Then Wal-mart arrived and put out "help wanted" ads. Workers flocked to Wal-mart from their existing suitable employment, and the store's doors opened.

The citizens of the town, who had been perfectly happy patronizing small local stores, suddenly flocked to Wal-mart instead. The local business, at which no one wanted to shop any more, closed.

I suppose it was a bad result for the small businesses, none of which were unionized either, but to scold Wal-mart in this? I don't see it yet.

Stop trying to intellectualize a situation that is completely transparent. If I had one big gripe about this website, it is exactly that.

MalWart moves into town, and that = migration of unskilled labour, as lesser companies cannot compete with the "underhead" they are faced with.

Also this isn't exclusive to America. They are a cancer that has spread world-wide.

Originally posted by Jordan River
Dear God, why am I pro union? They save jobs and look after the average joe. What are wrong with unions, my dad was in one (Chrysler )

Depends on the union in question, who is running it at the time. This issue is not black and white. it's not pro or anti union. Some unions do look out for their members in fairness to all and some do dirty underhanded tricks to gain control they or their members should not have.

Unions can do good up to a point but after that point if they are out for for power and control, they become self serving monsters that should be taken down. They are not being fair to the members but manipulate those members into backing them. This can happen to any union depending on who's in charge and the agenda and many unions have flip flopped over the years due to this. It's at the point where you cant tell the good guys from the bad.

Originally posted by Stuship
I've read this thread out of curiosity but as an person who started as a cart pusher 18 years ago with Walmart, now having worked in 15 different facilities,

That right there makes your post suspect. Why should anyone believe you? You could be a Wal-mart shill. Not saying you are but if your going to refute the above points you should give details and back them up with searchable facts.. otherwise, your post looks bad in this anti wal-mart era.

Originally posted by CranialSponge
Why bother unionizing ?

All you'll do is slowly kill the beast and ultimately put good paying jobs down the toilet (what is otherwise right now crappy wages).

Why would you allow these poor unemployed folks of the country to acclimatize to good paying jobs only to slowly lose them down the road ? WallyWorld would no longer be able to offer such low low prices with such high high unionized wages/benefits/pensions, thus killing the evil beast anyways because they would no longer be able to compete and meet customer demands.

So why not skip past all the rhetoric and go straight for the jugular now while the going is hot ? It would be the more humanitarian thing to do, no ?

Everybody walk off their jobs, everybody stop shopping there, and shut em down.

All these greedy capitalist pigs are doing is making our lives miserable anyways. I say shoot the beast now !

Good paying jobs? I hope you are being sarcastic. Wal Mart doesn't pay crap. I know some folks that have worked for them. Low wages, no benefits and lucky to actually get paid for a 40 hour week even if you worked the hours.

Wal Mart is the poster child of Capitalism...no seriously. They slowly and methodically gobbled up or pushed out all their competition. (Look what's left...K mart and Target...and they suck too) I hate Wal mart with a passion, but it is a textbook model of how capitalism works.

Originally posted by ripcontrol
Walmart files US labor charge against Union

OUR Walmart is not a union, though the thousands of Walmart employees it says are members do pay $5 monthly dues.

of note they collect member dues

Yeah, and so does the country club, (considerably higher than $5 per month too) but it doesn't make them a union.

If I organize a group of taxpayers who are sick and tired of Walmart, who is the single largest private employer in the U.S., having more employees dependent on tax-payer subsidies than any other U.S. company and we decide to collect "membership dues" to fund our efforts, we are all of a sudden "Union?" Please!!!!!!

Walmart's practice of having the taxpayers subsidize it's employee base, most of whom qualify as "Working Poor," is nothing more than a cancer on taxpaying americans. How can you even think of complaining about the high cost of social assistance programs without addressing those employers who refuse to pay a "Living Wage?"

Just the other day I heard about this new study that was being released on this very subject and it's an eye opening read indeed. I know you're not going to like the source but it's the only one I could find on short notice, check it out;

www.demos.org...

According to the study, if large retailers were to raise their base pay to $25,000 for full time employees, it would;

A wage standard equivalent to $25,000 for a full-time, year-round employee would lift 734,075 people currently in poverty – including retail workers and the families they support – above the federal poverty line.
An additional 769,191 people hovering just above poverty would see their incomes rise to above 150 percent of the poverty line.

and it would;

A wage standard at large retailers equivalent to $25,000 per year for full-time, year-round workers would increase GDP between $11.8 and $15.2 billion over the next year.
As a result of the economic growth from a wage increase, employers would create 100,000 to 132,000 additional jobs.

and also;

Assuming that workers do not save money out of their wage income, the additional retail spending by employees and their families generated by the higher wage would result in $4 to $5 billion in additional sales across the retail sector in the year following the wage increase.

and it would cost the customer a whopping;

If retailers pass half of the costs of a wage raise onto their customers, the average household would pay just 15 cents more per shopping trip—or $17.73 per year.
If firms pass on 25 percent of the wage costs onto their customers, shoppers would spend just 7 cents more per shopping trip, or $8.87 per year.
Higher income households, who spend more, would absorb a larger share of the cost. Per shopping trip, high income households would spend 18 cents more, for a total of $36.80 per year. Low-income households would spend just 12 additional cents on their shopping list, or $24.87 per year.

There's a whole lot more to the study if you're in for the read.

Originally posted by ripcontrol
This is just after the UNION caused hostess to close during Bankruptcy... and the union does play dirty....

I think there is a huge chess game going on here between the fools on both sides vying for control...So short after the election ...

So far- 18500 jobs gone to the chess game....

You really should learn a little more about the Hostess bankruptcy before you go blaming it all on the union. If you do a little research into the subject, you'll learn that the situation actually resembles some of the Bain Capital, buy-out / drive the Co. into bankruptcy deals, that were exposed during the election campaign. You know, where in the end, the CEOs walk away with huge bonuses while their debtors get stiffed and their employees lose their livelihoods and have their pensions stolen.

reply to post by HIWATT

Dear HIWATT,

I was hoping for a little more help from you.

First Wal-mart announces it's intentions and advertises for workers. The residents of your small town flood Wal-mart's hiring fair. Either they didn't have jobs, or they didn't like the jobs they had. Either way, Wal-mart is giving them better employment options. The employees are better off than they were

Wal-mart opens. They offer a choice, "Shop here, or shop at your local businesses." The town decides they would rather shop at Wal-mart. The places they don't want to shop at close. The town had a choice, they picked one. Should they not have been allowed to shop where they wanted?

I think the above description is completely transparent, you accuse me of intellectualizing it. What, by the way, does "intellectualizing" mean? Are you suggesting that I'm thinking about it more than I should? You believe the proper analysis of the situation is:

MalWart moves into town, and that = migration of unskilled labour, as lesser companies cannot compete with the "underhead" they are faced with.

What does that mean? It seems that you are saying, if I may offer my translation, that when Wal-mart moves into town, workers from the small shops leave and go to work for Wal-mart. The reason they leave is that small town shops have higher overhead.

The meaning of that statement is not immediately apparent. Nor is it clear why workers would leave businesses with high overhead.

With respect,
Charles1952

reply to post by charles1952


My translation...

Wal Mart comes to town with their cheap and crappy made junk. People in town spend their money on said cheap junk. Local businesses no longer have the money to pay workers. Local businesses close. Now unemployed worker begs for crappy job at Wal mart.

I think that explains his point.

reply to post by Flatfish

You really should learn a little more about the Hostess bankruptcy before you go blaming it all on the union. If you do a little research into the subject, you'll learn that the situation actually resembles some of the Bain Capital, buy-out / drive the Co. into bankruptcy deals, that were exposed during the election campaign. You know, where in the end, the CEOs walk away with huge bonuses while their debtors get stiffed and their employees lose their livelihoods and have their pensions stolen.

Might I ask you to consider broadening your thoughts on the Hostess issue a bit? The New York Times printed a different analysis of it.
dealbook.nytimes.com...

While Bain has nothing to do with Hostess, another private equity firm does: Ripplewood Holdings. That firm took control of Hostess as part of a bankruptcy process in 2009.

No tears need to be shed for Ripplewood and its investors, but they weren’t part of a get-rich-quick scheme either.

Ripplewood, which was founded by Timothy C. Collins, a major Democratic donor, is expected to lose most, if not all, of the $130 million or so it invested in Hostess. The company’s lenders, led by Silver Point Capital and Monarch Alternative Capital, are not expected to fare well either.

When Mr. Collins originally looked at Hostess, he was trying to make investments in troubled companies with union workers. He was convinced that he could work with labor organizations to turn around iconic American businesses, and he hoped Hostess would become a model for similar deals.

Early on, Mr. Collins sought out Richard A. Gephardt, the former House majority leader, who had become a consultant on labor issues, to help Ripplewood acquire Hostess and work with its unions.

While Ripplewood sought significant concessions from the unions in 2009, some insiders and outside analysts privately suggested that Ripplewood did not fight hard enough for even greater givebacks from the unions in the bankruptcy process — savings worth $110 million — perhaps as a function of Mr. Collins’s relationship with Mr. Gephardt.

Ripplewood’s luck — and its investment thesis — could not have been worse. With the sputtering economy, the increase in commodity costs, pressure from competitors that were consolidating and out-of-whack labor costs, Hostess’s fate seemed assured from nearly the beginning.

Having said all that, Ripplewood’s management was far from a model for the industry. For at least the first year of the new ownership, Ripplewood charged Hostess management and consulting fees, according to people briefed on the payments, which were “in the millions of dollars.” As Hostess’s balance sheet worsened, Ripplewood stopped seeking the payments, these people said.

Worse still, Mr. Gephardt’s son was added to the board of Hostess and paid an annual fee of $100,000.

Perhaps the most egregious sin of Ripplewood’s oversight of Hostess was the increase in management’s compensation at the same time it was seeking to cut employee compensation.

Frank Hurt, the president of the union that went on strike, said, “Our members are on strike because they have had enough. They are not willing to take draconian wage and benefit cuts on top of the significant concessions they made in 2004 and give up their pension so that the Wall Street vulture capitalists in control of this company can walk away with millions of dollars.”

Unless a compromise is reached, Hostess’s employees are likely to lose their jobs soon. And either way, Ripplewood isn’t going to walk away with millions of dollars. So much for being Bained.

reply to post by charles1952


Maybe you could explain away these contradictory statements taken from the quoted text you posted in your reply;

Having said all that, Ripplewood’s management was far from a model for the industry. For at least the first year of the new ownership, Ripplewood charged Hostess management and consulting fees, according to people briefed on the payments, which were “in the millions of dollars.” As Hostess’s balance sheet worsened, Ripplewood stopped seeking the payments, these people said.

Worse still, Mr. Gephardt’s son was added to the board of Hostess and paid an annual fee of $100,000.

Perhaps the most egregious sin of Ripplewood’s oversight of Hostess was the increase in management’s compensation at the same time it was seeking to cut employee compensation.

Versus;

Unless a compromise is reached, Hostess’s employees are likely to lose their jobs soon. And either way, Ripplewood isn’t going to walk away with millions of dollars. So much for being Bained.

Sounds to me like they already walked with their millions early on, but surely that had nothing to do with their current economic situation. Yeah right!!!

Furthermore, they're not through stripping the company of any remaining assets, even while they're in the middle of bankruptcy proceedings.

thinkprogress.org...

Hostess Brands will ask a bankruptcy judge on Monday for approval to shut down the company and pay $1.75 million in executive bonuses.

Even as it blamed unions for the bankruptcy and the 18,500 job losses that will ensue, Hostess already gave its executives pay raises earlier this year. The salary of the company’s chief executive tripled from $750,000 to roughly $2.5 million, and at least nine other executives received pay raises ranging from $90,000 to $400,000. Those raises came just months after Hostess originally filed for bankruptcy earlier this year.

Go figure!