Wal Mart Employees protest, I call BS

Originally posted by Juggernog
reply to post by neo96

 

Blah my first job paid me $3.25 and hour

Lmao, same here. Busted my butt in a pizza store and at the end of the day, I made 26 bucks, and some tips, maybe.

So what? I used to work as dishwasher in some restaurants during my high school years, just to have some supplementary income, in addition to what my parents provided for me.

But when you become old enough to start a family or simply move out of their house and become independant, that minimum wage crap after the appropriate deductions have been made, is not enough to even live a trailer life and pay for bus fares.

Just comparing inflation to wage increases shows that wages/salaries have not kept up since the federal reserve was created and the irs. Inflation has been much greater, thus purchasing power has gone down drastically over the years.

reply to post by EarthCitizen07


So, nothing. I was just commenting on his post about the min wage during that time period.

I heard walmart is one of those companies that intentionally keeps employees under the forty hour threshold just to avoid paying the majority any overtime compensation. Isn't that illegal? At the very least it is quite unethical of them.

reply to post by foodstamp


Since when do you need a college education to be paid decently? It's that type of thinking that causes working people to have substandard wages.I sure wouldn't want to try to live off that,how about you?

After reading your OP, I'm wondering what you majored in for your degree. Research sure wasn't part of it.

As has been pointed out in other posts, Walmart doesn't start you out at 11 bucks an hour, that figure was an average.

Walmart doesn't hire you if you do not have a HS diploma or GED (you an lie about it however).

Walmart employees are many and diverse. About the bottom of the rung is your "Cart Pushers" (the people out in the parking lot gathering the carts and bringing them back to the store).
Majority of the cash register employees are listed as "Part Time" or "Seasonal", with a few "old timers" that are on full time pay.
You have your Sales Associates (which cover the largest amount of employees), Shipping and Receiving. Trucks come in with both GM (General Merchandise) and Produce (which varies from dry goods, to cold to frozen foods). Those trucks get unloaded by the Shipping and Receiving guys with pallet jacks, taken to the shop floor, where the 3rd shift people then stock.

You have the ISO crew.

You have your bakery crew, the deli crew. You have the service desk personnel and cashiers office workers.

You have Personnel and Loss Prevention (these are the guys in regular clothes watching you and catching you if you shop lift).

You have the Pharmacy employees.

You have the CSMs (Customer Service Managers).

The highest "rank" you can get as a Walmart employee with just a HS Diploma or a GED is Department Manager. To go any higher, you have to have at least a 2 year degree. That will land you Assistant Manager, and an Super Center has a LOT of them. Then you have the Co-Manager and Store Manager. Further down the road you have District Manager, Regional Manager and then you head to Home Office in Arkansas.

How do I know all this? My wife. My 2nd oldest daughter. A sister in law. A step aunt, many different friends. All who are Walmart employees.

My wife pulls in just under 14 dollars an hour. She's worked for Walmart for 18 years now. She's a high school graduate, worked as a CNA (Certified Nursing Assistant), and was in the Army Reserves for 8 years.

Why Walmart for her? Because it fit her schedule. Because back then, Walmart didn't have an issue with someone that was in the Army Reserves and when she had to go play Weekend Warrior, the company fully backed her up (this was when Sam Walton was still alive). Back then Walmart was a great place to start out if you needed work, and had never worked before.

Why did she stick with it? Because she's a people person and loves retail. She talks with her customers all the time, many who come back and see her every week. She works in the deli (and could most likely run circles around your butt, while you'd be whining about the hot oil burn you got from the deep fryer, or the cut you got from one of the meat slicers, or having to spend several hours inside a freezer unloading pallets of frozen food for your department).

Is it a great place to work at? If you'd asked her that question over 10 years ago, she would have told you that it was a great place to start out at. Ask her now, and she's tell you: Only if you're desperate for a job.

So much has changed. It used to be that they would work with you on your schedule, but today if you don't have "Open Availability" then your hours will get cut (that's like saying you can't work Mondays because that is the one day you can visit your parents at their nursing home, etc, etc, etc).

Her store stopped hiring full time employees (except for those who have a degree that work in management) and only hire part time now. Don't like it? There's the door, plenty of desperate people out there looking for work......

She'd like to get paid more, but she also knows that if she wanted a better paycheck, then Walmart is not the place to do it at.
So why doesn't she seek other employment? Because she's a fully vested employee. She has a lot of stock that is purchased each payday, she has her 401k, and she has full medical coverage. In 2 more years, she hit's 20 years with them. At that point, she gets to keep her Employee Discount Card (10 percent off all GM purchases) for the rest of her life. As she put it: leaving now would throw away a lot that she invested in it.

Is she a high school drop out? No. Is she someone with a low IQ? Oh hell no. She's as sharp as a tack.

So is my daughter who works as a Pharmacy Tech at Walmart. She's working there, while earning her degree to be an actual Pharmacist.

So sorry OP: not all Walmart employees are brain dead, high school drop outs, with low IQs.

They are just normal people wanting to make a living is all. The biggest complain at my wife's store isn't how much you get paid. It actually the cut in hours. It's very rare for any employee to get 40 hours anymore. She has to fight to get her 36 hours.

Originally posted by Dimithae
reply to post by foodstamp

 

Since when do you need a college education to be paid decently? It's that type of thinking that causes working people to have substandard wages.I sure wouldn't want to try to live off that,how about you?

I know people who have finished vocational schools and still have a hard time trying to make ends meet. These people are neither lazy nor credit card addicts; just normal everyday hard working and honest folks.

Automation and outsourcing have killed the world. It has been a right wing agenda to lie about everything and make people indentured servants, aka feudalism reborn again in modern times. These people hide behind and religion and gun laws. Not saying I am against religion or guns either, just saying they use these items as a smokescreen. And best of all is fight against socialism. Unions are parasites, etc. Brainwash people enough and they will believe anything.

Originally posted by Dimithae
reply to post by foodstamp

 

Since when do you need a college education to be paid decently? It's that type of thinking that causes working people to have substandard wages.

It depends on what you defined as "decent". Much of this thread has been spend arguing about this. What's your definition? If it's about driving a late model car or ownership of a house a notch above the basic, I'm not sure if it's not too much for "decent".

Wake up and smell the coffee -- as much as I discard the "knowledge based economy" as a scam perpetrated on the American people in order to outsource the daylights out of them, there is little arguing that the world is changing anyhow, and knowledge does have a price. If you are willing to work for it, you have a fighting chance.

Originally posted by EarthCitizen07
Automation and outsourcing have killed the world. It has been a right wing agenda to lie about everything and make people indentured servants, aka feudalism reborn again in modern times. These people hide behind and religion and gun laws.

Well said. It p!ssed me to no end that topics like these are used to highjack the discourse about what the nation is about.

Originally posted by buddhasystem

Originally posted by Dimithae
reply to post by foodstamp

 

Since when do you need a college education to be paid decently? It's that type of thinking that causes working people to have substandard wages.

It depends on what you defined as "decent". Much of this thread has been spend arguing about this. What's your definition? If it's about driving a late model car or ownership of a house a notch above the basic, I'm not sure if it's not too much for "decent".

Wake up and smell the coffee -- as much as I discard the "knowledge based economy" as a scam perpetrated on the American people in order to outsource the daylights out of them, there is little arguing that the world is changing anyhow, and knowledge does have a price. If you are willing to work for it, you have a fighting chance.

Knowledge is definitely more valuable than brute force. The question is how much more. My answer is I am not sure yet nor will I ever be. But at the very least wages and salaries should have adjusted for the proper inflation amounts and they have not, going back maybe a hundred years or so.

Brute force definitely plays a vital role in the economy and everyone should the basic right to work, among other basic rights. It should not be a priviledge to find a job and keep it. Today jobs are becoming fewer, the pay rate is going down or at best stagnate, but profits are still going up for the shareholders. When business seeks continual profit growth each year to make the stock attractive for potential investors, that forces management to take shortcuts wherever possible. It becomes a sick addiction to shortchange the workers and the enviroment. It is downward spiral of decay.

I think the stock market had a useful purpose when it first started but I am not sure about that anymore. Speculation has gone through the roof, regulations are not equally applied to big business as much as to small and medium business. Tariffs are too low or non-existant. Save money everywhere to increase the divident payout.

Communism was pretty bad but capitalism is far worse. It is better to be under-motivated than over-motivated. I personally like mixed economies such as in europe aka socialism. But even there socialism has gradually given way to american style capitalism under the pretense of the government cannot efficiently manage resources. I live in europe therefore I should know!

Originally posted by Juggernog
reply to post by EarthCitizen07

 

So, nothing. I was just commenting on his post about the min wage during that time period.

edit on 11/25/2012 by Juggernog because: (no reason given)

I could be wrong, but I think he actually meant his reply for neocon, not you.

reply to post by MountainLaurel


Uh, what? @ $11/hr you come out to $22,880 a year full time. A person making $22,880 would pay $1,534 in income taxes to the Federal, $1,418 to SSA, $331 to medicare.

That is 15% of their income. If they live in a state that taxes income YMWV. California will ding them for another $491. That brings the total to 16.5%.

Moreover, wages that low will qualify for public assistance in expensive areas.

If we wanted to really help those people the best thing we could do is ban income taxes for people who make less than the mean household income. Honestly, it makes no sense to lament their poverty when the government is taking 1 out of every 6 dollars.

Originally posted by GreenGlassDoor
If we wanted to really help those people the best thing we could do is ban income taxes for people who make less than the mean household income. Honestly, it makes no sense to lament their poverty when the government is taking 1 out of every 6 dollars.

I think we must find other ways to help these people (and I do mean that this needs to be figured out), other than "banning" taxes. I really do think that it makes a person less of a citizen when they don't participate (such as they care less about how the tax money is spent). I know there are less fortunate, who can ill afford paying anything at all, but one might hope that in a normal society, this is a small minority of population, not the rule. That is the crux of the problem here in the US, that the income scale has indeed effectively slipped for large segments of population.

reply to post by buddhasystem


Here in the UK our government has said you have to earn over £10k before you pay income tax, I think it comes in next year....Gonna help me out a lot.

Originally posted by boymonkey74
reply to post by buddhasystem

 

Here in the UK our government has said you have to earn over £10k before you pay income tax, I think it comes in next year....Gonna help me out a lot.

Dude, what if you make 10,233.45?

reply to post by buddhasystem


We didn't have an income tax until 1913, so I don't see how anybody not paying taxes is less of a citizen. Moreover, the government is pushing for an idea of an infinite debt ceiling and unlimited QEs. if such a system existed, where how the taxes are spent are irrelevant to the amount pulled in, why have an income tax at all?

I firmly believe the poor shouldn't pay taxes. We won't solve their poverty by taking money from them.

Originally posted by buddhasystem

Originally posted by GreenGlassDoor
If we wanted to really help those people the best thing we could do is ban income taxes for people who make less than the mean household income. Honestly, it makes no sense to lament their poverty when the government is taking 1 out of every 6 dollars.

I think we must find other ways to help these people (and I do mean that this needs to be figured out), other than "banning" taxes. I really do think that it makes a person less of a citizen when they don't participate (such as they care less about how the tax money is spent). I know there are less fortunate, who can ill afford paying anything at all, but one might hope that in a normal society, this is a small minority of population, not the rule. That is the crux of the problem here in the US, that the income scale has indeed effectively slipped for large segments of population.

edit on 26-11-2012 by buddhasystem because: (no reason given)

The problem with the taxation system is that too much goes to pay the national debt and wars, and not enough goes to social welfare programs. The second big problem is that the progressive taxation system starts unreasonably low and includes too many loopholes for the deep millionares(say $100M or more) and especially the billionares. Donating to charities, opening up offshore shell companies and using this for tax evasion, opening trust funds, buying bonds, etc.

The highest bracket should start at lets say $5 million rather than $250,000. Someone who makes a quarter million per year should pay much less taxes cause he is not rich in reality. This is one of the reasons so many people resent the current taxation system; too many small business owners get affected unfairly. 20% would be more reasonable for them. 5% for those that make $50,000 a year, slightly higher for the $100,000 group say 10%. You get the idea. To have actual redistribution society needs to target the powerbrokers and choke off their money supply.

Originally posted by Spike Spiegle
I think they deserve a higher wage that I'm 100% sure of...

Not just Wal Mart employees though, all minimum low wage serve the public jobs need a higher pay.

It is truly ridiculous how little you make at some of these jobs, where it is possible to endure high stress,lousy hours and heartless boss's....

But hey watcha gona do?

*S&F



SS

edit on 063030p://pm3052 by Spike Spiegle because: S&F

Well, that's just great. And then we can all go to McDonalds and buy a $40 hamburger so the 18 year old working the drive thru who lives with his mom and dad can afford to buy a house and a car.

Geebus you just can't talk common sense to people these days.

Originally posted by bluemooone2
reply to post by foodstamp

 

The solution is simple , all you have to do is quit your 8$ job and go to work for Wal Mart for 11$ an hour. (although Im sure they do not start at that wage).
Then you can let us know how that works out for you.
My point here is not really to slam you OP , but its to say that how do people making 11$ an hr at Wal Mart hurt you in any way?
Does it take any money out of your pocket at all?
No! It actually puts more money into average peoples pockets with which they can spend more money (albeit largely on essentials) and that will boost the overall economy.

Ok ok, I was just gonna leave this thread alone but you are about the 30th person with this response. Everyone has repeatedly been viscious and close minded to the whole situation that I just quickly gave up because EVERYONE seems to be missing the point. Not too mention, it would also appear that barely anybody has read the article thoroughly enough.

In the article, you will find that at this "protest" specifically, only one Wal-Mart employee had shown up for the protest. That's what got me thinking, and here's why. Wal-Mart has been in the news REPEATEDLY over the last ten years about them being the biggest company with the MOST "underpaid" employee's. However, These recent "protest" are void of the most important part of a protest. That being, EMPLOYEE'S PROTESTING!

The reason for that (And I being one of these "type" people) is because these type of employees are typically, uneducated, Ex felon's, welfare recipients etc etc. They KNOW what's out there when it comes to jobs and they're not complaining. Not En MASS anyway. Because, They, like myself, know that if you go anywhere else, the "prospects" are not gonna be that good. Now, I didn't include many articles pertaining to the same protests, but if you do a little research, you will find that the protests were all about the same throughout the nation. People protesting, not EMPLOYEE'S protesting.

Now, a person who's somewhat educated and actually has read the article (and hasn't just parroted the general consensus) would look at this and say, "hmmmm, that's odd, I wonder why, hmmmm, let's discuss it". But obviously that is too much for the average ATS'er.

Anyway, my tough talk aside, I DID in fact think about this. WHY are people who are not affiliated with Wal-Mart, protesting Wal-Mart? Well, THAT's what this thread is about. Any reference made to my felony was in response to ONE guy who was complaining about something off topic. I believe it was along the line of "Why Am I "complaining" about it in the first place."

So, with THAT being said, I will conclude with why I titled the thread what I did. It is my general consensus that these "people" are protesting in response to media newsbits over the years. They are not affiliated with Wal-Mart nor do they realieze that the employees are getting an average wage. Are the Over paid? Definatley not, however, these employees (generally speaking) are the types of people who's only alternative is to go to the factory or McDonald's down the street and surely be paid minimum wage with next to no real chance of advancement. So, They're not complaining. AND THAT'S SAYING ALOT!

So, when you have have any article that states that, "Wal Mart Employees protest nationwide." And you come to find out that Wal Mart employee's are NOT protesting nationwide. We just may wanna call it one thing, BS.

I hope I've cleared this up for you and all the other people who've taken the time to trash me and make fun of me when instead they could've (god forbid) opened up their mind and burnt a braincell or two over a good subject/thread. Instead of mindless drivel.

Not you specifically sir, but this whole community of people has left me with a sick stomach and a grim outlook on the way people go about filtering information. It's instead been one big "hatefest" and a waste of time. If I was halfway in the know about how to work my OP status, I would erase this useless thread.

Ohh BTW, My apoligies for those few of you who did in fact ponder this wonderful and interesting subject for reasons I didn't even imagine. Kudos and stars to ALL OF YOU!

reply to post by EarthCitizen07


Please see my post above this one. I am quite curious as to what you think about the fact that barely any actual Wal-Mart employees participated in these protests. And how is the media to blame for the protests by the masses? What's your observation?

Originally posted by Dimithae
reply to post by foodstamp

 

Since when do you need a college education to be paid decently? It's that type of thinking that causes working people to have substandard wages.I sure wouldn't want to try to live off that,how about you?

Please go back and read the article. You will find that barely any employees were participating in these protests. That's the subject matter and that's what I'm interested in when it comes to your opinion.

In response to your post. I agree with you 100%. One's potential, efficiency, and profitability should determine wages. They would If you worked for me anyway.