Work Is A Beautiful Thing. Wal-Mart To Invest $250 Billion

reply to post by Kangaruex4Ewe


As the daughter of two parents who worked their lives in a factory, watching this made me cry. So ironic that a corporation complicit and partially responsible for the problems we have with outsourcing, is now going to try and turn it around? I don't know. Can it be turned around? Is it too late?

Lately I have felt so hopeless and depressed. My husband and I feel as if we have been thrown into the abyss.

reply to post by hounddoghowlie


They built a new supercenter in my town too. I'm in a rural area. They boasted of hiring on 188 new positions. They opened in October, and by the time January 10th rolled around, they let 188 people go.

You walk into that store, and you see 20 lanes, but only two are open during the busiest time.

After seeing how they handle employment, I can't feel overly positive about their job creation scheme.

unb3k44n7
"If it sounds too good to be true it probably is"

There's going to be a catch(s) to this...there has to be... Methinks they are not going to be the type of "manufacturing jobs" you're thinking of...the ones where a good man can put a an honest days work, support his family and know it etc. They're going to be the kind of jobs that replicate the kind of moral, ethical and environmental business standards they already run. Need I be specific and elaborate. (I don't think I do)

You mean like this? Anyone remember what this used to look like?

reply to post by Kangaruex4Ewe


i smell a war coming ...were the factories of yester year not turned into a thriving war machine...?

.this could be a good thing but the cynic in me sees a potential for another agenda at play here,surely wallmart are in the loop for future plan and if not they could be playing out anothers agenda

Aisling
reply to post by Kangaruex4Ewe

 

As the daughter of two parents who worked their lives in a factory, watching this made me cry. So ironic that a corporation complicit and partially responsible for the problems we have with outsourcing, is now going to try and turn it around? I don't know. Can it be turned around? Is it too late?

Lately I have felt so hopeless and depressed. My husband and I feel as if we have been thrown into the abyss.

That's the reaction I had to it as well. I am surrounded by huge "white elephants" here. Factories that are just sitting there vacant, and useless. One or two of those never even opened the doors upon completion. If you lived here... it's what you did. It's what you knew you would do if you didn't want to go for higher education. And you could do it. You could make a good living working 4 12 hour days a week. One factory closed to go to Mexico, and it snowballed from there.

The commercial certainly was well done, and it pulled at many heartstrings I am sure. And I hope it isn't too late to turn it around. Maybe I am naive, but I hope a turn around can be had eventually with or without Wal-Mart. You are not alone. My husband and I feel the same way you do. It's not a good feeling to feel like there is absolutely no hope of ever getting ahead, even if just a little. I refuse to give up all hope forever though because sometimes that's the only thing you have.

I hope your situation improves much sooner than later.

reply to post by Aisling


That is one of the best songs ever made. Judging from your posts... I would say you are close to my neck of the woods. Alabama wrote that song at a time where most everyone took pride in what they did and the future looked bright. Let's hope that's not the last time we see anything like it!

hopenotfeariswhatweneed
reply to post by Kangaruex4Ewe

 

i smell a war coming ...were the factories of yester year not turned into a thriving war machine...?

.this could be a good thing but the cynic in me sees a potential for another agenda at play here,surely wallmart are in the loop for future plan and if not they could be playing out anothers agenda

It's hard to keep that inner cynic from coming out, I know. Real life tends to do that to us after a while. All we can do is wait and see. I am not naively expecting miracles, but I would like to hope that something good will come out of this. We have to catch a break once in a while one would think.

reply to post by Bassago


That's my thoughts on this too.
I hope we're wrong.

hanyak69
COMING a Walmart sweat shop near you........just wait eventually we will all work for Walmart.
Or do we already?

I saw this coming a mile off.

Close down manufacturing and send jobs overseas and put everyone on the dole. Choke off everyone's benefits so they're on the brink of desperation, then bring back manufacturing and they'll be grateful to work for crumbs, or less.

TPTB now need the older generations to die off. We're the ones who have real-life experience and memories of better treatment, when workers had rights and work provided a good standard of living. We're the ones who can compare that to today and we can see how bad it has become. By the time your kids and grandkids are born it will be already bad, but they won't know any different, and we old timers will no longer be around to tell of how it used to be, and how it should be.

They're already brainwashing our kids in school and pumping them with Ritalin if they don't sit still, be quiet, and conform. It sounds horrific to me, but it has become the norm for today's generation. Any 'rebellious' type of behaviour is now suppressed at an early age with drugs.

We're not leaving a very nice world or society for them to inherit. We will be curses on their lips as they miserably slave away, because although we all saw it coming, we lamely stood by and did nothing.

If they do go ahead and revamp manufacturing in the US, I may pull my opinion of them out of the gutter slightly. It ultimately depends on how well the employees are treated & paid before I have even a marginally good opinion of them, I know too many people stuck in their crap-for-pay trap jobs... We'll see how this venture of theirs goes.

I have such a heard time to believe this.

The catch will likely be that those who will be "allowed" to work in those factories will get less paid as their Chinese counterpart who is ALREADY getting pennies for their work.

Obviously I wish it was true, that walmart (from ALL companies, lol) would all-of-a-sudden get the epiphany that creating work is indeed the most important thing...but I can't see this happening when it as a result would create massive losses for walmart, which NECESSARILY must happen if they were to stop buying overseas.

(Obviously, it would be the right thing when those "losses" mean less money for the billionaire and then flow directly as wages into the pockets of the workers...but it would just be the exact anti-thesis of capitalism...so I have a hard time to buy this. You don't cause disaster over decades and then from one day to the other become a Saint and make a 180 turn.....)

$250 billion?
That will pay for a bunch of part time slaves with no benefits and executive officers making 600% of the rabble that "do not work hard enough" to earn the executive jobs.
$25 billion a year over 10 years?

How much of that is going to be picked up by the taxpayer rather than Walmart?
How much are Wal-Mart's quarterly and annual profits?
How much tax has Wal-Mart paid in the last 20 years?

The best thing Walli could do if it hasn't already been mentioned is to allow the bulk of their already employed that are underemployed to have real full time hours.



Start there first.

amfirst1
America will be a third world nation soon with the flood of illegals and economic collapse, it would be profitable to bring manufacturing back.

Illegals are not the problem. It's the companies that prefer to hire them instead of Americans that are the problem.

the owlbear
$250 billion?
That will pay for a bunch of part time slaves with no benefits and executive officers making 600% of the rabble that "do not work hard enough" to earn the executive jobs.
$25 billion a year over 10 years?

How much of that is going to be picked up by the taxpayer rather than Walmart?
How much are Wal-Mart's quarterly and annual profits?
How much tax has Wal-Mart paid in the last 20 years?

Seeing how Walmart employees get almost 2 billion a year in federal aid look for the tax payer to pick up the check for even more. It would help the economy a lot if Walmart would just pay their people a livable wage.

reply to post by Kangaruex4Ewe


I doubt this new Walmart initiative has anything to do with any change of heart with respect to "doing the right thing." If anything, I think it is representative of the fact that their long term business planning is coming into fruition.

Corporations the size of Walmart do not operate on a year to year basis but rather, they have business plans that project 30+ years into the future.

Isn't this the very same company that has repeatedly forced their suppliers to move manufacturing overseas in the past? Now they want to be the hero that brings them home again? PLEASE!

For your pleasure, here's an article from 2012 entitled "NOT MADE IN AMERICA: TOP 10 WAYS WALMART DESTROYS US MANUFACTURING JOBS" where they elaborate on each of these strategies;

www.tradereform.org...

1. Buying billions of goods that weren’t made in America.
2. Pushing U.S. companies to move their factories overseas.
3. Making it easier for other U.S. retailers to buy from foreign factories.
4. Forcing layoffs among its U.S. suppliers.
5. Promoting domestic sweatshops.
6. Squeezing U.S. manufacturers out of business.
7. Discouraging American innovation.
8. Driving competitors to squeeze manufacturing.
9. Lobbying for policies that make it easier to move U.S. jobs overseas.
10. Making growing inequality the accepted norm

If anything, I think it's fairly obvious that Walmart planned this all along.

First, they move in and build these huge super-sized stores across America where they force their suppliers to outsource manufacturing to insure the lowest possible prices for their customers. A strategy that has proven to undermine local economies across this nation, forcing smaller mom & pop businesses to close their doors in mass. All the while, utilizing a workforce that is overworked, underpaid and subsidized by the taxpayers. Believe it or not, they openly instruct their employees to apply for taxpayer funded social services.

Not to mention the fact that they lobbied for and got, tax breaks for doing all this.

Now that we're talking about closing those tax loopholes and instituting breaks for companies who bring manufacturing home and now that the American middle class has been decimated to the point where minimum wage jobs, (producing below poverty level incomes) are looked at as opportunities, they're ready to step in and become the new American hero? Come on! Do you really believe that?

They got tax breaks for taking our jobs away and now they're out to get tax breaks for bringing them back. This is not about doing what's best for America, it's about doing what's best for Walmart and it's an absolute joke!

Maluhia
they profit most from low or no wage earners.

When those wage earners are 7,000 miles away and Wal-Mart has to ship what they make over here, yes, they will be low wage earners in order for the company to make a profit.When you take those jobs and bring them back over here where they belong, Wal-Mart can afford to pay the factory workers more because they no longer have those sky-high shipping costs. And if they crunch the numbers right, they would actually be able to pay the retail workers more as well and still not have an effect on their bottom line. They would still be making as much of a profit as they did before. Everybody wins. It would make their workers and shoppers happy and when that happens, it's good for business.

There is a factory in the U.S., it's been there for at least a few decades, that makes everything a store needs to put goods into the store. Next time you walk into Wal Mart imagine all the shelves are empty. What you see then has been manufactured right here in the U.S. for a very long time and the workers make very good money. And it's not just Wal=Mart they supply. When the recession hit all those years ago, the area in which that factory sits got hit hard. It was financially devastated. Wally World kept going though, and so did that factory. It was probably then that Wal-Mart first realized that keeping work "in house", in the country, was the financially stable thing to do, and if their shareholders look at anything, it's financial stability.

People bitch because Wal-Mart makes money. The fact of the matter is that if you ran a company that had the potential that Wal-Mart had, and you saw a business model that could take your growth far and fast, you would utilize it. You'ld be a fool if you didn't. True, they made some boneheaded decisions in the past, but that can be chalked up to growing pains. No company in the history of this nation has grown so much so fast, and that's something their business model simply could not take into account. There was no precedent for that growth. Nothing to compare it to so, yes, mistakes were inevitable. Some of those mistakes are still ongoing, but as they get a better grip on how big they are and how much influence they have on the global economy, those mistakes will be fine-tuned. They have to be in order for Wally to keep going.

This isn't a Wal-Mart love fest either. This is simply getting people to stop being so emotional about the thing and start looking at Wal-Mart from a business perspective. They look at you that way, so return the favor.

Ten years is a long time for this to fade from memory.

Local Store got taken over by big box stores, and big box stores are getting taken over by the internet stores. Will 3D printing take over internet stores? Will manufacturing become outdated in ten years?

The next big thing is always around the corner.

this country needs those jobs but they need them to be full-time jobs at decent livable wages with decent benefits. i have a hard time believing that wal-mart would create those types of jobs. if there record says anything, the jobs created will be part-time jobs at near minimum wage with the benefits being close to none. when all is said and done those types of jobs will only make things worse for america.

So if I intentionally burn down my neighbors home,

Can I build a shack in its place and get peoples accolades for being such a humanitarian?


Walmart helped destroy Americas manufacturing base, Routinely under employs people to avoid health care...

All i see is a 250 billion investment to save on shipping,

They tanked the american manufacturing base and now they get to Hire people on the cheep, and not have to ship across the Pacific to get it.

Third world working conditions,

First world convince.

Thank you walmart...

Probably finally realized their customer base is going to the dollar store. Most companies have realized that raising the prices because sales are falling is a temporary fix that has a corporate dead end. Lots of jobs are coming back to the US because they need customers. Our city had like 23 empty factories 5 years ago and the last one was sold a couple of weeks ago. Things are picking up

Wallmart is NOT about helping Americans.....
Wallmart is about helping ITSELF!
If they are for real about this....they intend to cash in somehow.......
Probably at YOUR expense..............