Wal-Mart's political blunders

[estranged4life]

http://www.slate.com/id/2196774/

Always Dumb Politics. Always Wal-Mart.
The retailer's clumsy, self-defeating attempts to influence Washington.
By Daniel Gross

A Wal-Mart store in California
Last Friday, the Wall Street Journal reported that retailing giant Wal-Mart, concerned about a potential Democratic sweep this fall, has been not-so-subtly indoctrinating managers and department heads about the perils of an Obama presidency. The operating assumption in Bentonville seems to be that a Democratic president and a Democratic Congress would pass laws such the Employee Free Choice Act, which would make it easier for unions to organize at Wal-Mart, thus hurting the company, its workers, and its shareholders. And while the executives running the meetings were careful not to instruct workers which lever to pull, the upshot was clear. "I am not a stupid person," a Wal-Mart customer-service supervisor told the Journal. "They were telling me how to vote."

Wal-Mart denied that it was engaging in partisan politics. But, even so, these meetings are the latest in a series of clumsy political moves. Wal-Mart may be a master of many domains: global supply chains and logistics, local politics and zoning, anti-union warfare and branding. But on the stage of national politics, it has proved to be strikingly inept. Its executives seem to have a cartoonish understanding of the way Washington works, ascribing mythic powers to the nation's continually weakening private sector unions and misunderstanding the linkages between party control in Washington and its impact on the performance of the economy and individual companies.

For starters, Wal-Mart has pursued what would appear to be a self-contradictory political strategy. Clearly, Wal-Mart fears the prospect of unionization more than any other factor. Low wages, low benefits, and a generally supine workforce have been fundamental to its business model for decades. Wal-Mart clearly believes Democrats are more sympathetic to unions than Republicans. So one might think that the company would be doing everything in its power to help Republicans and hurt Democrats. That's certainly what it used to do. In the 2000 campaign cycle, its political action committee devoted 85 percent of its donations to candidates for federal office to Republicans; in 2004, the split was 78 percent to 22 percent. But with Democrats having resumed control of Congress, Wal-Mart has increasingly deployed corporate resources to help Democrats stay in power. So far in this cycle, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, Wal-Mart has basically split its $884,700 in donations equally between the two parties (52 percent to 48 percent in favor of the Republicans). The list of recipients includes long-standing friends of organized labor such as Rep. Charles Rangel of New York and Sen. Debbie Stabenow of Michigan.

Wal-Mart seems to be trying to help Democrats in retail politics, too. In the fall of 2006, Wal-Mart, seeking to bolster its public image, kicked off a campaign to help its 1.3 million employees—whoops, I mean "associates"—register to vote. The company hasn't published results of this campaign. But given the demographic makeup of Wal-Mart's workforce, any such efforts would seem to help Democrats. As Wal-Mart's 2006 EEOC data shows, 61 percent of employees are women, including 75 percent of sales workers, while 17.5 percent of workers are African-Americans and 11.4 percent are Hispanic. So it has spent money and effort helping to register voters who are quite likely to vote for Democrats.

As it tries to scare managers and workers about the inevitable triumph of unions should the Democrats sweep this fall, Wal-Mart also seriously misreads recent political history. The company behaves as if private-sector unions are juggernauts gaining strength, enjoying enormous support in Washington, and bending the Democratic Party to their will. In reality, private sector unions are very weak and getting weaker. Data from the statistical abstract of the United States show that in 2006, just 8.1 percent of private-sector workers (7.4 million) were covered by unions, down from 9.8 percent in 2000 and 15.9 percent in 1985. Given the massive job reductions in the auto industry, the figures are almost certainly lower now. Yes, big unions such as SEIU and AFL-CIO spend money on (mostly Democratic) campaigns and help get out the (mostly Democratic) vote. But the long-term trend is against unions and has been so under all partisan combinations in Washington. While Washington Republicans are almost uniformly hostile to organized labor, Washington Democrats aren't exactly the second coming of Samuel Gompers. Remember that NAFTA, a piece of legislation that organized labor vociferously opposed, was passed in 1993, when a Democrat was in the White House and Democrats controlled both houses of Congress. In today's enlarged Democratic tent—with its upscale constituencies on the coasts and newly flipped districts in places like Mississippi, North Carolina, and Texas—unions just don't matter as much. (While this shift could explain Wal-Mart's increased willingness to fund Democratic candidates, it strikes me as too subtle a change to register with Wal-Mart's Manichean strategists.)

Finally, consider this. Wal-Mart's brass plainly believes—no, know—that a Republican president would be good for Wal-Mart, while a Democrat would be bad. Despite Clinton's Arkansas roots, most Wal-Mart executives probably opposed Clinton in both his successful campaigns. But during his presidency, Wal-Mart's stock more than tripled. By contrast, Wal-Mart executives polled in 2000 would have been exultant at the prospect of two George W. Bush terms, especially if they were to be coupled with mostly Republican control of the House and Senate. And yet this decade has been a lost one for Wal-Mart shareholders: In the Bush years, the stock hasn't budged at all.

Yes, politics matters. But in the end, the macroeconomic climate matters a lot more. Wal-Mart's success ultimately depends on whether the lower-income and middle-income customers on whom it depends are doing well or getting eaten up by stagnant incomes and rising costs for health care and gas. Here, again, the last two decades offer a pretty good contrast. In the 1990s, when a Democrat was in the White House, the rising economic tide lifted all boats (though not all boats equally), and Wal-Mart benefited. In this decade, the rising tide lifted only the yachts. The Bush years have been something of an economic disaster for people on the lower rungs of the income ladders. Census data show that household income in 2006 was below its 1999 peak and that the uninsured rate has steadily risen throughout the decade. Layer on soaring energy prices in the past couple of years, and you've got trouble. It's not all the fault of Bush or congressional Republicans, of course. But it's pretty clear that the dominant fiscal and economic policies of the past eight years—massive tax cuts for the wealthy, economic royalism, hostility to labor, and neglect on health care—haven't made things better for Wal-Mart customers.

Instead of asking whether a particular candidate or political party will be favorable to Wal-Mart's labor-relations policies, the executives in Bentonville, Ark., should be asking whether the candidate or party will be good for Wal-Mart's customers.

[strandinthewind]

^^

Nice -

We don't care how you vote - but here is some general info. we want you to read on official work time -- translation - vote this way or you are fired

[gldstwmn]

No one in their right mind should shop or work there.

[ajmccarrell]

Originally Posted by gldstwmn

No one in their right mind should shop or work there.

My favorite store! They help the poor by providing cheaper prices. Where else can you buy milk for $2.99?! All hurting Walmart does is hurt consumers and hurt poor people that shop there. Econ 101, yet again! Why are you targeting the poor and needy?! You think someone like Safeway pays more or pays great benefits?! They wouldn't even hire some of the same people Walmart would. Face it, low skilled workers would be totally unemployed without Walmart. Do you think being on welfare is better? Walmart is the new cotton that is revitalizing the south. You also hurt a Buckingham Nicks'er, IE Gary Hodges, as he works there on his off seasons.

[David]

Originally Posted by gldstwmn

No one in their right mind should shop or work there.

Why not? I buy my Ranch Doritos there!

[gldstwmn]

Originally Posted by ajmccarrell

My favorite store!

Of course it is! Keep contributing to the death of the American way of life. Shop China Mart! Tell Gary I hope he finds himself a good, union job soon.

[strandinthewind]

Originally Posted by David

Why not? I buy my Ranch Doritos there!

This explains much

[ajmccarrell]

Originally Posted by gldstwmn

Of course it is! Keep contributing to the death of the American way of life. Shop China Mart! Tell Gary I hope he finds himself a good, union job soon.

It's not contributing to the death of the American way of life, it is contributing to it. We get cheaper goods from there, people who would otherwise be unemployed living off the state work there, poor people have a place to go where their dollar is stretched, and poor old people can get their prescriptions in most locations for pocket change. If you are complaining about it being Chinese goods, who else sells American anymore? Walmart is hardly unique in selling cheap Chinese goods. It's too darn expensive to resell American goods, due to union wages and waste, high taxes, and overregulation. One example is that GM has to pay laid off workers for two years after they stop working, and we wonder why American manufacturing is in trouble?! Stop taxing corporations to death and overregulating them, and places like Walmart would start buying American again. You're blaming the symptom, not the problem. Why on Earth anyone hates Walmart is beyond me.

[strandinthewind]

Originally Posted by ajmccarrell

. . . Why on Earth anyone hates Walmart is beyond me.

Why is it you always see only one side of the issue. Yes, WalMart sells goods at a cheap price and it employees many people. Those, on their own are good things.

On the other hand, the aceive this ostensibly laudable goal by doing crappy things to their employees like forcing them to work part time so WalMart does not have to pay them benefits.

Here are some other bad acts:

http://wakeupwalmart.com/facts/

I like WalMart, but they are by no means without fault and that fault often is not seen when they present their squeaky clean, Christian image.

Similary, you complain about regulating the corps in America, but all that regulation came about because for years these very same corps were making people work 12 hour days for slave wages and not providing them with any benefits. That kind of capitalism is not really what America is about in my book. Do you really think deregulating all companies and letting them do whatever they want to their emplyees is a better method, given the history of that

I personally hate WalMart because it is too crowded.

[David]

Originally Posted by strandinthewind

On the other hand, the aceive this ostensibly laudable goal by doing crappy things to their employees like forcing them to work part time so WalMart does not have to pay them benefits.

Using words like "forcing" clouds the issue, even if it's only a manner of speaking. No one is forced to work at Walmart by Walmart in any capacity. And what's wrong with my Ranch Doritos?! I alternate Doritos with Japanese rice crackers (bar mix). I tease my palate with frequent change.

[strandinthewind]

Originally Posted by David

Using words like "forcing" clouds the issue, even if it's only a manner of speaking. No one is forced to work at Walmart by Walmart in any capacity. And what's wrong with my Ranch Doritos?! I alternate Doritos with Japanese rice crackers (bar mix). I tease my palate with frequent change.

LOL - I love Ranch Doritos

Well, Walmart has intituted changes in work times, etc. that have been designed to force out higher paid workers, to wit:

October 2, 2006

Wal-Mart to Add Wage Caps and Part-Timers

By STEVEN GREENHOUSE and MICHAEL BARBARO

Wal-Mart, the nation’s largest private employer, is pushing to create a cheaper, more flexible work force by capping wages, using more part-time workers and scheduling more workers on nights and weekends.

Wal-Mart executives say they have embraced new policies for a large number of their 1.3 million workers to better serve their customers, especially at busy shopping times — and point out that competitors like Sears and Target have made some of these moves, too.

But some Wal-Mart workers say the changes are further reducing their already modest incomes and putting a serious strain on their child-rearing and personal lives. Current and former Wal-Mart workers say some managers have insisted that they make themselves available around the clock, and assert that the company is making changes with an eye to forcing out longtime higher-wage workers to make way for lower-wage part-time employees.

Investment analysts and store managers say Wal-Mart executives have told them the company wants to transform its work force to 40 percent part-time from 20 percent. Wal-Mart denies it has a goal of 40 percent part-time workers, although company officials say that part-timers now make up 25 percent to 30 percent of workers, up from 20 percent last October.

To some extent, Wal-Mart is simply doing what business strategists recommend: deploying workers more effectively to meet the peaks and valleys of business in their stores. Wall Street, which has put pressure on Wal-Mart to raise its stock price, has endorsed the strategy, with analysts praising the new approach to managing its workers. In the last three years, the stock price has fallen about 10 percent, closing at $49.32 a share on Friday.

“They need to be doing some of this,” said Charles Grom, an analyst at J. P. Morgan Chase who covers Wal-Mart. It lets the company schedule employees “when they are generating most of their sales — at lunch, in the evening on the weekends.”

But Sally Wright, 67, an $11-an-hour greeter at the Wal-Mart in Ponca City, Okla., said she quit in August after 22 years with the company when managers pressed her to make herself available to work any time, day or night. She requested staying on the day shift, but her manager reduced her schedule from 32 hours a week to 8 and refused her pleas for more hours, she said.

“They were trying to get rid of me,” Ms. Wright said. “I think it was to save on health insurance and on the wages.”

Wal-Mart vigorously denies it is pushing out longtime or full-time employees and says its moves will ensure its competitiveness. The company says it gives employees three weeks’ notice of their schedules and takes their preferences into account, but that description differs from those of many workers interviewed. Workers said that their preferences were often ignored and that they were often given only a few days’ notice of scheduling changes.

These moves have been unfolding in the year since Wal-Mart’s top human resources official sent the company’s board a confidential memo stating, with evident concern, that experienced employees were paid considerably more than workers with just one year on the job, while being no more productive. The memo, disclosed by The New York Times in October 2005, also recommended hiring healthier workers and more part-time workers because they were less likely to enroll in Wal-Mart’s health plan.

Other big retailers, with or without unions, have begun using more part-time workers, adopted wage caps and instituted more demanding work schedules in one form or another. But because Wal-Mart is such a giant — its $312 billion in sales last year exceeded the sales of the next five biggest retailers combined — its new labor practices may well influence policies more broadly.

And Wal-Mart’s tougher scheduling demands could be especially taxing on workers because, unlike its competitors, the chain has many stores — more than 1,900 out of 4,000 — that are open 24 hours.

Human resources experts have long said that companies benefit most from having experienced workers. Yet Wal-Mart officials say the efficiencies they gain will outweigh the effects of having what labor experts say would be a less experienced, less stable, lower-paid work force.

Sarah Clark, a Wal-Mart spokeswoman, said the company viewed the changes as “a productivity improvement through which we will improve the shopping experience for our customers and make Wal-Mart a better place to work for our associates,” as Wal-Mart refers to its employees.

But some workplace experts point to the downside of the policies. Susan J. Lambert, a professor of social sciences at the University of Chicago who has written several research papers on retail workers, called it a burden for employees to cope with constant schedule changes.

“You have to set up child care for every day just in case you have to work,” she said, “and this makes it hard to establish routines like reading to your kids at night or having dinner together as a family.”

The adoption of wage caps has also been difficult for many workers to swallow. Workers will never receive annual raises if their pay is at or above the cap, unless they move to a higher-paying job category. Wal-Mart says the caps will encourage workers to seek higher-paying jobs with more responsibility.

To compensate for lost future wages under the new system, Wal-Mart made one-time payments of $200 to $400 to workers whose pay was near or over the caps. Several workers described that as “hush money.”

Ramiro Gonzalez, who works in the produce department of a Wal-Mart in El Paso, said that many longtime workers were fuming about the caps.

No matter how hard people work, “we won’t get anything else out of it,” said Mr. Gonzalez, who earns $11.18 an hour, or about $23,000 a year, after six years with Wal-Mart. “The message is, if I don’t like it, there is the door. They are trying to hit people who have the most experience so they can leave.”

In the confidential memo sent to Wal-Mart’s board last year, M. Susan Chambers, who was recently promoted to be Wal-Mart’s executive vice president in charge of human resources, questioned whether it was cost-efficient to employ longtime workers. “Given the impact of tenure on wages and benefits,” she wrote, “the cost of an associate with 7 years of tenure is almost 55 percent more than the cost of an associate with 1 year of tenure, yet there is no difference in his or her productivity.”

The memo said, “the shift to more part-time associates will lower Wal-Mart’s health-care enrollment” even though Wal-Mart was reducing the amount of time to one year, from two, that part-time workers would have to wait to qualify for health insurance.

Workers say there is some evidence that the goals outlined in Ms. Chambers’ memo are being put into practice. At several stores in Florida, employees said, managers have suddenly barred older employees with back or leg problems from sitting on stools after using them for years while working as cashiers, store greeters or fitting-room attendants. Wal-Mart said it had no companywide policy on stool use and did not have enough information to comment.

In August, Wal-Mart sent all store managers a confidential document called “Facility Manager Toolkit.” It instructed them to tell workers that the new pay system helped “establish pay levels that are competitive in the local job market, helping us to attain and retain the talent we need.”

If a worker asked whether the wage caps were “one more attempt to get rid of long-service Wal-Mart workers,” the manager was to respond that this was “not an attempt to ‘get rid’ of long term associates,” but was “consistent with our objective to maintain internally equitable pay levels,” according to the document. The memo was supplied to The New York Times by WakeUpWalMart.com, a group funded by the United Food and Commercial Workers, which has tried to organize Wal-Mart workers in the past.

Though some workers have quit in response to the pay caps and scheduling policies, Wal-Mart says it has received an average of seven applications for every job opening at a new store in the last three months.

Wal-Mart generally prohibits reporters from interviewing workers in its stores. The Times contacted employees through union-backed groups, Wal-Mart, employment lawyers and referrals from current and former workers.

A big area of discrepancy between what Wal-Mart says and what the workers say is whether the company has a policy of “open availability,” requiring employees to make themselves available around the clock. Ms. Clark, the Wal-Mart spokeswoman, said the company had no such a policy, adding, “Our main goal is to match the ratio of associates to customers shopping in our stores resulting in better customer service hour by hour.” Wal-Mart says it pays higher wages to night-shift workers.

But in March, workers from a Wal-Mart in Nitro, W.Va., held a small protest rally in the center of town after Wal-Mart managers demanded 24-hour availability and cut the hours of workers who balked. And workers from other stores around the country said in interviews that similar demands had been made on them.

Houston Turcott, the former overnight stocking manager at the Wal-Mart in Yakima, Wash., said that managers had told workers, “Either they had full, open availability so we can schedule them when we would like or we would cut their hours.”

Tracie Sandin, who worked in the Yakima store’s over-the-counter drug department until last February, said, “They said, if you don’t have open availability, you’re put on the bottom of the list for hours.”

Ms. Sandin said that many Wal-Mart employees disliked the tougher scheduling demands, which typically did not take seniority into account. “It makes it hard,” she said. “If you have a function with your child or you want to go to church on Sunday, you don’t want to miss those things.”

Tim Hahn, who oversees three workers as manager of the housewares department of a Wal-Mart in Lake St. Louis, Mo., said that two of his subordinates had left their schedules open, but one did not for family reasons. Mr. Hahn said “it helps a lot” to have two workers who have agreed to work during the day or night.

“Sometimes they work two nights a week and two days a week,” he said. “If there is an issue with a schedule, they can approach me. It’s something we will work to solve. If they need this day off, I am happy to give it to them.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/02/bu...02walmart.html

But, I agree with you that perople are not forced to work there. It just sucks when you lose your job because you have been there too long

[ajmccarrell]

Originally Posted by David

Using words like "forcing" clouds the issue, even if it's only a manner of speaking. No one is forced to work at Walmart by Walmart in any capacity. And what's wrong with my Ranch Doritos?! I alternate Doritos with Japanese rice crackers (bar mix). I tease my palate with frequent change.

EXACTLY! Walmart doesn't put a gun to your head to make you work there. You either work there because you're in between jobs, in the off season of your regular job, are in college, elderly and just need a part time income, or you are someone who is otherwise unemployable. Basically, no one but the last category makes a career out of it. I've had a LOT of crappy jobs, but I'm free to go work someplace else.

I think the basic problem with the argument you were responding to is one of expectation. You don't go to work at Walmart expecting full time employment and benefits. Who on Earth thinks that you're actually going to get that in retail anywhere?! No one targets Target, K-Mart, Kroeger, Safeway, Albertson's, Von's, or any other retail outlet. They target Walmart because it is successful and the world's largest company. Some people just base their opinions on envy and a vague concept of "fairness" instead of what is really best for everyone.

[strandinthewind]

^^

Please provide support for this arguement. The article I quoted above indicates WalMart employees do work there and expect that

I get that people may be free to go someplace else, but not everyone has the ability to take up that so called option. For example, where else is the 67 year old greet in the article above going to go? Who is going to hire her? Apparently, she was going a good job for WalMart though.

Out of curiosity, do you acknowledge that WalMart does anything bad to its employees?

On edit -- all companies do bad things to their employees. But, that does not make it right GThe topic of this thread was WalMart, not Target or those other companies

[David]

Originally Posted by strandinthewind

Out of curiosity, do you acknowledge that WalMart does anything bad to its employees?

Did you know that Ludovico Beethoven's sensitive & esteemed patron, His Royal Highness the Archduke Rudolph, was once caught dressing in women's panties?

[ajmccarrell]

Originally Posted by David

Did you know that Ludovico Beethoven's sensitive & esteemed patron, His Royal Highness the Archduke Rudolph, was once caught dressing in women's panties?

I actually did know that, but only because I'm a Beethoven junkie. Personally, I thought Lobkowitz got a raw deal with Eroica. I mean, getting Napoleon's leftovers....