When Workers Come Together

[_Gunnar]

And for the record here, I don't have any skilled employee making less than $22/hr (plus benefits) in any of my businesses. They work hard and deserve it. 48% of my workforce is Latino. 18% are African Americans 21% are women. And my turnover is less than 4% annually.

Well, then, judging by that, you are a better and more admirable employer than Walmart! Do you really have any serious argument with the OP that what Walmart did was wrong or that they deserved the judgment against them?

[_honorentheos]

And for the record here, I don't have any skilled employee making less than $22/hr (plus benefits) in any of my businesses. They work hard and deserve it. 48% of my workforce is Latino. 18% are African Americans 21% are women. And my turnover is less than 4% annually.

Out of curiosity, how many hours per week do your employees average (skilled and unskilled)? And what percentage of your employees do not qualify as "skilled"?

[_Kevin Graham]

Bach has no employees. He's trolling as usual.

[_honorentheos]

Bach has no employees. He's trolling as usual.

His numbers are interesting. I'm guessing what he left out says a lot more than what he chose to share.

[_Gunnar]

Walmart Statistics
According to the statistics in the above link, Walmart has 2,200,000 employees world wide. The total amount of profit that Walmart makes, on average, every single minute of every day, 7 days a week is $34,985. That is a total profit of $352,643,800 profit per week. Assuming that all those 2,200,000 employees world wide put in an average work week of 40 hours (which is questionable since not all of them work full time), the average profit Walmart makes per worker per hour of logged in work time is about $4.00 at current Walmart wage scales. So there is some room to raise salary scales and still make a decent profit without drastically increasing prices, though not as much as I might have expected. However, many Walmart prices are low enough so that even with a moderate increase, they would still be quite competitive and affordable, it seems to me.

[Guest]

This is the very problem of those seeking entitlement - they want to have their life's needs fulfilled by the effort of others! The very effort they believe Is not their responsibility.

This characterization could also describe top management at Walmart and many other companies that commit the behaviors mentioned in the OP's link.

[_Gunnar]

This is the very problem of those seeking entitlement - they want to have their life's needs fulfilled by the effort of others! The very effort they believe Is not their responsibility.

This characterization could also describes top management at Walmart and many other companies that commit the behaviors mentioned in the OP's link.

Excellent! This may be the most important point to be drawn from the OP's link and underscores the hypocrisy of the conservative, Republican viewpoint.

[_canpakes]

I wish Cinepro would chime in. I don't want to misrepresent his position but he believes that it would be better to help the underemployed through social welfare and EICs than by raising the minimum wage.

That's a great way to socialize the hidden cost of paying workers wages that are low enough to allow or require participation in welfare/assistance programs.

I'm a bit more of a free-market capitalist who believes that a company should pay reasonable wages, with those wages paid for by the products sold, and the folks who buy them. With the exception of a handful of regressive situations, this seems like the logical approach.

Did you want Congress to raise your taxes to compensate for WalMart's reluctance to pay a higher wage, or would you prefer for the folks who actually use WalMart to pay for that? The choice seems fairly obvious.

[_Gunnar]

So Gunnar - when the city council of Washington DC told Walmart that they could only build three new stores subject to wage rate that was not sustainable, and Walmart pulled out of their openings, was it a good thing for all those looking for jobs? Did the govt provide or replace those jobs? Did they give those seeking work the opportunity to make their own decision? Why not let big bad Walmart fail with no one wanting to sign up for those horrible jobs. After all, those seeking that skill level of employment had SO MANY OPTIONS, right?

You really have no clue about providing people a path to dignity do you?

I question whether those wage rates were really unsustainable, when other local, successful businesses are apparently complying with those same wage rates. I think it more likely that Walmart simply did not want to pay those rates. Walmart is one of the most profitable companies in history. I don't think there is any reasonable doubt that they can afford to pay their employees more than what they are now paying them. Reducing their profit margin somewhat would not kill them, and would surely be a lesser evil than continuing to abuse their workers like they apparently are currently doing.

Another thing I question is how many of the people Walmart would eventually have hired would have been people laid off from higher paying local retail businesses forced out of business because they could not compete with Walmart prices, and still make a reasonable profit?

[_Kevin Graham]

Also, Walmart is owned and operated by a small group of family members who inherited the company. They haven't put forth any time and effort to invest in anything. They created nothing. Bach cannot defend Walmart so he has to immediately divert attention to his company, which is an imaginary entity that doesn't exist.

Bach, and those on the Right who think like him, love to romanticize the employer side of a business without acknowledging any of the investment made by the employees who are needed for the employer to make any profits. It takes both for a company to be successful, which is why I do not believe Bach has ever been involved in a company. He has a very naïve, FOX News understanding of what a business is and does. He likes to think of employees as basically slaves to a corporate system which were all supposed to be grateful for until our dying breath. Meanwhile, anyone who invests in a startup company is called "job creator," ignoring the fact that those employees are basically the "wealth creators" for the employers. In a just and fair system, or in a "self regulating labor market," employee pay would rise and be commensurate with a company's earnings as well as their increased rates of productivity. However, since Reagan the rights of the workers have been basically stripped and what we get as a result is situations like the one above. Unions are demonized and employees who are now forced to work multiple jobs just to live are made to feel ungrateful for getting whatever job a "job creator" was gracious enough to provide them.

The problem with this wrong-headed Right Wing thinking can be summed up with this telling statement from one notorious CEO:



I'm speaking as someone who started a business and became fairly wealthy from it. The strategy we used in Brazil was to pay top our employees much more than what the competition was paying. Not only was I rewarded with increased business, but also their loyalty. Turnover rates in Brazil are ridiculous because no one wants to pay employees what they deserve.