Just in time for Halloween, Wal-Mart has announced that they will start selling caskets.
I don't know if I'd want to buy one or get buried in it though. Virtually every product sold at Wal-Mart is produced by the cheapest manufacturer they can find (almost always overseas) and there have been a number of product recalls as a result. I keep having this image of being carried down the aisle by pallbearers and all of a sudden the bottom falls out and I fall down right in the middle of them.
Boo!
Showing posts with label Wal-Mart. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Wal-Mart. Show all posts
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Monday, August 10, 2009
Repost of, "Winslow Basha's to close; Super-Walmart to remain open."
NOTE: THIS IS A REPOST OF A POST ORIGINALLY TITLED, "WINSLOW BASHA'S TO CLOSE; SUPER WAL-MART TO REMAIN OPEN" THE POST WAS INFILTRATED BY A SPAM BOT SO THIS IS A REPOST WHICH WILL BE POSTED AT THE ORIGINAL DATE AND THE ORIGINAL POST WILL BE DELETED.
Monday, August 10, 2009
Winslow Basha's to close. Super Wal-Mart to remain open.
Proving some of us right several years ago.
Winslow is a two-grocery store town.
Some years back Wal-Mart wanted to expand to Super Wal-Mart (i.e. including groceries.) A number of us felt that this would eventually force either Safeway or Basha's to close, and thereby trade better paying jobs for Wal-Mart jobs.
We lost.
Wal-Mart did open Super Wal-Mart, and I can't say I'm surprised that Winslow was on the list of fourteen Basha's stores slated to close by October. Last year they changed their closing time to an hour earlier and I was honestly surprised that they weren't on the list of closures last month, right before the bankrupcty filing.
Now, I've had my problems with Basha's in the past (mostly over their recalcitrance to allow the workers to organize under UFCW if they want to-- see this post, though I have to admit I haven't faithfully kept up my boycott (though I have faithfully boycotted Wal-Mart).
Some conservatives will blame UFCW for Basha's demise. This is of course ridiculous--the UFCW never did organize Basha's, and Basha's workers earn about two dollars per hour less than their counterparts at unionized grocery stores like Safeway and Fry's, so if unions were the problem then you'd have to figure that those stores, which actually do have unions, would have gone out of business rather than Basha's. But as far as anti-union activity is concerned, Basha's is like a good-looking colt racing against Rachel Alexandra compared to Wal-Mart, the undisputed king of union-busting (recall that a Kingman Wal-Mart employee was let go some years back just for saying the word, 'union,' and it took several years before a court held that the employee was wrongfully terminated; and even then I think that Wal-Mart felt that the damages they had to pay was just part of the cost of doing business because the ultimate result is that they still have no union in Kingman or anyplace else.)
The lack of pockets as deep as out of state competitors certainly is a problem, especially if you are competing with someone like Wal-Mart (which in just about a decade has gone from just breaking into the grocery market to being the number one selling grocer in Arizona and a number of other states as well.)
The bottom line is that in a town the size of Winslow (population 8,000 including the inmates at the prison, plus several thousand more people from southern areas of the reservation who come in to shop every day) there just isn't the population base to support three supermarkets. If the same checker earns $7 an hour at Super Wal-Mart as earns $11 an hour at Basha's and $13 an hour at Safeway (roughly typical wages at each store) then clearly Wal-Mart is saving money on the front end. With them getting stuff shipped in from out of state in large quantities they save on the middle end too, and since a lot of their stuff (even including some canned foods and other groceries) is produced out of the country they save on the back end too.
Winslow Basha's bought a lot of the 4-H kids' animals at the county fair every year, which the kids usually save the money and put it in their college fund. Somehow I doubt if Wal-Mart will be buying any locally grown 4-H animals.
I understand that a lot of people shop at Wal-Mart because they don't have much money. Granted, my wife and a few other people who have joined coupon sense have learned how to shop cheaper at Basha's and Safeway than at Wal-Mart, (Wal-Mart doesn't have double, triple or quadruple coupon deals) but most people shop at Wal-Mart to save money. I understand that.
But I hope that the people (especially the Winslow city councillors at the time and former mayor Bob Bolles) who supported the Super Wal-Mart realize that just as opponents predicted at the time, they've just traded $11 an hour jobs with decent benefits for $7 an hour jobs with few benefits, thereby increasing the poverty rate in Winslow.
Winslow is a tough town and it will survive, but it will be hard for the Basha's employees (many of whom I know) who are now being dumped out onto the street during a deep recession.
Labels: Basha's, Safeway, Wal-Mart, Winslow
# posted by Eli Blake @ 8:24 PM
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Comments:
just heard the news... another empty store on that side of the street.
sad day for Winslow...
# posted by Anonymous Anonymous : 18 August, 2009 23:37
Monday, August 10, 2009
Winslow Basha's to close. Super Wal-Mart to remain open.
Proving some of us right several years ago.
Winslow is a two-grocery store town.
Some years back Wal-Mart wanted to expand to Super Wal-Mart (i.e. including groceries.) A number of us felt that this would eventually force either Safeway or Basha's to close, and thereby trade better paying jobs for Wal-Mart jobs.
We lost.
Wal-Mart did open Super Wal-Mart, and I can't say I'm surprised that Winslow was on the list of fourteen Basha's stores slated to close by October. Last year they changed their closing time to an hour earlier and I was honestly surprised that they weren't on the list of closures last month, right before the bankrupcty filing.
Now, I've had my problems with Basha's in the past (mostly over their recalcitrance to allow the workers to organize under UFCW if they want to-- see this post, though I have to admit I haven't faithfully kept up my boycott (though I have faithfully boycotted Wal-Mart).
Some conservatives will blame UFCW for Basha's demise. This is of course ridiculous--the UFCW never did organize Basha's, and Basha's workers earn about two dollars per hour less than their counterparts at unionized grocery stores like Safeway and Fry's, so if unions were the problem then you'd have to figure that those stores, which actually do have unions, would have gone out of business rather than Basha's. But as far as anti-union activity is concerned, Basha's is like a good-looking colt racing against Rachel Alexandra compared to Wal-Mart, the undisputed king of union-busting (recall that a Kingman Wal-Mart employee was let go some years back just for saying the word, 'union,' and it took several years before a court held that the employee was wrongfully terminated; and even then I think that Wal-Mart felt that the damages they had to pay was just part of the cost of doing business because the ultimate result is that they still have no union in Kingman or anyplace else.)
The lack of pockets as deep as out of state competitors certainly is a problem, especially if you are competing with someone like Wal-Mart (which in just about a decade has gone from just breaking into the grocery market to being the number one selling grocer in Arizona and a number of other states as well.)
The bottom line is that in a town the size of Winslow (population 8,000 including the inmates at the prison, plus several thousand more people from southern areas of the reservation who come in to shop every day) there just isn't the population base to support three supermarkets. If the same checker earns $7 an hour at Super Wal-Mart as earns $11 an hour at Basha's and $13 an hour at Safeway (roughly typical wages at each store) then clearly Wal-Mart is saving money on the front end. With them getting stuff shipped in from out of state in large quantities they save on the middle end too, and since a lot of their stuff (even including some canned foods and other groceries) is produced out of the country they save on the back end too.
Winslow Basha's bought a lot of the 4-H kids' animals at the county fair every year, which the kids usually save the money and put it in their college fund. Somehow I doubt if Wal-Mart will be buying any locally grown 4-H animals.
I understand that a lot of people shop at Wal-Mart because they don't have much money. Granted, my wife and a few other people who have joined coupon sense have learned how to shop cheaper at Basha's and Safeway than at Wal-Mart, (Wal-Mart doesn't have double, triple or quadruple coupon deals) but most people shop at Wal-Mart to save money. I understand that.
But I hope that the people (especially the Winslow city councillors at the time and former mayor Bob Bolles) who supported the Super Wal-Mart realize that just as opponents predicted at the time, they've just traded $11 an hour jobs with decent benefits for $7 an hour jobs with few benefits, thereby increasing the poverty rate in Winslow.
Winslow is a tough town and it will survive, but it will be hard for the Basha's employees (many of whom I know) who are now being dumped out onto the street during a deep recession.
Labels: Basha's, Safeway, Wal-Mart, Winslow
# posted by Eli Blake @ 8:24 PM
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Comments:
just heard the news... another empty store on that side of the street.
sad day for Winslow...
# posted by Anonymous Anonymous : 18 August, 2009 23:37
Friday, August 01, 2008
Wal-Mart pressuring its employees to vote Republican
I've posted before that I have no love lost for Wal-Mart, which is in trouble every year it seems for various exploitative labor practices. In the past decade or so, Wal-Mart has been caught violating child labor laws, hiring illegals for $2/night to clean its stores, discriminating against female employees, forcing employees to work on their lunch breaks and sending out a memo on how to get rid of employees who have six years working with the company in order to deny them retirement benefits they would have become eligible for when they hit the seven year mark. In most of these cases they've either had to pay a fine or settled out of court, though in the gender discrimination class-action lawsuit they took it all the way through and lost.
And that's not even counting the non-illegal things they've done, including buying products produced in foreign sweatshops, selling products in targeted communities at below cost in order to force local small business competitors out of business, giving employees welfare applications as part of their 'benefits' package, going so far as to close entire stores in order to avoid unionization and only grudgingly, after many years, agreeing to offer health insurance once several states passed legislation which for all practical purposes forced them to.
But now they've gone to a new level: telling their employees how to vote. Oh, of course they say they are NOT telling them how to vote, before telling them how to vote.
Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. is mobilizing its store managers and department supervisors around the country to warn that if Democrats win power in November, they'll likely change Federal law to make it easier for workers to unionize companies-- including Wal-Mart.
In recent weeks, thousands of Wal-Mart store managers and department heads have been summoned to mandatory meetings at which the retailer stresses the downside for workers if stores were to be unionized.
According to about a dozen Wal-Mart employees who attended such meetings in seven states, Wal-Mart executives claim that employees at unionized stores would have to pay hefty union dues while getting nothing in return, and may have to go on strike without compensation. Also, unionization could mean fewer jobs as labor costs rise....
The Wal-Mart human-resources managers who run the meetings don't specifically tell attendees how to vote in November's election, but make it clear that voting for Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama would be tantamount to inviting unions in, according to Wal-Mart employees who attended gatherings in Maryland, Missouri and other states.
"The meeting leader said, 'I am not telling you how to vote, but if the Democrats win, this bill will pass and you won't have a vote on whether you want a union,'" said a Wal-Mart customer-service supervisor from Missouri. "I am not a stupid person. They were telling me how to vote," she said.
It should also be pointed out that Wal-Mart is possibly in violation of the law with these meetings: Federal election rules permit companies to advocate for specific political candidates to its executives, stockholders and salaried managers, but not to hourly employees. While store managers are on salary, department supervisors are hourly workers.
Of course they've been in violation of many laws before and seem to consider the resulting fines to just be part of the cost of doing business.
Now, I know, I know. If you are a conservative your knee-jerk reaction to Wal-Mart pressuring its employees in this way will probably be viscerally positive (i.e. it depends on whose ox is getting gored.) So let me turn it around for you:
Suppose that a publically funded institution were to do the same thing. Suppose for example that employees of a public school were called together and told (by their immediate supervisor, who incidentally has a lot of say about their continued employment) that "I'm not telling you how to vote but you should know that if Republicans win in November then we may face massive budget cuts, so that some of you may lose your jobs or take pay cuts, and you may be forced to work under more difficult conditions. Now remember, I'm not telling you how to vote, but you should understand that this is what will happen if Republicans win the election."
If that happened at a school then you'd be screaming bloody murder. You know you would.
Wal-Mart has the right to donate to political campaigns (which they do, heavily), lobby elected officials for or against legislation and even create a 527 or other organization to advertise directly to the public on political issues (which is fair enough, given that unions do the same thing.) As a publically traded company they can even contact all their shareholders and disseminate their political propaganda.
However forcing their employees to attend a mandatory meeting run by their supervisor for the specific purpose of telling them that voting for Barack Obama may cost them their jobs is both illegal and unethical.
And that's not even counting the non-illegal things they've done, including buying products produced in foreign sweatshops, selling products in targeted communities at below cost in order to force local small business competitors out of business, giving employees welfare applications as part of their 'benefits' package, going so far as to close entire stores in order to avoid unionization and only grudgingly, after many years, agreeing to offer health insurance once several states passed legislation which for all practical purposes forced them to.
But now they've gone to a new level: telling their employees how to vote. Oh, of course they say they are NOT telling them how to vote, before telling them how to vote.
Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. is mobilizing its store managers and department supervisors around the country to warn that if Democrats win power in November, they'll likely change Federal law to make it easier for workers to unionize companies-- including Wal-Mart.
In recent weeks, thousands of Wal-Mart store managers and department heads have been summoned to mandatory meetings at which the retailer stresses the downside for workers if stores were to be unionized.
According to about a dozen Wal-Mart employees who attended such meetings in seven states, Wal-Mart executives claim that employees at unionized stores would have to pay hefty union dues while getting nothing in return, and may have to go on strike without compensation. Also, unionization could mean fewer jobs as labor costs rise....
The Wal-Mart human-resources managers who run the meetings don't specifically tell attendees how to vote in November's election, but make it clear that voting for Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama would be tantamount to inviting unions in, according to Wal-Mart employees who attended gatherings in Maryland, Missouri and other states.
"The meeting leader said, 'I am not telling you how to vote, but if the Democrats win, this bill will pass and you won't have a vote on whether you want a union,'" said a Wal-Mart customer-service supervisor from Missouri. "I am not a stupid person. They were telling me how to vote," she said.
It should also be pointed out that Wal-Mart is possibly in violation of the law with these meetings: Federal election rules permit companies to advocate for specific political candidates to its executives, stockholders and salaried managers, but not to hourly employees. While store managers are on salary, department supervisors are hourly workers.
Of course they've been in violation of many laws before and seem to consider the resulting fines to just be part of the cost of doing business.
Now, I know, I know. If you are a conservative your knee-jerk reaction to Wal-Mart pressuring its employees in this way will probably be viscerally positive (i.e. it depends on whose ox is getting gored.) So let me turn it around for you:
Suppose that a publically funded institution were to do the same thing. Suppose for example that employees of a public school were called together and told (by their immediate supervisor, who incidentally has a lot of say about their continued employment) that "I'm not telling you how to vote but you should know that if Republicans win in November then we may face massive budget cuts, so that some of you may lose your jobs or take pay cuts, and you may be forced to work under more difficult conditions. Now remember, I'm not telling you how to vote, but you should understand that this is what will happen if Republicans win the election."
If that happened at a school then you'd be screaming bloody murder. You know you would.
Wal-Mart has the right to donate to political campaigns (which they do, heavily), lobby elected officials for or against legislation and even create a 527 or other organization to advertise directly to the public on political issues (which is fair enough, given that unions do the same thing.) As a publically traded company they can even contact all their shareholders and disseminate their political propaganda.
However forcing their employees to attend a mandatory meeting run by their supervisor for the specific purpose of telling them that voting for Barack Obama may cost them their jobs is both illegal and unethical.
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