Unionize Wal-Mart or Let's Boot Them From Canada

[maplesyrup]

Unionizing Wal-Mart

"The entire world will be watching this to see what develops and see what the possibilities are," said Mary McArthur, a former Wal-Mart employee who was part of a team in Windsor, Ont., that scored the first union contract in a Wal-Mart store in December 1997.

"Because once one sticks, I think that's it. You'll see a huge resurgence in interest in many other stores and not only in Canada but elsewhere."

Let's teach these scumbags something about Canadian values, eh!

Either they are going to begin properly paying their employees or we should run these buggers out of town (Canada). The rest of the world is looking to Canada to set some standards in labour conditions, labour standards.

We can survive very well in Canada without Wal-Mart and their elk.

[Big Blue Machine]

We don't need to unionize Wal-mart. If we allow that, then everyone will follow. Some business don't need unions like Wal-mart and McDonalds. The workers have good stuff working at Wal-mart. They don't need an union to represent them.

[Guest eureka]

What good stuff do they have? In the US, the average wage at Wal-Mart is $7.50 an hour. It won't be much different in Canada. Many Canadian businesses have been forced to actually lower wages because of the sweat shop purchasing by Wal-Mart.

I would say that it should not be unionized but run out of the country.

[August1991]

The last time I was in a Wal-Mart, I noticed that most of the customers were ordinary people, often with kids, simply trying to stay inside their budget. I noticed that most of the Wal-Mart employees are the same. I suspect that most of the people who manufacture the stuff sold in Wal-Mart are the same as well.

So, what will happen if Wal-Mart is closed? All these ordinary people will have to manage elsewhere.

I can't help think that outside busybodies are putting their noses in other people's affairs. There is a whiff of moral superiority about it.

[maplesyrup]

Typical rich person's response - try and divert the issue of employees being exploited by a transnational.

Is the world going to come to the end if Wal-Mart ceased operations in Canada? I don't think so.

It is always the rich that is willing to let others work for minimum wages so they can receive their dividend cheques.

Thanks but no thanks.

[Argus]

The last time I was in a Wal-Mart, I noticed that most of the customers were ordinary people, often with kids, simply trying to stay inside their budget. I noticed that most of the Wal-Mart employees are the same. I suspect that most of the people who manufacture the stuff sold in Wal-Mart are the same as well.

So, what will happen if Wal-Mart is closed? All these ordinary people will have to manage elsewhere.

There is an axium that capitalism works only because of its vast imperfections. Given perfect capitalism, us little folk would be crushed in the wheels of the giant corporate megagroups. As someone whose major was Business Administration I believe that most sincerely.

Wal-Mart is the closest we have to a perfect capitalist enterprise, utterly ammoral, devoted to maximizing profit at any cost. What's good for GM might be good for America/Canada, but the same cannot be said of Wal-Mart.

Wal-Mart has grown too powerful, able to dictate to even its biggest suppliers, to entire industries, and control the market through their buying and selling power. It treats its employees like crap, and runs other retail outlets out of business in droves. For every succesful Wal-Mart in a community there are probably a hundred or more other retail outlets which went out of business to feed its appetite, and Wal-Mart, with its draconion efficiency will employ only one third to half those people, at perhaps 2/3 their former salaries.

I don't like that Wal-Mart can order video distributors to make cuts to their movies or else it will refuse to sell them. I don't like that it can order recording companies to change the lyrics or drop songs from albums in order to be able to sell there. I don't like that these changes are made at the production level so that whatever Wal-Mart wants becomes the standard everywhere.

Once you become a Wal-Mart supplier you start getting squeezed. They squeeze every last dime out of you, badgering you to cut costs again and again, until you're barely turning a profit. By that time they represent so much of your demand you don't have any choice but to go along.

Once you become a Wal-Mart employee you become a drone, badgered at all times to work harder, forced to endure endless lectures and videos about what happens to employees who steal, or who don't work hard enough. And let's not even get to their ridiculous little morning cheer, performed before the amused and smirking customers. Most employees work for one year terms. Then they are fired and, provided they've kept their nose clean are re-hired immediately. This keeps them all on their toes. Don't make any complaints or turn down overtime if you want to keep working for Wal-Mart.

Once you become a Wal-Mart customer you get used to being herded and crammed through narrow aisles with merchandise stored high on the shelves. You get used to shoddy quality merchandise and long lines to pay for it. Try and return something and be prepared to wait a looong time. Customer service is not a concept Wal-Mart ever put much effort into learning. Wal-Mart treats its customers like cattle, or perhaps a better comparison, like sheep to be sheered.

Frankly, Wal-Mart needs to be broken up. Five thousand giant stores is just too much power. And there are hundreds more every year.

[caesar]

Just don't accept a job at wal mart or shop at wal mart if you don't like their business practices. You don't seem to need to have much talent to work there. Shop where you get good service by better paid employees. Kids need a starting job.

[playfullfellow]

If people want to unionize, then that is there personal choice. They should not be forced to do so. As for Walmart, can't really say that I am so much impressed by it anymore. Sure, there is plenty of merchandize and at resonable prices but the customer service is not there. I like to shop where I get good service. I don't even mind paying a little more for better service. I may not agree with Walmart's business practices but where does it say we can regulate every successful business? Every province has it's own labour standards regulations and as long as the company stays within those standards, then what say do you have in what they do? If you are not happy with the way things are, then you petition the provincial government to change those regulations. If you want to take it a step further, then you convince your friends and relatives to boycot Walmart.

[Guest eureka]

I think you nailed it, Argus.

[August1991]

Wal-Mart has grown too powerful, able to dictate to even its biggest suppliers, to entire industries, and control the market through their buying and selling power.

If that were the case, the presumed purpose would be to restrict supply and raise prices to make monopoly profits. I see no evidence of that.

The rest of your rant Argus is your own personal opinion. You are entitled to have it. If you don't like Wal-Mart, don't shop there, don't work there and don't be one of its suppliers. (If you contribute to a pension, you are probably a shareholder but that's a separate detail.)

But what gives you the right to stop other people from shopping at Wal-Mart or working there?

Given perfect capitalism, us little folk would be crushed in the wheels of the giant corporate megagroups.

A corporation is composed of people. All the people associated with a corporation do so voluntarily. This association is presumably better than any alternative.

You seem to view Wal Mart as a giant monster instead of what it really is: A large group of individuals each pursuing in their own way what is best for themselves.

Wal-Mart is the closest we have to a perfect capitalist enterprise, utterly ammoral, devoted to maximizing profit at any cost.

You might as well say the world market for oil is amoral and devoted to one thing: determining the price of oil whatever the consequences this may have for mere mortals.

[Choke]

Walmart is a bigger economic entity than many countries...throwing them out would be like placing a total embargo on one of the world's major nations and the consequences would be no less severe.

Unless Canada wants to opt out of capitalism, and being a first world country, there's not much to be done about Walmart. Besides that, unions have become less about helping out the little guy and more about their own political power. Unions have become the moral equivalent of corporations...they both fuck over the common man and make a profit on it. Supporting the bureaucracy required for a big union is expensive and drives down the wage of the common worker.

[Hugo]

I think a lot of people here have a serious Stalin complex.

What you are saying amounts to this: "I don't like the way Wal-Mart does business. I don't want to shop there anymore. But that's not good enough. You have to stop shopping there too. If you don't, then I plan to use force to stop you. You will do as I say!"

To which I ask, well, who died and made you King? This talk is more socialist nonsense, basically, bossing other people around, telling them what to do, and threatening to use force if they don't comply. Stop it, and leave other people alone, please, and realise that you are not a prince amongst men with a divine right to run the lives of other people.

As August has said, there's no evidence that Wal-Mart is attempting to conquer the market and then become a greedy, extortionist monopoly. Their prices are the lowest around, generally, and that is why they are in the position they are in now.

If they were to start raising prices, trying to bleed their monopolised customers, they are basically raising a sign saying, "Dying multinational company! Swoop down and have a feeding frenzy!" Other companies will quickly undercut them and competition will reappear.

You might think that Wal-Mart could simply buy them all out or buy them off, however, I don't recall that happening to Sony when they muscled in on the videogame market lorded over by the cartel of Sega and Nintendo, nor did that happen to Microsoft when they muscled in on the same market a few years later (against Sony and Nintendo this time). The only way this could happen is if Wal-Mart becomes not only the only player in the retail industry, but the only player in the international economy - absurd.

As to getting a union in and raising the wages, sure you can do that. I don't know why you hate Wal-Mart employees so much, though, that you want loads of them to join the dole queue. I'm certain I don't want to pay their unemployment cheques! Unions will raise the wages, which will mean that marginal employees will have to be fired. It's that simple. Artifically inflating wages is the chief cause of unemployment. If we had no minimum wage, we'd have no endemic unemployment. If you don't believe me, look at the figures right after Clinton raised the minimum wage. Over half a million newly unemployed immediately afterwards. These are always the marginal employees, too, who generally have no savings and cannot afford to lose their jobs.

So-called leftist compassion. All I see here is hatred, ignorance, dreams of dictatorial power and cold-heartedness towards one's fellow man.

[caesar]

Put your money where your mouth is. If you don't like their business practices; don't shop or work there. Go to a store that pays their employees well and buys from sources that do not exploit the workers. Do be prepared to pay a little more. I do, I want to buy where I can get service and buy items made by more skilled workers so I have more durable trustworthy products. I don't like wasting my free time waiting in lineups to buy or to return shoddy merchandise.

[Choke]

Walmart doesn't actually have the lowest prices on most items, but in their flyers they'll put a few sale products that draw in customers while the rest of the store is filled with products with above average prices.

So you only save money at Walmart the same way you save it anywhere else; by comparing prices with the competition. Walmart doesn't have anything near a monopoly.

[Guest eureka]

You ideologcal beliefs are getting the better of you, Hugo. Simply put, WalMart has hurt, and is hurting, a great many people. It has driven thousands of businesses out of existence byits practises. It recently forced the closure of a nomber of ToysRUs stores through its practise of selling as a loss leader items the TRUs depended on for its major sales.

The WalMart concept is estimated to have cost the US some 2,300,000 jobs. It treats its enployees in the way that Argus said it does. It lives itself on forced labour at home in the selling and slave labour overseas in the manufacturing. It has forced down wages in whole industries and, in itself, has much of the responsibility for the stagnant living standards in North America.

Its loss would bring no harm wahtsover. Everything it does would quickly be duplicated by others but at in more socially responsible way, It never created a single job but simply replaced jobs at home and sent so many more overseas.

The net effect of WalMart on the economy is entirely negative. The argument about the increased wages holds no water since WalMart has had the effect of merely driving down rxisting wage levels in its own industry and for the suppliers.

WalMart should never have been allowed into the country but that is what Free Trade Agreements have brought. If the Americans cannot see their own doom, that is their problem.

[ndpnic]

We don't need to unionize Wal-mart. If we allow that, then everyone will follow. Some business don't need unions like Wal-mart and McDonalds. The workers have good stuff working at Wal-mart. They don't need an union to represent them.

I take it you have never worked at one of these places.

They don't "have it good".

Minimum wages are never "good"!

[Hugo]

Simply put, WalMart has hurt, and is hurting, a great many people. It has driven thousands of businesses out of existence byits practises.

This is only a problem if you assume that Wal-Mart and the competitors that lost to it employed more people than Wal-Mart sells to. That, of course, is nonsense. The provision of lower prices is important and has helped a great many people. As has been said in this thread already, in a Wal-Mart store there aren't an abundance of rich people, but of working people trying to get by, to whom Wal-Mart offers more for less. Their dollars go further. And you want to take that away from them, to force them to pay more and lower their standard of living so that some company whose executives were too lazy or stupid to compete can get a free ride. Shame on you. I thought you were against corporate welfare?

The WalMart concept is estimated to have cost the US some 2,300,000 jobs.

Says who? Did they also compute the extra purchasing power that Wal-Mart has given to every North American by lowering the prices they pay for goods?

The argument about the increased wages holds no water since WalMart has had the effect of merely driving down rxisting wage levels in its own industry and for the suppliers.

Minimum wages are never "good"!

Wal-Mart does not employ a single minimum-wage earner in Canada. How are they driving down wages, exactly? If you really care so much about this, why don't you start hounding companies that pay their workers minimum wage only, like small businesses and mom-and-pop shops?

WalMart should never have been allowed into the country

Why - because you feel you have the right, or that others have the right, to tell people what they can and can't do with their own money in purely voluntary transactions? Again I ask, who died and crowned you King?

It never created a single job

Untrue. Perhaps you would care to know a little about Wal-Mart's history. They originally came about because they developed a fantastically efficient inventorying and warehousing system. This meant that their margins were greater, enabling them to open stores in small towns where many of their products (and thus, jobs selling those products) were previously unavailable, and residents who wished to purchase them had to drive many miles to go to a big town, and buy from the big store that did not employ any more people, nor pay them any more, but charged more because they were just inefficient.

Its loss would bring no harm wahtsover.

Which of their competitors do you shop at? If you buy from Zellers or similar, I hate to break it to you, but they don't pay their employees any more than Wal-Mart. Less, more often than not. Nor do they train them as well.

If you step up a tier, and buy at Sears or The Bay, then you're paying more for the same, which means you're costing other people their jobs because of the increased opportunity costs of your purchases. You spend more on your towels, which means you have less money left over to buy a bathrobe, and the bathrobe manufacturer takes a paycut or goes out of business. Aren't you proud of yourself, causing unemployment and wage decreases, Eureka?

[ndpnic]

Just don't accept a job at wal mart or shop at wal mart if you don't like their business practices. You don't seem to need to have much talent to work there. Shop where you get good service by better paid employees. Kids need a starting job.

I don't see many kids working at Walmart.

I see alot of seniors and working parents trying to earn enough money to support themselves.

[The Terrible Sweal]

We don't need to unionize Wal-mart. If we allow that, then everyone will follow. Some business don't need unions like Wal-mart and McDonalds. The workers have good stuff working at Wal-mart. They don't need an union to represent them.

I think we should leave it that up to them to decide.

[Argus]

Just don't accept a job at wal mart or shop at wal mart if you don't like their business practices.

Just don't take a job in the mine if you're afraid cause it keeps collapsing. No need for safety rules...

It ain't that easy. Especially in smaller centres, especially for folks without connections or skills, especially those whose shops were put out of business by uh, Wal-mart.

  You don't seem to need to have much talent to work there.  Shop where you get good service by better paid employees.  Kids need a starting job.

I almost have to be dragged into a Wal-Mart. I'll shop almost anywhere else. But I have been in them, and there don't seem to be a lot of kids working there. I don't think Wal-mart likes kids.

[Choke]

Better than banning Walmart would be banning unions.

[Argus]

Wal-Mart has grown too powerful, able to dictate to even its biggest suppliers, to entire industries, and control the market through their buying and selling power.

If that were the case, the presumed purpose would be to restrict supply and raise prices to make monopoly profits. I see no evidence of that.

The purpose is to maximize market share. Wal-Mart is still growing at a huge rate, after all, with hundreds of new stores added every year. And it's barely begun its international expansion. Nor is there much doubt about Wal-mart's bullying practices. They're well documented.

Given perfect capitalism, us little folk would be crushed in the wheels of the giant corporate megagroups.

A corporation is composed of people. All the people associated with a corporation do so voluntarily. This association is presumably better than any alternative.

You seem to view Wal Mart as a giant monster instead of what it really is: A large group of individuals each pursuing in their own way what is best for themselves.

Sorry, but that's a load of horse shit. Wal-Mart is a few very, very very wealthy people, mostly named Walton - 5 of the ten richest people on earth are Walton family members. And you might say those people who join the company do it voluntarily, but you'd say the same about coal miners who went down into the mines despite their being no safety rules fifty or sixty years ago. In short, people who need to feed their families will take what they can get.

Wal-Mart is the closest we have to a perfect capitalist enterprise, utterly ammoral, devoted to maximizing profit at any cost.

You might as well say the world market for oil is amoral and devoted to one thing: determining the price of oil whatever the consequences this may have for mere mortals.

If I said that I'd be lying. The world oil market isn't as centralized or organized, and the ownership has other interests so that it doesn't want to risk deciminating economies by hiking the price too high.

[Choke]

How many of you commies (ie, the anti-Walmart crowd) have worked a low-wage job?

How many have owned and operated their own business?

How many think people who own corporations should work to their own detriment by NOT trying to make the biggest profits possible?

How many think they know of a viable alternative to capitalism and an example of where it is working today?

[Argus]

I think a lot of people here have a serious Stalin complex.

What you are saying amounts to this: "I don't like the way Wal-Mart does business. I don't want to shop there anymore. But that's not good enough. You have to stop shopping there too. If you don't, then I plan to use force to stop you. You will do as I say!"

It's very basic. Wal-Mart is bad for communities, bad for employees, bad for business, bad for economies, bad for nations. When Wa-Mart forces changes to magazines, CDs and videos some of those who sanitize their products simply use that as the default for everyone else, since they can't afford to make two copies, two versions. So you may wind up buying sanitized, censored music, videos and magazines even if you never shop at Wa-Mart.

In addition, Wal-Mart wipes out jobs and competition. That is its main strategy, to wipe out all competition, or as much of it as they can, and their business practices, including predatory pricing, have been well documented. You can have a communit with a hundred mom and pop stores, or a community with one Wal-Mart and nothing else.

Wal-Mart sells mostly foreign produced goods. It disdains Canadian made products (or American made) in favour of cheap imports from third world countries. It is the number one importer from China, and many of its goods come from sweatshops and slave labour camps. It has been known to lure in suppliers with a price they can make money on, make them dependant upon Wa-Mart sales, then start putting on pressure to reduce prices. Their most often repeated advice to their local suppliers - build your product overseas in Asia with dirt cheap labour. So Wal-Mart costs jobs in more ways than one, by destroying competitors and by increasing imports.

As to getting a union in and raising the wages, sure you can do that. I don't know why you hate Wal-Mart employees so much, though, that you want loads of them to join the dole queue. I'm certain I don't want to pay their unemployment cheques! Unions will raise the wages, which will mean that marginal employees will have to be fired. It's that simple.

There are no "marginal" employees at Wal-Mart. Sam Walton began the practice of employing people at less than full-time hours, even though the stores have more than enough work. They prefer to employee people for 25 or so hours a week so they don't have to pay full-time benefits or protection. Do something - anything - your boss doesn't like, and you find your hours cut down. And employees work on yearly probation. Every year they are rehired (those that don't quit, which is most of them), provided they have done as they were told and never been judged lacking the proper "wal-mart spirit". That includes many allegations of forced, unpaid overtime.

So-called leftist compassion. All I see here is hatred, ignorance, dreams of dictatorial power and cold-heartedness towards one's fellow man.

That's a load of horse shit too. I am as far from a socialist as you're likely to find. I was a business major and am a conservative. But I don't approve of the way Wal-Mart does business, its growing power and influence over economies and politics.

[Hugo]

The purpose is to maximize market share. Wal-Mart is still growing at a huge rate, after all, with hundreds of new stores added every year.

It doesn't matter. They only have a slice of the retail pie right now, and as they grow, they pressure their competition to compete with them or die. Thus, we have Zellers, Sears, the Bay et al stumbling over themselves to become more competitive. Either way, the chief beneficiaries of this process are the consumers, the ordinary folk trying to get by.

And, as I illustrated before with my Sega/Sony/Nintendo/Microsoft example, unless Wal-Mart ends up becoming the entire global economy they always have to run the risk of a competitor from outside the retail market, too big to buy out or bully, muscling in on their patch.

Nor is there much doubt about Wal-mart's bullying practices. They're well documented.

Perhaps you should try reading some of the other documentation as well. For example, how slashing retail prices stimulates other industries and creates other jobs thanks to lower opportunity costs.

If you wish to read more, I'd suggest this page as a good start.

Wal-Mart is a few very, very very wealthy people, mostly named Walton - 5 of the ten richest people on earth are Walton family members.

Give me a source that shows me how every share of the Wal-Mart corporation is owned by "a few very, very very wealthy people, mostly named Walton", please.

Wal-Mart is bad for communities, bad for employees, bad for business, bad for economies, bad for nations.

Rhetoric. Facts only, please.

When Wa-Mart forces changes to magazines, CDs and videos some of those who sanitize their products simply use that as the default for everyone else, since they can't afford to make two copies, two versions. So you may wind up buying sanitized, censored music, videos and magazines even if you never shop at Wa-Mart.

So? So what? Your complaint about Wal-Mart is that you can't buy the sweary versions of songs or hardcore porn videos? You don't like the fact that Eminem's artistic vision has been compromised? This has been going on for centuries. Read Michelangelo's lamentations on being forced to paint the Sistine Chapel against his artistic vision.

In addition, Wal-Mart wipes out jobs and competition.

Wal-Mart creates jobs and competition, actually. Do you know what an opportunity cost is?

Wal-Mart sells mostly foreign produced goods. It disdains Canadian made products (or American made) in favour of cheap imports from third world countries.

Good. That's very beneficial to Canadians.

It has been known to lure in suppliers with a price they can make money on, make them dependant upon Wa-Mart sales, then start putting on pressure to reduce prices.

I believe that's called, "Doing business."

There are no "marginal" employees at Wal-Mart.

Force them to raise their salaries, and they'll prove you wrong! Do you think they really need the guy who says, "Hi! Welcome to Wal-Mart" when you walk in the door?

That's a load of horse shit too. I am as far from a socialist as you're likely to find.

Buddy... you are a socialist.