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Walmart workers demand better wages

Boo Radley said:
No, but it means there is another view. Workers are demonized constantly. Too sledom to we place any balme on management. There was likely a way out of this, as there often is. But whenever you make it us against them, it is seldom productive. There are bsuiness who see employees as an asset, and avoid this type of confrontation and work with employees to make arrangements, and do it without the excessive CEO salaries.
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People around here have said workers are replaceable where as managment is not.
 
Boo Radley said:
Well, they are actually. The middle class once were largely union, getting good wages and companies had a contract of sorts with them to boith give and take. Now, sure, there are other factors. Energy is certainly a concern, but I wouldn't but it up as the biggest. Destruction of the contact, decreasing union influence, outsourcing and the McDonaldization of American, all with the help of government working in concert with industry, as being more problematic.
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It wasnt so much collusion between government and business that brought about the destruction of union jobs in America as it was a collision with reality. Low-skill, high-pay union jobs lasted until the reality of global competition kicked them in the pants. Companies didnt stop making steel or textiles, they just stopped making them here.
 
Fletch said:
It wasnt so much collusion between government and business that brought about the destruction of union jobs in America as it was a collision with reality. Low-skill, high-pay union jobs lasted until the reality of global competition kicked them in the pants. Companies didnt stop making steel or textiles, they just stopped making them here.
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Where they could find cheap labor they took it. But that doesn't mean there was a need for them to take it. We competed very well with the world at high wages, and frankly, if we took the UHC route other countries have, we could now. But, the worker has been devalued, and I believe in the long run, this will hurt the nation.
 
Boo Radley said:
No, but it means there is another view. Workers are demonized constantly. Too sledom to we place any balme on management. There was likely a way out of this, as there often is. But whenever you make it us against them, it is seldom productive. There are bsuiness who see employees as an asset, and avoid this type of confrontation and work with employees to make arrangements, and do it without the excessive CEO salaries.
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Define "excessive CEO salaries"? You may see it as excessive because they could of given you more, but obviously, the owners/shareholders don't see it as excessive. If I owned a company and the CEO led the company to a $150 million profit, I would have no problems tossing that person $10 or even $20 million. Finding a CEO that can make you that kind of profits, or higher, is hardly the same as finding some high-school dropout to stand around and scan items at a register. At $10 an hour, the labor market provides them with all they can hire plus some, CEOs that make you profits are not so easy to come by and are thus infinitely more valuable.
 
DVSentinel said:
Define "excessive CEO salaries"? You may see it as excessive because they could of given you more, but obviously, the owners/shareholders don't see it as excessive. If I owned a company and the CEO led the company to a $150 million profit, I would have no problems tossing that person $10 or even $20 million. Finding a CEO that can make you that kind of profits, or higher, is hardly the same as finding some high-school dropout to stand around and scan items at a register. At $10 an hour, the labor market provides them with all they can hire plus some, CEOs that make you profits are not so easy to come by and are thus infinitely more valuable.
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Maybe the owners were stupid. I can't say. But to paid that kind of money, as many have, only to see failure seems excessive to me. Still, historically, I belive, CEOs tended to make 20 times employee salaries. Today some make as much as 671 times those salaries according to a chart I saw earlier today. Unsure how to not call that excessive. It also breds a lot of discontent, and helps create an hostile relationship between labor and managment.
 
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Boo Radley said:
Maybe the owners were stupid. I can't say. But to paid that kind of money, as many have, only to see failure seems excessive to me. Still, historically, I belive, CEOs tended to make 20 times employee salaries. Today some make as much as 671 times those salaries according to a chart I saw earlier today. Unsure how to not call that excessive. It also breds a lot of discontent, and helps crerate an hostile relationship between labor and managment.
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You're going to have a higher CEO salary to employee ratio with Walmart, because though the ordinary employee only needs a high school education, the executive skills still need to be Wall Street level for a multi-billion dollar company.
 
Boo Radley said:
Used to cost us pennies to go to a football game. Players got more money, owners made more profit, but prices went up. Low prices put others out of business, but did so in pert at the expensive of the worker. Is this really the better way?
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I don't go to football games, sports never interested me like that.
But Walmart isn't making huge profits compared to their revenue.

Their margin is 3.57%.
 
American said:
You're going to have a higher CEO salary to employee ratio with Walmart, because though the ordinary employee only needs a high school education, the executive skills still need to be Wall Street level for a multi-billion dollar company.
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Again, this isn't really new, and yet, the salaries have increased from 20 times to 671 times. There really is no way not to see that as problematic.
 
Harry Guerrilla said:
I don't go to football games, sports never interested me like that.
But Walmart isn't making huge profits compared to their revenue.

Their margin is 3.57%.
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I think right now they are still buying, pushing out competition. Bad for all of us when they win. But, that really wasn't my point. If paying employees were important, they'd find a way to do it.
 
Mustachio said:
That's fine, don't have any regard for them and you don't have to sympathize with them or empathize with them. But the very least you can do is understand what's going on. We're talking about Walmart employees who protest their jobs yet keep them, in case you've forgotten. People are motivated by fear - fear of the unknown, fear of losing their money or their friends or their house. Walmart will hire you if you don't have a solid education or proficient skills, they'll still hire you when a lot of other companies won't. And it's NOT because they think you'd make a great employee, it's because they hire people who can be paid minimum wage and get the shaft in every aspect of their employment and still not quit or even demand a raise. Most don't stick around too long but many of them do and of those that do are afraid of what I mentioned before: loss and discomfort. That's human, dawg. That's what we all do.

When a woman can't bring herself to leave her abusive husband, do you say you have little regard for her and that if she was really abused she would have divorced him? Yes, that's a long way away from working at Walmart, but the important thing is that many (or arguably most) people find it impossible to make big changes in their lives, even when that change would greatly benefit them in the long run. And just because they are afraid to change doesn't mean that they should be exploited for that inability.
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This, in no way, is comparable to an abusive spouse relationship.
That's actually pretty insulting to those who have been through real abuse.
 
OpportunityCost said:
Ironically, you dont see how you are proving his point.....
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feel free to elaborate .....

tell us how working at Wal Mart and getting a root canal is an enjoyable experience.
 
Harry Guerrilla said:
I don't go to football games, sports never interested me like that.
But Walmart isn't making huge profits compared to their revenue.

Their margin is 3.57%.
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That works out to about 15 billion dollars.
 
Boo Radley said:
I think right now they are still buying, pushing out competition. Bad for all of us when they win. But, that really wasn't my point. If paying employees were important, they'd find a way to do it.
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Their average wage is above $10 an hour.
For retail, that's good.

As a former manager in retail and fast food, I never made that much.
 
Boo Radley said:
Maybe the owners were stupid. I can't say. But to paid that kind of money, as many have, only to see failure seems excessive to me. Still, historically, I belive, CEOs tended to make 20 times employee salaries. Today some make as much as 671 times those salaries according to a chart I saw earlier today. Unsure how to not call that excessive. It also breds a lot of discontent, and helps crerate an hostile relationship between labor and managment.
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The only failure I have seen from the CEO of Hostess was his failure to bow down and kiss the ass of the Unions, to me that is not a failure.

Who cares what a CEO gets paid? Only some jealous fool who thinks they could do the same job but really cannot. Labor is a competitive market. Supply and demand set labor costs, or should if Unions and government didn't interfere with the process. If an employee wants to be more valuable and earn more pay, then it is incumbent upon the individual to make themselves more valuable. Unions are the refuge of the lazy and incompetent who don't want to learn skills to make themselves more valuable. They want skilled wages without the effort of becoming skilled and thus more valuable. Most Union jobs really are nothing more than unskilled labor that is cheap and easily replaceable but think they deserve the same as those who put forth effort and better themselves.
 
Boo Radley said:
I think right now they are still buying, pushing out competition. Bad for all of us when they win. But, that really wasn't my point. If paying employees were important, they'd find a way to do it.
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If there wasn't a glut of unskilled, unemployed labor, then they might actually have to pay more and it would become important to them. Not going to happen during our lifetimes.
 
Boo Radley said:
And what Hostess did was poor management. They decided to pay high CEO pay, likely with a good golden parachute, and not tie it to results. This guy made a fortune and saw the doors close. Odd how some see bad workers and not bad management.
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How do you know if it was poor management?
If you believe poor management necessarily results in a struggling business, you are wrong.
If you believe superb management necessarily results in a thriving business, you are wrong.

Funny as **** because you routinely cry about how teachers are NOT responsible for student performance, and there we're talking about an actual teacher, teaching a handful of students directly, on one specific subject, with fairly well-known teaching techniques and material available to everyone.

But the CEO who runs a giant company, not really given the power directly to control everything, and basically subject in large part to markets....these guys, oh no, here comes Boo holding up a sign of "they are individually responsible!!"

You never fail to disappoint.
 
Harry Guerrilla said:
Their average wage is above $10 an hour.
For retail, that's good.

As a former manager in retail and fast food, I never made that much.
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When and where might make a difference.
 
Mach said:
How do you know if it was poor management?
If you believe poor management necessarily results in a struggling business, you are wrong.
If you believe superb management necessarily results in a thriving business, you are wrong.

Funny as **** because you routinely cry about how teachers are NOT responsible for student performance, and there we're talking about an actual teacher, teaching a handful of students directly, on one specific subject, with fairly well-known teaching techniques and material available to everyone.

But the CEO who runs a giant company, not really given the power directly to control everything, and basically subject in large part to markets....these guys, oh no, here comes Boo holding up a sign of "they are individually responsible!!"

You never fail to disappoint.
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Just using their arguments.

And frankly, business, making a ding dong, is a lot easier than teaching any human being anything.
 
Born Free said:
extends unemployment benefits for 13 months. Freebee

includes a one-year Social Security tax cut, among other measures. SS is what you pay in you get back at some point. Not paying in and still getting the benefit is a freebee

the taxes would have affected the middle class too if not signed in it's present state. No taxes for the middle class, a freebee, cut taxes for everyone

included tax breaks for millions of college students and their families and extensions of the earned income tax credit and $1,000-per-child tax credit.
college students get freebees, tax breaks, also called subsidies, I call them freebee
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Unemployment benefits are derived from a fund that employers ( and in some areas employees as well) contribute to in a manner not unlike FICA taxes (Specified percentage of any particular employees paycheck set aside for a specific venture.)

Oh employees still pay into the SSTF, despite the reduction in percentage. 6.2 to 4.2 for a temporary time period, a reduction more than compensated for by the interest accrued on said employees prior and future contributions.

No tax cut for the middle class, simply an extension of previous policy. There you go again labeling a tax cut as a freebie though, might it be time to rethink that Conservative lean?

The subsidy you speak of was simply a federal contribution to the Stafford Fund which insured against a doubling of student loan interest rates. A good investment if you ask me, and Mitt Romney as well. Avoiding lumping more debt onto the backs of those entering an anemic labor market is in the best interest of just about everyone involved.
 
DVSentinel said:
The only failure I have seen from the CEO of Hostess was his failure to bow down and kiss the ass of the Unions, to me that is not a failure.

Who cares what a CEO gets paid? Only some jealous fool who thinks they could do the same job but really cannot. Labor is a competitive market. Supply and demand set labor costs, or should if Unions and government didn't interfere with the process. If an employee wants to be more valuable and earn more pay, then it is incumbent upon the individual to make themselves more valuable. Unions are the refuge of the lazy and incompetent who don't want to learn skills to make themselves more valuable. They want skilled wages without the effort of becoming skilled and thus more valuable. Most Union jobs really are nothing more than unskilled labor that is cheap and easily replaceable but think they deserve the same as those who put forth effort and better themselves.
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If you only see two options, than youmight not see a failure. I suspect there were more than two.

No, it's just human nature that you can't tell another to tighten his belt while you're stuffing yourself at the buffet.
 
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