Walmart and Hybrids

I'll come out in support of walmart, and admit that I may darken the door of walmart 1 or 2 times a year. We shop sams club often.

The low end employee salary should not be tied to the salary paid to the lowest end employee. The guy bringing the shopping carts in from the lot is not making walmart any more or less money than if he/she were to stay home that day and someone else were to bring them in.

The store managers deserve some kind of bonus/salary structure that is incentive based so that their stores run as tight a ship as possible. You don't want them to start looking like a 1990's kmart do you? You don't want the merchandise all walking otu the back door. Those guys are lower level executive material and they make real decisions that make the store and company and stockholders real money. Whether they do a good job or not matters to the company.

Above the store managers are regional managers, huge distribution warehouse managers and high level decision makers that make real decisions that make the company money. They are probably not lavished on with cash, but are adequately compensated. The forklift driver in the distribution center doesn't make the company any more or less money based on performance.

At the very top end, the company is making some ungodly amount of money a year (350 billion?). That's almost a billion a day. Somehow, overall direction of the company is in the hands of one or a few men. When you are the stockholders of a company making that kind of money, what is 23 million a year? nothin. If they thought they could get good leadership for $130,000 a year, they would. If they knew a guy could double the 350 billion to 700 billion, but that guy wanted to make 50 million a year, would it make sense to hire that guy? Absolutely.

The only thing wrong with that guy making so much money is that he isn't you. If he was making 24 million a year and giving you the 1 million extra, would you still object to his salary compensation?

If you don't like how they do it, go make something better and show them the error of their way. Until then, they are wildly successful, and congrats to them.

 

I've never shopped at Walmart, and god willing and the creek don't rise, I plan to continue not shopping there. I do shop at Costco, at least they treat their employees decently. Walmart has a way of coming into a community and driving local businesses into bankruptcy via lower prices. They pay their employees low enough wages that they can get onto the local welfare roles, and get tax dollars. So we taxpayers are subsidizing Walmart in a very real sense.

I'm sorry, I find their business practices deplorable, ethically and morally bankrupt. Yes, "that's business", but I will not vote for them by giving them money. If I were dirt poor, I probably would shop at Walmart, but I do have a choice at the moment, so I won't. I don't find lower prices that come out of their employee's and the community's hides to be acceptable.

I find it very sad that they prosper...and the pay disparity between the CEO/executive staff and the employees doesn't surprise me either. It fits right into the whole picture of Walmart as a company.

-Roger

 

Which is why every so often a Wal-Mart store is busted for forcing employees to work off the clock. That makes the offending mangers appear as if they run very efficient operations.

I cannot recall ever having set a foot in a Wal-Mart or a Sam's Club and I have no intent of shopping there until they start paying living wages with real medical benefits. Until then, Costco and Target will do just fine for me.

I am tired of having my tax dollars pay for the health care of the Wal-Mart employees and subsidize their shareholders as a result.

 

Why Squid, you communist, you.
Do you really expect Wally-kingdom to consider acting like that commie-pinko group, Ben and Jerry's, used to?

No way. That sort of thinking is totally anti-American and anti-corporate.

Bet you haven't been selected and groomed for upper-management.

 

:lol:

it's too late for wally world...

which, incidentally, could be viewed as a Communist empire. At least, from the perspective of their employees...

As for not having been selected, well, that's not really applicable when it's your business isn't it?

h34r:

 

Love your logic. By this calculation, Wal Mart can give a half-billion dollar raise to its top level executive and save itself $332 million...if poverty wages (subsidized by taxpayers for the social costs) is your goal... Thanks for the clarification.

 

If that's your idea of a particularly evil company then you have a hopelessly optimistic view of the world. Profiting slightly from an employee's death, while morbid and disturbing, is much better than ruining people's lives as many companies do by scamming stockholders.

By the way, according to this article, "hundreds of companies" take out Dead Peasant's Insurance against their employees, including "Dow Chemical, Procter & Gamble, Walt Disney and Winn-Dixie" but I don't hear you complaining about them.

 

Half a billion dollars is a significant amount of money even for a company the size of Wal-Mart, so no, no executive could get away with paying themselves that much each year. You can't save money by spending money, and I never said you could, so a one million dollar raise for an executive also does not save the company any money, but it is relatively inconsequential.

I once took a part-time job in a supermarket, working there 8 months, and I earned $6/hour. People in Wal-Mart earn significantly more.

And for the record, I'm not saying Wal-Mart is a great company or even a good one, I'm just saying they're not doing anything especially evil and anyone would have to be significantly ignorant of how companies are run if they believe Wal-Mart is unusual in its practices.