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Ugh. I think that this sort of attitude (which was my initial reaction too) is a big part of what's wrong with our current economy. If you take the concept at

Ugh. I think that this sort of attitude (which was my initial reaction too) is a big part of what's wrong with our current economy. If you take the concept at face value, this is Walmart offering to let their employees make some extra money in exchange for a bit of extra work, once they've clocked out. What a nice company. But realistically, this is Walmart shunting the costs of delivery onto their employees. Instead of paying their employees a living wage, or offering benefits befitting a delivery driver, they can offset all of the risk, deprecation costs, etc associated with delivering a package all for the low cost of what amounts to a tiny raise in their existing payroll. Walmart chooses what they pay their associates, and what hours they get. So it's not really appropriate for them to start becoming arbiters of opportunities to make extra money "outside of work." This is shady as all hell.

ancap 9y ago
Wow, way to take something that would be a win-win for Walmart, its employees and consumers and turn it into some dark scheme. >Instead of paying their employees a living wage Walmart (and any other employer) doesn't arbitrarily pick wages. They pay the market rate which is no more than the employee's marginal productivity. This is why Walmart was offering entry level employees $17+/hour in North Dakota during the height of the fracking boom.
- x0x0 9y ago
  The market rate is unrelated to marginal productivity, unless you think North Dakota Walmart employees are twice as productive as Walmart employees elsewhere. Walmart is, in many markets, a big enough employer in the low skills employment marketplace to be a price setter not a price taker.
  - ancap 9y ago
    I think you misunderstood what I was saying. To state the same thing differently: They pay the market rate which is less than or equal to the employee's marginal productivity, or, an employer is not going to pay someone more than their marginal productivity. > unless you think North Dakota Walmart employees are twice as productive as Walmart employees elsewhere. No, not at all. Walmart was merely paying the market rate. It's important to recognize that at some point with fewer workers the per-employee marginal productivity increases--a kind of inverse way of talking about diminishing returns. You can be sure that the Walmart in North Dakota paying $17+/hour was not hiring nearly as many workers as a Walmart paying people $8/hour. EDIT: I want to add one more thing. Not only would the $17/hour Walmart not be hiring as many people as the $8/hour Walmart, but they're also going to have a lower over-all productivity rate unless the $17/hour workers had their labor complemented by additional technology. The cost of purchasing the additional technology is price prohibitive until labor costs rise.
wyc 9y ago
Wouldn't this result in increased risk of delivery failure, package damage, or even non-professional delivery-driver injury? If anything, this is low-end, but yes, it sounds cheap. I think it'd be a good practice to examine competitive offerings for delivery per area, e.g., offerings such as Postmates and similar. If there's someone willing to pay them more, then I feel that the employee may have enough options for fair treatment. However, if Walmart is the only game in town, then I agree with a lot of your apprehensions.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
pavement 9y ago
In other words, knowing what we already know about Wal Mart, while this might be good news for share holders, this isn't likely to be good news for employees.
justforFranz 9y ago
It blows my mind how libertarian/naive techy types are. But I also suspect there's some right-wing nutjob organization spamming hacker news comments with pro-business community idiocy.
- Houshalter 9y ago
  I feel exactly the opposite. It feels like HN is very liberal. I'd bet money it's much more than the general population.
  - Fraterkes 9y ago
    Its not like everyone is perfectly left or right. Hn is probably pretty socially liberal and kinda economically liberal on some points, but its also a big fan of companies and has a lot more people with libertarian ideas than the general population.
- twoquestions 9y ago
  Libertarian isn't necessarily right-wing, even though it generally is in the US. When you get some time, search for and skim though "The Conquest of Bread" to see a hard Leftist complain about taxes. Be warned, the author is kind of a nutbar.
  - dragonwriter 9y ago
    > Libertarian isn't necessarily right-wing, even though it generally is in the US. American left-libertarians exist, but may not identify as libertarians because right-libertarians have kind of monopolized the label.
    - rectang 9y ago
      I'd like to think that left-libertarians would focus on efficiency of the labor market and the attendant benefits to the broader economy. Right-libertarians have ceded that ground.
- 9y ago
ianai 9y ago
Yes, exactly. I could imagine an after-shift delivery taking up to an hour to complete. (I'm factoring-in "find the place" time and retracing their steps after delivery) They will probably only be paid a per Diem for the delivery - and it won't be near their hourly wage nor gas/wear & tear costs. It's a nice thought on the outside...but ultimately, deliveries are best done by actually specialized outfits. I can also imagine a manager changing everyones' schedules around the deliveries. That could seriously impact people.
- xienze 9y ago
  > and it won't be near their hourly wage nor gas/wear & tear costs. Well then, I suppose the people involved will just have to do the math and see if it makes sense to them. The horror.
  - subway 9y ago
    Sadly for a lot of people, the short term win of being able to use the extra couple dollars to feed the family causes them to act 'irrationally' and ignore the longer term consequences.
    - Alupis 9y ago
      > Sadly for a lot of people, the short term win of being able to use the extra couple dollars to feed the family causes them to act 'irrationally' and ignore the longer term consequences Sort of like driving for Lyft or Uber? The wear on vehicles alone adds up quickly into large maintenance bills... yet many people still drive for them on an amateur level, making long term profits questionable (buying new tires after 1-2 years instead of 3-4, for example).
  - rgbrenner 9y ago
    Im in the 'wait and see' camp.. but you can say a program is voluntary, while in truth it's required to keep your job. Just label all the people who refuse as not being team players. Dock them on their performance reviews for it. "Johnny over there wouldn't take a short detour on his way home, so we had to send someone out to deliver a package. If he's not willing to help out, maybe he should go work some place else." There.. a required voluntary program. This is the natural language/playbook for every manager out there.
gregw134 9y ago
Walmart has less than 3% profit margin. It'd go bankrupt if it paid its employees $15/hour.
- ransom1538 9y ago
  If walmart can't support a decent wage - then they should go bankrupt and let middle class persons own and run small businesses: hardware stores, grocery stores, clothing stores, ice cream stores, etc. Owning a business near a walmart means competing with floods of cheap off loaded goods from china -- operated by persons using government subsidies.
  - Houshalter 9y ago
    It's more like the other way around. Small businesses are much more sensitive to increases in wages than big efficient companies like walmart. That's why Walmart has supported increases in the minimum wage in the past, because they know it hurts their competitors more than them. They just increase their prices and put the increased costs onto consumers and keep the same profit. But even if it wasn't this way, so what? Walmart isn't making their employees worse off. They are giving them low skill jobs that the economy is desperately short on. Companies like Apple hire orders of magnitude less low skill employees relative to their profit than Walmart. No one is protesting Apple over that. If we just taxed companies like that bit more, and distributed the money amongst the poor, it would be vastly more effective than making walmart pay a few percent more. In a few years Walmart will automate most of their jobs anyways. As many industries already have. Increasing the minimum wage doesn't solve that.
- greglindahl 9y ago
  If you compare Costco to Sam's Club, you'll notice that it's not that simple.
  - qmarchi 9y ago
    Costco doesn't have customer service. I can walk around and never see a single person. At Sam's, I'm constantly bombarded with questions of if I need help.
danvoell 9y ago
Also, the fact that it is tied to employment could also be a pitfall. It's optional, until such point as it isn't. At least with other types of sharing economy type jobs it is optional. What happens when you feel obligated to make deliveries so as to not lose your day job.
SilasX 9y ago
You don't think you're jumping the gun here, maybe? Do you even know what the compensation will be? >Instead of paying their employees a living wage, or offering benefits befitting a delivery driver, Obviously you can criticize Walmart's current practices. The issue is whether this policy is any worse than what they had before. >they can offset all of the risk, deprecation costs, etc associated with delivering a package all for the low cost of what amounts to a tiny raise in their existing payroll. Do you give the same objection to every other company that pays for mileage for work-related travel? Is that also "shunting off depreciation costs"? Why are you assuming that they won't have an insurance policy for such deliveries or pay for mileage like every other company? Edit: clarified which part was responding to what
- zorked 9y ago
  > You don't think you're jumping the gun here, maybe? Do you even know what the compensation will be? Walmart is known for high wages.
  - x0x0 9y ago
    If only we had some patterns of previous behavior towards employees at Walmart from which we could make inferences about whether the deal offered (well, eventually, this will be "offered" to employees, ie totally optional, unless you want to keep your job) will be a fair deal or exploitative.
  - atom-morgan 9y ago
    I made a few dollars above minimum wage when I was 18 before I started college. Not much on my resume other than similar jobs expected of someone in highschool. I was very happy with my job there.
  - downrightmike 9y ago
    Are you already zorked this early on a Friday? Then why are so many of walmart's employees on social benefits? https://www.thenation.com/article/walmart-wages-are-the-main-reason-people-depend-on-food-stamps/ https://www.thenation.com/article/walmart-wages-are-the-main...
v45h 9y ago
Is it only shady because you believe Walmart employees are not paid enough as is? Doctors can choose to moonlight and get paid extra, and I don't think anyone is complaining about that. And overtime is certainly a thing. Coming from Walmart's perspective, I'm assuming it just seemed like a smart business decision rather than something maliciously intended. Like hey look, we can make our customers and employees happier in a profitable manner thereby keeping up with our competitor (Amazon). If the employees have complaints about this then I guess perhaps it can be called into question. But at the end of the day won't most employees be happy about this?
- ghostly_s 9y ago
  > Doctors can choose to moonlight and get paid extra, and I don't think anyone is complaining about that. Doctors have that choice, and yet they don't do that. I wonder why?
  - briandear 9y ago
    That just isn't true at all. In fact, it's patently false. https://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/12/24/the-doctor-as-moonlighter/?_r=0 https://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/12/24/the-doctor-as-moon...
  - potatoyogurt 9y ago
    >In Medical Economics’ 2013 annual survey, 36% of family medicine/general practitioners and 35% of internists reported earning income from sources other than their primary practice/employer in 2012. That number was about the same for cardiologists (38%), but was higher for hospitalists (40%). Pediatricians and gastroenterologists were lower, at 25% and 27%, respectively. http://medicaleconomics.modernmedicine.com/medical-economics/content/tags/career-advice/moonlighting-physicians-expand-income-experience-taking?page=full http://medicaleconomics.modernmedicine.com/medical-economics...
    - xienze 9y ago
      To add to that, a lot of doctors at urgent care clinics (after hours, at least) are moonlighting.
penpapersw 9y ago
Most of our local friends work at Walmart, because there's honestly not much other choice for them. Our economy is so broken that the only people who win are people who know how to abuse the system, and who have designed the system to be easier to abuse and harder to survive by honest hard work. I read once that Walmart uses their resources to take advantage of current (broken) laws to allow them to keep paying pennies for hard work, and forcing the government to pay the rest of a living wage. (Most of our friends are also receiving at least one or two forms of public aid.) I wouldn't be surprised if they also use their resources to "influence" laws to ensure that it stays this way.
- Houshalter 9y ago
  That's surprising. In the past walmart has supported increases in the minimum wage because they know it hurts their competitors more than it hurts them. They shove the cost of higher wages off to higher prices for consumers and keep the same profit. In any case within a few years these jobs will likely be automated, and walmart will stop hurting all those poor employees.
  - mtberatwork 9y ago
    Walmart has acquiesced to increases in minimum wages only under protest from their workers and even then, the increases were pitiful. [1] [1] http://www.cnbc.com/2016/06/03/walmart-can-afford-15-minimum-wage-commentary.html http://www.cnbc.com/2016/06/03/walmart-can-afford-15-minimum...
    - Houshalter 9y ago
      Walmart raising it's own wages voluntarily is different than supporting a law that forces all companies to raise wages.
      - mtberatwork 9y ago
        Walmart raising its own wages under protest is different than Walmart raising them voluntarily.
Stanleyc23 9y ago
interesting perspective. my first impression was that this was a v1 test for getting into the on demand delivery business that Postmates is in right now.
voidlogic 9y ago
>Instead of paying their employees a living wage Are you operating on old assumptions? The average hourly wage is $13.38 for full-time workers and $10.58 per hour for part-timers [1]. While that might not get you far in the bay area (which doesn't have many Walmarts FWIW), its a pretty good wage for unskilled labor in much of the interior country (which is prime Walmart territory)... 1: http://money.cnn.com/2016/01/20/news/companies/walmart-pay-raise-wages/ http://money.cnn.com/2016/01/20/news/companies/walmart-pay-r... Edit: Sorry, when I said bay area I was thinking of the area immediately surrounding San Francisco.
- greglindahl 9y ago
  The Bay Area doesn't have Walmarts? Mountain View, Santa Clara, 4 in San Jose, Milpitas, Fremont, and that's just in the South Bay.
  - voidlogic 9y ago
    Sorry, I'm not from the area, I was thinking of the area immediately around SF on the lower peninsula.
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  > While that might not get you far in the bay area (which doesn't have Walmarts FWIW) The Bay Area has, from a quick Google search and review of the list of locations, something like 25 Wal-Marts, which is substantially more than zero.
williamle8300 9y ago
It says they can "opt in"... why are you criticizing this? And yes, they can also "opt in" whether to find a new job, and quit Walmart.
- Zarath 9y ago
  True, but I'd bet those that choose to opt in are more likely to get raises/promotions and create a vicious cycle where it's still opt in but everyone basically needs it to stay competitive (smartphone, car, etc.)
  - williamle8300 9y ago
    If you think your employer is crooked, then... quit? I can't do everything for you. This is basic life skills.
russdpale 9y ago
You could be totally right, but honestly this whole idea sounds like something a union would do. I don't wonder if this is to throw the employees a bone, in hopes of staving off employees trying to unionize. My main worry is the safety. Who is controlling how many hours are worked? This may not seem safety related at first, but many state DOT's might have a problem with 8 hour shift employees then going and working 5+ more hours on the road. What is the safety oversight? For UPS, Fedex, etc, there are state guidelines about how many hours they can drive consecutively in a day, in a week, so on and so forth. Are these employees going to have to get a DOT health certification (checking vision and such)?
- qmarchi 9y ago
  The system is designed to only minorly adjust the route taken on the way back to the associates place of residence.
dheera 9y ago
As long as Walmart doesn't indirectly force people to participate, I don't see a problem. By indirectly force, I mean, "you will effectively get fired for some BS reason like poor performance if you don't do some deliveries and take the meager compensation" type stuff. I for one rarely go directly home after work. I have other things I like to do in the evenings before going home. I don't want work telling me I need to do otherwise. It emphatically needs to be voluntary.
- cat199 9y ago
  Nah, walmart finance inc will sell you a nice auto loan no probs.. you'll get a real good deal.. I'll make you an offer you can't refuse
pmiller2 9y ago
Yep, and if they happen to get in an accident on the way to a delivery, guess who pays? Not the employee's insurance, unless they have commercial coverage, and I'm guessing not Walmart.
refurb 9y ago
What? This is completely voluntary. If an employee looks at the extra pay and says "no thanks". Nothing happens.
adventured 9y ago
If you want Walmart to pay a "living wage" for the bottom 50% of their employees - then you're asking Walmart to fire a million people in the next decade. Walmart's net income has been declining for years. Their sales have topped out. Their margins are razor thin. Amazon is beginning to cut deeply into their business. Some non-trivial percentage of Amazon's growth over the next ten years must come directly from Walmart. Walmart is in trouble, Sears style circa 1990. And you want them to raise wages significantly when they already can't afford the employee base they have. Good luck. How does this sound instead? Fire a million workers, try to get the sales to employee ratio closer to Costco by automating anything and everything they can. Then raise the salaries modestly of the remaining million employees that are higher value labor. Then the fired million people become 100% subsidized by tax payers because there are no jobs for them and are not going to be. Nothing can stop some variation of that scenario from happening, the only thing slowing it down is the low cost of the labor in question. Raise that cost, Walmart will be forced to accelerate the employee reduction as their net income continues to contract. Your sole choice re Walmart & a living wage, is full government subsidization of the low skill employees, or partial. Besides, Canada, Australia and every European welfare state uses a public subsidization system for low value labor: the top 50% pay for the welfare (healthcare et al) for the bottom 50% that do not earn much (who do you think is paying for the welfare costs of France's perpetually high unemployment rate?). If you take a job in the UK making minimum wage, you are not covering the cost of all of your benefits such as healthcare, and the UK has a relatively low corporate income tax rate, who do you think is subsidizing that low pay rate on the labor? This is common all over the developed world.

ancap 9y ago

Wow, way to take something that would be a win-win for Walmart, its employees and consumers and turn it into some dark scheme. >Instead of paying their employees a living wage Walmart (and any other employer) doesn't arbitrarily pick wages. They pay the market rate which is no more than the employee's marginal productivity. This is why Walmart was offering entry level employees $17+/hour in North Dakota during the height of the fracking boom.

x0x0 9y ago
The market rate is unrelated to marginal productivity, unless you think North Dakota Walmart employees are twice as productive as Walmart employees elsewhere. Walmart is, in many markets, a big enough employer in the low skills employment marketplace to be a price setter not a price taker.
- ancap 9y ago
  I think you misunderstood what I was saying. To state the same thing differently: They pay the market rate which is less than or equal to the employee's marginal productivity, or, an employer is not going to pay someone more than their marginal productivity. > unless you think North Dakota Walmart employees are twice as productive as Walmart employees elsewhere. No, not at all. Walmart was merely paying the market rate. It's important to recognize that at some point with fewer workers the per-employee marginal productivity increases--a kind of inverse way of talking about diminishing returns. You can be sure that the Walmart in North Dakota paying $17+/hour was not hiring nearly as many workers as a Walmart paying people $8/hour. EDIT: I want to add one more thing. Not only would the $17/hour Walmart not be hiring as many people as the $8/hour Walmart, but they're also going to have a lower over-all productivity rate unless the $17/hour workers had their labor complemented by additional technology. The cost of purchasing the additional technology is price prohibitive until labor costs rise.

wyc 9y ago

Wouldn't this result in increased risk of delivery failure, package damage, or even non-professional delivery-driver injury? If anything, this is low-end, but yes, it sounds cheap. I think it'd be a good practice to examine competitive offerings for delivery per area, e.g., offerings such as Postmates and similar. If there's someone willing to pay them more, then I feel that the employee may have enough options for fair treatment. However, if Walmart is the only game in town, then I agree with a lot of your apprehensions.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

pavement 9y ago

In other words, knowing what we already know about Wal Mart, while this might be good news for share holders, this isn't likely to be good news for employees.

justforFranz 9y ago

It blows my mind how libertarian/naive techy types are. But I also suspect there's some right-wing nutjob organization spamming hacker news comments with pro-business community idiocy.

Houshalter 9y ago
I feel exactly the opposite. It feels like HN is very liberal. I'd bet money it's much more than the general population.
- Fraterkes 9y ago
  Its not like everyone is perfectly left or right. Hn is probably pretty socially liberal and kinda economically liberal on some points, but its also a big fan of companies and has a lot more people with libertarian ideas than the general population.
twoquestions 9y ago
Libertarian isn't necessarily right-wing, even though it generally is in the US. When you get some time, search for and skim though "The Conquest of Bread" to see a hard Leftist complain about taxes. Be warned, the author is kind of a nutbar.
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  > Libertarian isn't necessarily right-wing, even though it generally is in the US. American left-libertarians exist, but may not identify as libertarians because right-libertarians have kind of monopolized the label.
  - rectang 9y ago
    I'd like to think that left-libertarians would focus on efficiency of the labor market and the attendant benefits to the broader economy. Right-libertarians have ceded that ground.
9y ago

ianai 9y ago

Yes, exactly. I could imagine an after-shift delivery taking up to an hour to complete. (I'm factoring-in "find the place" time and retracing their steps after delivery) They will probably only be paid a per Diem for the delivery - and it won't be near their hourly wage nor gas/wear & tear costs. It's a nice thought on the outside...but ultimately, deliveries are best done by actually specialized outfits. I can also imagine a manager changing everyones' schedules around the deliveries. That could seriously impact people.

xienze 9y ago
> and it won't be near their hourly wage nor gas/wear & tear costs. Well then, I suppose the people involved will just have to do the math and see if it makes sense to them. The horror.
- subway 9y ago
  Sadly for a lot of people, the short term win of being able to use the extra couple dollars to feed the family causes them to act 'irrationally' and ignore the longer term consequences.
  - Alupis 9y ago
    > Sadly for a lot of people, the short term win of being able to use the extra couple dollars to feed the family causes them to act 'irrationally' and ignore the longer term consequences Sort of like driving for Lyft or Uber? The wear on vehicles alone adds up quickly into large maintenance bills... yet many people still drive for them on an amateur level, making long term profits questionable (buying new tires after 1-2 years instead of 3-4, for example).
- rgbrenner 9y ago
  Im in the 'wait and see' camp.. but you can say a program is voluntary, while in truth it's required to keep your job. Just label all the people who refuse as not being team players. Dock them on their performance reviews for it. "Johnny over there wouldn't take a short detour on his way home, so we had to send someone out to deliver a package. If he's not willing to help out, maybe he should go work some place else." There.. a required voluntary program. This is the natural language/playbook for every manager out there.

gregw134 9y ago

Walmart has less than 3% profit margin. It'd go bankrupt if it paid its employees $15/hour.

ransom1538 9y ago
If walmart can't support a decent wage - then they should go bankrupt and let middle class persons own and run small businesses: hardware stores, grocery stores, clothing stores, ice cream stores, etc. Owning a business near a walmart means competing with floods of cheap off loaded goods from china -- operated by persons using government subsidies.
- Houshalter 9y ago
  It's more like the other way around. Small businesses are much more sensitive to increases in wages than big efficient companies like walmart. That's why Walmart has supported increases in the minimum wage in the past, because they know it hurts their competitors more than them. They just increase their prices and put the increased costs onto consumers and keep the same profit. But even if it wasn't this way, so what? Walmart isn't making their employees worse off. They are giving them low skill jobs that the economy is desperately short on. Companies like Apple hire orders of magnitude less low skill employees relative to their profit than Walmart. No one is protesting Apple over that. If we just taxed companies like that bit more, and distributed the money amongst the poor, it would be vastly more effective than making walmart pay a few percent more. In a few years Walmart will automate most of their jobs anyways. As many industries already have. Increasing the minimum wage doesn't solve that.
greglindahl 9y ago
If you compare Costco to Sam's Club, you'll notice that it's not that simple.
- qmarchi 9y ago
  Costco doesn't have customer service. I can walk around and never see a single person. At Sam's, I'm constantly bombarded with questions of if I need help.

danvoell 9y ago

Also, the fact that it is tied to employment could also be a pitfall. It's optional, until such point as it isn't. At least with other types of sharing economy type jobs it is optional. What happens when you feel obligated to make deliveries so as to not lose your day job.

SilasX 9y ago

You don't think you're jumping the gun here, maybe? Do you even know what the compensation will be? >Instead of paying their employees a living wage, or offering benefits befitting a delivery driver, Obviously you can criticize Walmart's current practices. The issue is whether this policy is any worse than what they had before. >they can offset all of the risk, deprecation costs, etc associated with delivering a package all for the low cost of what amounts to a tiny raise in their existing payroll. Do you give the same objection to every other company that pays for mileage for work-related travel? Is that also "shunting off depreciation costs"? Why are you assuming that they won't have an insurance policy for such deliveries or pay for mileage like every other company? Edit: clarified which part was responding to what

zorked 9y ago
> You don't think you're jumping the gun here, maybe? Do you even know what the compensation will be? Walmart is known for high wages.
- x0x0 9y ago
  If only we had some patterns of previous behavior towards employees at Walmart from which we could make inferences about whether the deal offered (well, eventually, this will be "offered" to employees, ie totally optional, unless you want to keep your job) will be a fair deal or exploitative.
- atom-morgan 9y ago
  I made a few dollars above minimum wage when I was 18 before I started college. Not much on my resume other than similar jobs expected of someone in highschool. I was very happy with my job there.
- downrightmike 9y ago
  Are you already zorked this early on a Friday? Then why are so many of walmart's employees on social benefits? https://www.thenation.com/article/walmart-wages-are-the-main-reason-people-depend-on-food-stamps/ https://www.thenation.com/article/walmart-wages-are-the-main...

v45h 9y ago

Is it only shady because you believe Walmart employees are not paid enough as is? Doctors can choose to moonlight and get paid extra, and I don't think anyone is complaining about that. And overtime is certainly a thing. Coming from Walmart's perspective, I'm assuming it just seemed like a smart business decision rather than something maliciously intended. Like hey look, we can make our customers and employees happier in a profitable manner thereby keeping up with our competitor (Amazon). If the employees have complaints about this then I guess perhaps it can be called into question. But at the end of the day won't most employees be happy about this?

ghostly_s 9y ago
> Doctors can choose to moonlight and get paid extra, and I don't think anyone is complaining about that. Doctors have that choice, and yet they don't do that. I wonder why?
- briandear 9y ago
  That just isn't true at all. In fact, it's patently false. https://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/12/24/the-doctor-as-moonlighter/?_r=0 https://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/12/24/the-doctor-as-moon...
- potatoyogurt 9y ago
  >In Medical Economics’ 2013 annual survey, 36% of family medicine/general practitioners and 35% of internists reported earning income from sources other than their primary practice/employer in 2012. That number was about the same for cardiologists (38%), but was higher for hospitalists (40%). Pediatricians and gastroenterologists were lower, at 25% and 27%, respectively. http://medicaleconomics.modernmedicine.com/medical-economics/content/tags/career-advice/moonlighting-physicians-expand-income-experience-taking?page=full http://medicaleconomics.modernmedicine.com/medical-economics...
  - xienze 9y ago
    To add to that, a lot of doctors at urgent care clinics (after hours, at least) are moonlighting.

penpapersw 9y ago

Most of our local friends work at Walmart, because there's honestly not much other choice for them. Our economy is so broken that the only people who win are people who know how to abuse the system, and who have designed the system to be easier to abuse and harder to survive by honest hard work. I read once that Walmart uses their resources to take advantage of current (broken) laws to allow them to keep paying pennies for hard work, and forcing the government to pay the rest of a living wage. (Most of our friends are also receiving at least one or two forms of public aid.) I wouldn't be surprised if they also use their resources to "influence" laws to ensure that it stays this way.

Houshalter 9y ago
That's surprising. In the past walmart has supported increases in the minimum wage because they know it hurts their competitors more than it hurts them. They shove the cost of higher wages off to higher prices for consumers and keep the same profit. In any case within a few years these jobs will likely be automated, and walmart will stop hurting all those poor employees.
- mtberatwork 9y ago
  Walmart has acquiesced to increases in minimum wages only under protest from their workers and even then, the increases were pitiful. [1] [1] http://www.cnbc.com/2016/06/03/walmart-can-afford-15-minimum-wage-commentary.html http://www.cnbc.com/2016/06/03/walmart-can-afford-15-minimum...
  - Houshalter 9y ago
    Walmart raising it's own wages voluntarily is different than supporting a law that forces all companies to raise wages.
    - mtberatwork 9y ago
      Walmart raising its own wages under protest is different than Walmart raising them voluntarily.

Stanleyc23 9y ago

interesting perspective. my first impression was that this was a v1 test for getting into the on demand delivery business that Postmates is in right now.

voidlogic 9y ago

>Instead of paying their employees a living wage Are you operating on old assumptions? The average hourly wage is $13.38 for full-time workers and $10.58 per hour for part-timers [1]. While that might not get you far in the bay area (which doesn't have many Walmarts FWIW), its a pretty good wage for unskilled labor in much of the interior country (which is prime Walmart territory)... 1: http://money.cnn.com/2016/01/20/news/companies/walmart-pay-raise-wages/ http://money.cnn.com/2016/01/20/news/companies/walmart-pay-r... Edit: Sorry, when I said bay area I was thinking of the area immediately surrounding San Francisco.

greglindahl 9y ago
The Bay Area doesn't have Walmarts? Mountain View, Santa Clara, 4 in San Jose, Milpitas, Fremont, and that's just in the South Bay.
- voidlogic 9y ago
  Sorry, I'm not from the area, I was thinking of the area immediately around SF on the lower peninsula.
dragonwriter 9y ago
> While that might not get you far in the bay area (which doesn't have Walmarts FWIW) The Bay Area has, from a quick Google search and review of the list of locations, something like 25 Wal-Marts, which is substantially more than zero.

williamle8300 9y ago

It says they can "opt in"... why are you criticizing this? And yes, they can also "opt in" whether to find a new job, and quit Walmart.

Zarath 9y ago
True, but I'd bet those that choose to opt in are more likely to get raises/promotions and create a vicious cycle where it's still opt in but everyone basically needs it to stay competitive (smartphone, car, etc.)
- williamle8300 9y ago
  If you think your employer is crooked, then... quit? I can't do everything for you. This is basic life skills.

russdpale 9y ago

You could be totally right, but honestly this whole idea sounds like something a union would do. I don't wonder if this is to throw the employees a bone, in hopes of staving off employees trying to unionize. My main worry is the safety. Who is controlling how many hours are worked? This may not seem safety related at first, but many state DOT's might have a problem with 8 hour shift employees then going and working 5+ more hours on the road. What is the safety oversight? For UPS, Fedex, etc, there are state guidelines about how many hours they can drive consecutively in a day, in a week, so on and so forth. Are these employees going to have to get a DOT health certification (checking vision and such)?

qmarchi 9y ago
The system is designed to only minorly adjust the route taken on the way back to the associates place of residence.

dheera 9y ago

As long as Walmart doesn't indirectly force people to participate, I don't see a problem. By indirectly force, I mean, "you will effectively get fired for some BS reason like poor performance if you don't do some deliveries and take the meager compensation" type stuff. I for one rarely go directly home after work. I have other things I like to do in the evenings before going home. I don't want work telling me I need to do otherwise. It emphatically needs to be voluntary.

cat199 9y ago
Nah, walmart finance inc will sell you a nice auto loan no probs.. you'll get a real good deal.. I'll make you an offer you can't refuse

pmiller2 9y ago

Yep, and if they happen to get in an accident on the way to a delivery, guess who pays? Not the employee's insurance, unless they have commercial coverage, and I'm guessing not Walmart.

refurb 9y ago

What? This is completely voluntary. If an employee looks at the extra pay and says "no thanks". Nothing happens.

adventured 9y ago

If you want Walmart to pay a "living wage" for the bottom 50% of their employees - then you're asking Walmart to fire a million people in the next decade. Walmart's net income has been declining for years. Their sales have topped out. Their margins are razor thin. Amazon is beginning to cut deeply into their business. Some non-trivial percentage of Amazon's growth over the next ten years must come directly from Walmart. Walmart is in trouble, Sears style circa 1990. And you want them to raise wages significantly when they already can't afford the employee base they have. Good luck. How does this sound instead? Fire a million workers, try to get the sales to employee ratio closer to Costco by automating anything and everything they can. Then raise the salaries modestly of the remaining million employees that are higher value labor. Then the fired million people become 100% subsidized by tax payers because there are no jobs for them and are not going to be. Nothing can stop some variation of that scenario from happening, the only thing slowing it down is the low cost of the labor in question. Raise that cost, Walmart will be forced to accelerate the employee reduction as their net income continues to contract. Your sole choice re Walmart & a living wage, is full government subsidization of the low skill employees, or partial. Besides, Canada, Australia and every European welfare state uses a public subsidization system for low value labor: the top 50% pay for the welfare (healthcare et al) for the bottom 50% that do not earn much (who do you think is paying for the welfare costs of France's perpetually high unemployment rate?). If you take a job in the UK making minimum wage, you are not covering the cost of all of your benefits such as healthcare, and the UK has a relatively low corporate income tax rate, who do you think is subsidizing that low pay rate on the labor? This is common all over the developed world.