7 ms·

Wal-Mart Returning To Full-Time Workers

43 points by TheLegace 13y ago

TheLegace 13y ago
>Wal-Mart’s competitor, Costco, a company that experienced a 19 percent increase in profits in Q2 2013 while paying its employees 40 percent more on average (the average Costco wage is $21.96 per hour) than what a Wal-Mart worker can earn. In that same quarter, Wal-Mart numbers revealed the company is going nowhere fast given its current state of operations. >the availability of a store clerk to get to the rather critical job of moving the merchandise from the box to the shelf where a customer can actually purchase it. But when there are insufficient numbers of store clerks available—due to Wal-Mart’s commitment to using temporary workers or busting its full-time employees down to part-time so as to avoid worker benefit—the products Wal-Mart sells stay off the shelves and unavailable for customers to purchase.
jobu 13y ago
My favorite bit in the whole article: "[Walmart] now hires people to work with its employees to help them sign up for Medicaid ..." So Walmart cares about the health of it's employees, just not enough to provide them with a reasonable health care option.
- pekk 13y ago
  Whatever helps them pay less themselves.
- derleth 13y ago
  So, if Walmart employees are on Socialized Medicine, does that make them Makers or Takers?
  - aaronbrethorst 13y ago
    Irrelevant. What does it make the CEO and board is the interesting question.
- maratd 13y ago
  > So Walmart cares about the health of it's employees, just not enough to provide them with a reasonable health care option. Walmart is not a person. It does not care one way or another. Not because it's evil, but because it's not a person. It can't care. About anything. This entire "don't be evil" crap has really got to stop. Corporations respond to incentives, not moral arguments. If we, as a society, have decided that we want employers to completely provide for the health of their employees, that's fine. We should make laws requiring them to do so, with penalties in tow for non-compliance. But please stop the entire "they just don't care!" crap. They're not supposed to. They're corporations, not people. And yes, I know people run those corporations. Those people have fiduciary responsibilities to their stockholders, not to your moral compass. This is something resolved on a societal level, not on the corporate level.
  - shiftpgdn 13y ago
    Then shouldn't Costco cut all of its employees salaries by half? They are a publicly traded company as well you know...
    - maratd 13y ago
      Costco is the way it is, not because it's a saint, but because of the market it occupies. It is, for all intents and purposes, a wholesaler. They sell things in bulk. That's their thing. And they don't hold your hand while doing it. There are no friendly people walking the isles willing to direct you, just cashiers. You pay for access. They only take AmEx, etc. Mind you, I love the place, but it is the way it is because of what it is, not because it cares.
      - shiftpgdn 13y ago
        I don't shop at Wal-Mart because of their Union busting but last time I went to Costco there were a handful of "floor" employees wandering around to be found if you needed help. Costco pays its employees well because their CEO thinks happy employees lead to better workers[1]. In fact the last big box store I shopped at which was Home Depot had less people around to help than Costco. I realize that's anecdotal but you can't write down high employee salaries as "Being just a wholesaler". [1]http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-06-06/costco-ceo-craig-jelinek-leads-the-cheapest-happiest-company-in-the-world http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-06-06/costco-ceo-c...
michaelwww 13y ago
I was surprised to see this in Forbes but the author says "I write from the left on politics and policy." and "I am a Senior Political Contributor at Forbes and the official 'token lefty,' as the title of the page suggests. However, writing from the 'left of center' should not be confused with writing for the left as I often annoy progressives just as much as I upset conservative thinkers." I applaud Forbes for having opposing viewpoints and also applaud the author for defending himself vigorously in the comment section from the more conservative readers. A good time was had by all as far as I can tell.
- revelation 13y ago
  It's Forbes, they have thousands of "contributors" and their site is nothing but a shell of blogspam now. Make no mistake, there is no editing going on.
  - eropple 13y ago
    This isn't completely true. Rick Ungar is an actual published writer with a nontrivial history (most of it outside of politics--he was head of Marvel Productions for a while). He appears on Fox News--such as that is--programs as the token liberal.
  - michaelwww 13y ago
    Steve Forbes still weighs in on the Op/Ed link and I doubt very much he would agree with your characterization.
- Pxtl 13y ago
  I tend to be skeptical of columnists who make claims like that because of Camille Paglia ruining it for everybody with her concern-trolling.
bane 13y ago
Oh, you mean when I can't buy things because they aren't on the shelves because there's nobody available to move them from the loading dock to the shelf, and I don't want to shop there anyway because the entire store is in disarray because there aren't enough employees to clean up the products that sales might drop?
- derleth 13y ago
  On the other side of the coin, there also aren't enough employees to stop shoplifters and it's policy that they can't really challenge them anyway.
tzs 13y ago
NOTE! The submitter linked to the second page of a two page story. For those who want to start at page 1, try this: http://www.forbes.com/sites/rickungar/2013/09/25/wal-mart-returning-to-full-time-workers-obamacare-not-such-a-job-killer-after-all/1/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/rickungar/2013/09/25/wal-mart-re...
- TheLegace 13y ago
  Oh my gosh, I could have sworn I was on the first page. Sorry about that.
gwright 13y ago
The author claims that shelves weren't being stocked because the employee mix had been shifted towards part-time workers. OK, accurate or not, it says nothing at all about the total number of available 'worker-hours' just that the full/part-time mix had changed. It simply doesn't follow logically that there would be a shortage of labor just because the mix changed.
- nathos 13y ago
  Is it possible that full-time workers would be more experienced and/or better motivated, resulting in increased productivity per worker?
  - runamok 13y ago
    They treat employees like crap and pay them as little as possible. Thus they get exactly what they pay for; sullen workers who do the bare minimum not to get fired.
  - gwright 13y ago
    Sure that is possible but that is a different argument. The author should have made that point explicitly if that was indeed the situation (and provided evidence).
adventured 13y ago
Some parts of this article may be correct, however this: "For anyone who has not been following the Wal-Mart saga, sales have been sinking dramatically at the retailer as the company has turned to hiring mostly temporary workers" ... is simply wrong. Sales (from the '13 annual report): FY09: $401b | FY10: $405b | FY11: $419b | FY12: $444b | FY13: $466b Sales are sinking dramatically at the retailer? At best that's ignorance, at worst a sensational lie.
- michaelwww 13y ago
  Sales are up around the world. He is referring to U.S. stores that are affected by domestic health care law changes. http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424127887323549204578317782804145490 http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000142412788732354920...
FredDollen 13y ago
"In fact, Wal-Mart’s unwillingness to pay most of their workers a livable wage" Wal-Mart is paying their workers what the market will bear. In fact, it can be argued they are paying MORE than the market can bear, since they have 25 applicants for every opening.

43 points by TheLegace 13y ago

>Wal-Mart’s competitor, Costco, a company that experienced a 19 percent increase in profits in Q2 2013 while paying its employees 40 percent more on average (the average Costco wage is $21.96 per hour) than what a Wal-Mart worker can earn. In that same quarter, Wal-Mart numbers revealed the company is going nowhere fast given its current state of operations. >the availability of a store clerk to get to the rather critical job of moving the merchandise from the box to the shelf where a customer can actually purchase it. But when there are insufficient numbers of store clerks available—due to Wal-Mart’s commitment to using temporary workers or busting its full-time employees down to part-time so as to avoid worker benefit—the products Wal-Mart sells stay off the shelves and unavailable for customers to purchase.

jobu 13y ago

My favorite bit in the whole article: "[Walmart] now hires people to work with its employees to help them sign up for Medicaid ..." So Walmart cares about the health of it's employees, just not enough to provide them with a reasonable health care option.

pekk 13y ago
Whatever helps them pay less themselves.
derleth 13y ago
So, if Walmart employees are on Socialized Medicine, does that make them Makers or Takers?
- aaronbrethorst 13y ago
  Irrelevant. What does it make the CEO and board is the interesting question.
maratd 13y ago
> So Walmart cares about the health of it's employees, just not enough to provide them with a reasonable health care option. Walmart is not a person. It does not care one way or another. Not because it's evil, but because it's not a person. It can't care. About anything. This entire "don't be evil" crap has really got to stop. Corporations respond to incentives, not moral arguments. If we, as a society, have decided that we want employers to completely provide for the health of their employees, that's fine. We should make laws requiring them to do so, with penalties in tow for non-compliance. But please stop the entire "they just don't care!" crap. They're not supposed to. They're corporations, not people. And yes, I know people run those corporations. Those people have fiduciary responsibilities to their stockholders, not to your moral compass. This is something resolved on a societal level, not on the corporate level.
- shiftpgdn 13y ago
  Then shouldn't Costco cut all of its employees salaries by half? They are a publicly traded company as well you know...
  - maratd 13y ago
    Costco is the way it is, not because it's a saint, but because of the market it occupies. It is, for all intents and purposes, a wholesaler. They sell things in bulk. That's their thing. And they don't hold your hand while doing it. There are no friendly people walking the isles willing to direct you, just cashiers. You pay for access. They only take AmEx, etc. Mind you, I love the place, but it is the way it is because of what it is, not because it cares.
    - shiftpgdn 13y ago
      I don't shop at Wal-Mart because of their Union busting but last time I went to Costco there were a handful of "floor" employees wandering around to be found if you needed help. Costco pays its employees well because their CEO thinks happy employees lead to better workers[1]. In fact the last big box store I shopped at which was Home Depot had less people around to help than Costco. I realize that's anecdotal but you can't write down high employee salaries as "Being just a wholesaler". [1]http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-06-06/costco-ceo-craig-jelinek-leads-the-cheapest-happiest-company-in-the-world http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-06-06/costco-ceo-c...

michaelwww 13y ago

I was surprised to see this in Forbes but the author says "I write from the left on politics and policy." and "I am a Senior Political Contributor at Forbes and the official 'token lefty,' as the title of the page suggests. However, writing from the 'left of center' should not be confused with writing for the left as I often annoy progressives just as much as I upset conservative thinkers." I applaud Forbes for having opposing viewpoints and also applaud the author for defending himself vigorously in the comment section from the more conservative readers. A good time was had by all as far as I can tell.

revelation 13y ago
It's Forbes, they have thousands of "contributors" and their site is nothing but a shell of blogspam now. Make no mistake, there is no editing going on.
- eropple 13y ago
  This isn't completely true. Rick Ungar is an actual published writer with a nontrivial history (most of it outside of politics--he was head of Marvel Productions for a while). He appears on Fox News--such as that is--programs as the token liberal.
- michaelwww 13y ago
  Steve Forbes still weighs in on the Op/Ed link and I doubt very much he would agree with your characterization.
Pxtl 13y ago
I tend to be skeptical of columnists who make claims like that because of Camille Paglia ruining it for everybody with her concern-trolling.

bane 13y ago

Oh, you mean when I can't buy things because they aren't on the shelves because there's nobody available to move them from the loading dock to the shelf, and I don't want to shop there anyway because the entire store is in disarray because there aren't enough employees to clean up the products that sales might drop?

derleth 13y ago
On the other side of the coin, there also aren't enough employees to stop shoplifters and it's policy that they can't really challenge them anyway.

tzs 13y ago

NOTE! The submitter linked to the second page of a two page story. For those who want to start at page 1, try this: http://www.forbes.com/sites/rickungar/2013/09/25/wal-mart-returning-to-full-time-workers-obamacare-not-such-a-job-killer-after-all/1/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/rickungar/2013/09/25/wal-mart-re...

TheLegace 13y ago
Oh my gosh, I could have sworn I was on the first page. Sorry about that.

gwright 13y ago

The author claims that shelves weren't being stocked because the employee mix had been shifted towards part-time workers. OK, accurate or not, it says nothing at all about the total number of available 'worker-hours' just that the full/part-time mix had changed. It simply doesn't follow logically that there would be a shortage of labor just because the mix changed.

nathos 13y ago
Is it possible that full-time workers would be more experienced and/or better motivated, resulting in increased productivity per worker?
- runamok 13y ago
  They treat employees like crap and pay them as little as possible. Thus they get exactly what they pay for; sullen workers who do the bare minimum not to get fired.
- gwright 13y ago
  Sure that is possible but that is a different argument. The author should have made that point explicitly if that was indeed the situation (and provided evidence).

adventured 13y ago

Some parts of this article may be correct, however this: "For anyone who has not been following the Wal-Mart saga, sales have been sinking dramatically at the retailer as the company has turned to hiring mostly temporary workers" ... is simply wrong. Sales (from the '13 annual report): FY09: $401b | FY10: $405b | FY11: $419b | FY12: $444b | FY13: $466b Sales are sinking dramatically at the retailer? At best that's ignorance, at worst a sensational lie.

michaelwww 13y ago
Sales are up around the world. He is referring to U.S. stores that are affected by domestic health care law changes. http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424127887323549204578317782804145490 http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000142412788732354920...

FredDollen 13y ago

"In fact, Wal-Mart’s unwillingness to pay most of their workers a livable wage" Wal-Mart is paying their workers what the market will bear. In fact, it can be argued they are paying MORE than the market can bear, since they have 25 applicants for every opening.