4 ms·

This is a drive-by shooting of Wal-Mart intended to play into U.S. domestic politics, where one group is pushing for a higher minimum wage (to divert attention

This is a drive-by shooting of Wal-Mart intended to play into U.S. domestic politics, where one group is pushing for a higher minimum wage (to divert attention from other problems, most likely) Terrible, terrible story. To see why, simply ask yourself: is WalMart obligated to employ every person at a certain wage for a certain number of hours? And pay all of their bills? And make sure they have a good holiday? Of course not. Lots of folks work at various big box stores for 10-20 hours a week just for the holiday season. Raising money to help these people is a pretty cool thing to do. Turning that into some kind of linkbait? Reprehensible.

selmnoo 13y ago
> To see why, simply ask yourself: is WalMart obligated to employ every person at a certain wage for a certain number of hours? And pay all of their bills? And make sure they have a good holiday? Well... yes. An honorable, noble employer would assume some responsibility that his workers are happy and healthy. These people do exist out there, who make an effort to be cognizant of their employees' situations, who try to resist actions that would hurt them in the long run, who go to great lengths to keep a good employee from getting fired just because upper management said so. My uncle was one such person, he owned a store that sold farming equipment some years back, his business had been doing really bad at some point that it became clear he'd have to fire some people (he only had like 3 or 4 employees), one of whom was a family man whose wife was disabled. My uncle operated on a loss for a few months rather than fire these people. Eventually he turned it around too.
- bmelton 13y ago
  Surely, you'd agree that at some point, that system cannot scale. According to Wikipedia, Wal-Mart has 2.2 million employees, and operates at a profit margin of 3.23%. I both value and appreciate the sentiment, but at the same time, some sort of balance must be struck between sentiment and pragmatism.
  - selmnoo 13y ago
    Sure, I totally get that. But grand-parent post made it sound like a corporation has zero responsibility to give one shit for anyone it employs. I just think that's terrible, that's a terrible and dispiriting culture that permits and even encourages that kind of callous I'm-just-in-it-for-myself thinking.
    - bmelton 13y ago
      Well, in all fairness, a corporation does have exactly zero responsibility to give a shit about its employees. It's certainly nicer when they do care, but they aren't obligated to, nor should anyone expect them to.
      - MaysonL 13y ago
        Bullshit!
        bmelton 13y ago
        I can't vote that down, but I would if I could. A corporation, by its very nature, is obligated to its shareholders. They are in violation of the law if they do not attempt to maximize profits for their shareholders. In order to shift any of that obligation toward employees, they'd have to get shareholder approval, and/or justify it in a way that made sense as a profit-motive (e.g., our workers will be more productive if they're happier or better paid). The problem isn't that Wal-Mart is paying too little, it's that they're paying the wrong people. Those jobs are perfectly great for high-schoolers and those with little experience, but apparently horrible for others. That isn't Wal-Mart's fault, it's a market problem caused by a poor economy and/or a dearth of existing jobs.
  - RodericDay 13y ago
    I'm pretty sure if you wanna put it in terms of "scalable systems", vast numbers of humans are deadweight. Let people be outraged at Walmart. Stop telling people to calm down and look at it from their perspective. The corporation as a whole doesn't need nor deserve your sympathy.
- JonFish85 13y ago
  Difference is, I imagine your uncle didn't have millions of shareholders who would lobby to fire him if he didn't lay someone off. What he did was noble, surely. But at the same time, it sounds like it was his business. If Mike Duke (Wal-Mart's CEO) were to say, hey, we're going to cut our profit in half, but pay our employees double, he'd be shown the door. The question is tough. I don't know you, but for a second let's imagine you're an average American. A percentage of your 401k is likely depending on Wal-Mart's stock rising. And your wife/husband's. And your parents' retirement accounts (whether it's 401k, pension fund, whatever). How much are you & your friends & family willing to give up? If you want Wal-Mart wages to go up, invest in them. And convince all your friends, family, coworkers, etc to do the same. And your 401k holders (or union representatives or whoever manages your retirement funds). Eventually, you'll have a voice big enough to bring up the issue in stockholder meetings & have it be heard. As it stands now, the board has a duty to their shareholders to maximize holdings, not to be nice. That can change though.
  - Amadou 13y ago
    the board has a duty to their shareholders to maximize holdings, not to be nice. I think that is a fundamentally biased description of the situation. It isn't necessarily about "nice" vs "profits" - its about corporate responsibility to the community that supports it. Or to over-simplify: short-term profits vs long-term profits. A store in a ghost-town doesn't do walmart any good in the long run.
  - crisnoble 13y ago
    >If you want Wal-Mart wages to go up, invest in them. So your saying that if we buy their stock, driving the price up that Walmart would take this a signal to invest in employee pay and benefit increases, and not a validation that their current minimum wage, weekly hour cap, and lack of benefit model is working? I have heard of people who believe that voting with your wallet / investments is a way to apply pressure to change a companies practices (somehow dolphins and tuna usually gets brought up). But I have never heard of a theory in which investing in a business you think has bad practices will encourage them to get better.
  - pbhjpbhj 13y ago
- Symmetry 13y ago
  I think pretty much any company is going to be willing to operate at a loss for a few months in order to avoid layoffs, even if you're a stereotypical heartless CEO there is such a thing as employee morale. I don't think an employer which didn't care at all about it's employees would lay out that collection in the first place. The problem is that different employees have different numbers of dependents and earners in their households, and need different amounts of money to support themselves well. But you can't really just pay the people with more need more for the same work without risking resentment. And WallMart's profit margins aren't very big, they can't just pay everybody a lot without raising prices. I'd be happy to pay those higher prices, but I don't shop at WallMart because I'm not they're target demographic. The people who shop there are mostly relatively poor people for whom those low prices are actually important. So I think a much better solution would be to collect more in taxes and subsidize the wages of poor people more.
  - yummyfajitas 13y ago
    So I think a much better solution would be to collect more in taxes and subsidize the wages of poor people more. We already subsidize the poor to the point where everyone's consumption is $20k/year, even if they earn $0-5k/year. ftp://ftp.bls.gov/pub/special.requests/ce/standard/2011/income.txt Is $20k not sufficient? What is the right number?
- SamuelMulder 13y ago
  He didn't ask whether it was an honorable, noble thing to do, he asked whether they were "obligated" to do it. Once you are obligated to do something, it is no longer honorable or noble just to do it. Your uncle stood out because he went beyond what he was coerced to do.
- thatswrong0 13y ago
  While that was noble, it was also risky. Firing a few employees to keep the business afloat (and thus preserving the livelihood for a few) would certainly be better than the business tanking and having all employees out of a job. I agree with your sentiment: employers should keep their employees happy and compensate them well. But there is no obligation to do so.
ChrisLTD 13y ago
Corporations are not legally obliged to pay their employees a living wage, but that doesn't mean especially stingy corporations should be free from criticism. Shame is a powerful motivating factor.
sixothree 13y ago
They definitely deserve criticism if they are purposefully hiring more employees with fewer hours with the intention of evading laws that apply to full time workers.
ajb 13y ago
Except that actually, this story doesn't mention the minimum wage at all. And if you look at his past articles, Yglesias is not exactly a cheerleader for it. I'm not saying Yglesias isn't partisan - he is. But a lot of the comments here seem to have seen the word 'Wal-mart' and just started firing away at a straw-man.

selmnoo 13y ago

> To see why, simply ask yourself: is WalMart obligated to employ every person at a certain wage for a certain number of hours? And pay all of their bills? And make sure they have a good holiday? Well... yes. An honorable, noble employer would assume some responsibility that his workers are happy and healthy. These people do exist out there, who make an effort to be cognizant of their employees' situations, who try to resist actions that would hurt them in the long run, who go to great lengths to keep a good employee from getting fired just because upper management said so. My uncle was one such person, he owned a store that sold farming equipment some years back, his business had been doing really bad at some point that it became clear he'd have to fire some people (he only had like 3 or 4 employees), one of whom was a family man whose wife was disabled. My uncle operated on a loss for a few months rather than fire these people. Eventually he turned it around too.

bmelton 13y ago
Surely, you'd agree that at some point, that system cannot scale. According to Wikipedia, Wal-Mart has 2.2 million employees, and operates at a profit margin of 3.23%. I both value and appreciate the sentiment, but at the same time, some sort of balance must be struck between sentiment and pragmatism.
- selmnoo 13y ago
  Sure, I totally get that. But grand-parent post made it sound like a corporation has zero responsibility to give one shit for anyone it employs. I just think that's terrible, that's a terrible and dispiriting culture that permits and even encourages that kind of callous I'm-just-in-it-for-myself thinking.
  - bmelton 13y ago
    Well, in all fairness, a corporation does have exactly zero responsibility to give a shit about its employees. It's certainly nicer when they do care, but they aren't obligated to, nor should anyone expect them to.
    - MaysonL 13y ago
      Bullshit!
      - bmelton 13y ago
        I can't vote that down, but I would if I could. A corporation, by its very nature, is obligated to its shareholders. They are in violation of the law if they do not attempt to maximize profits for their shareholders. In order to shift any of that obligation toward employees, they'd have to get shareholder approval, and/or justify it in a way that made sense as a profit-motive (e.g., our workers will be more productive if they're happier or better paid). The problem isn't that Wal-Mart is paying too little, it's that they're paying the wrong people. Those jobs are perfectly great for high-schoolers and those with little experience, but apparently horrible for others. That isn't Wal-Mart's fault, it's a market problem caused by a poor economy and/or a dearth of existing jobs.
- RodericDay 13y ago
  I'm pretty sure if you wanna put it in terms of "scalable systems", vast numbers of humans are deadweight. Let people be outraged at Walmart. Stop telling people to calm down and look at it from their perspective. The corporation as a whole doesn't need nor deserve your sympathy.
JonFish85 13y ago
Difference is, I imagine your uncle didn't have millions of shareholders who would lobby to fire him if he didn't lay someone off. What he did was noble, surely. But at the same time, it sounds like it was his business. If Mike Duke (Wal-Mart's CEO) were to say, hey, we're going to cut our profit in half, but pay our employees double, he'd be shown the door. The question is tough. I don't know you, but for a second let's imagine you're an average American. A percentage of your 401k is likely depending on Wal-Mart's stock rising. And your wife/husband's. And your parents' retirement accounts (whether it's 401k, pension fund, whatever). How much are you & your friends & family willing to give up? If you want Wal-Mart wages to go up, invest in them. And convince all your friends, family, coworkers, etc to do the same. And your 401k holders (or union representatives or whoever manages your retirement funds). Eventually, you'll have a voice big enough to bring up the issue in stockholder meetings & have it be heard. As it stands now, the board has a duty to their shareholders to maximize holdings, not to be nice. That can change though.
- Amadou 13y ago
  the board has a duty to their shareholders to maximize holdings, not to be nice. I think that is a fundamentally biased description of the situation. It isn't necessarily about "nice" vs "profits" - its about corporate responsibility to the community that supports it. Or to over-simplify: short-term profits vs long-term profits. A store in a ghost-town doesn't do walmart any good in the long run.
- crisnoble 13y ago
  >If you want Wal-Mart wages to go up, invest in them. So your saying that if we buy their stock, driving the price up that Walmart would take this a signal to invest in employee pay and benefit increases, and not a validation that their current minimum wage, weekly hour cap, and lack of benefit model is working? I have heard of people who believe that voting with your wallet / investments is a way to apply pressure to change a companies practices (somehow dolphins and tuna usually gets brought up). But I have never heard of a theory in which investing in a business you think has bad practices will encourage them to get better.
- pbhjpbhj 13y ago
Symmetry 13y ago
I think pretty much any company is going to be willing to operate at a loss for a few months in order to avoid layoffs, even if you're a stereotypical heartless CEO there is such a thing as employee morale. I don't think an employer which didn't care at all about it's employees would lay out that collection in the first place. The problem is that different employees have different numbers of dependents and earners in their households, and need different amounts of money to support themselves well. But you can't really just pay the people with more need more for the same work without risking resentment. And WallMart's profit margins aren't very big, they can't just pay everybody a lot without raising prices. I'd be happy to pay those higher prices, but I don't shop at WallMart because I'm not they're target demographic. The people who shop there are mostly relatively poor people for whom those low prices are actually important. So I think a much better solution would be to collect more in taxes and subsidize the wages of poor people more.
- yummyfajitas 13y ago
  So I think a much better solution would be to collect more in taxes and subsidize the wages of poor people more. We already subsidize the poor to the point where everyone's consumption is $20k/year, even if they earn $0-5k/year. ftp://ftp.bls.gov/pub/special.requests/ce/standard/2011/income.txt Is $20k not sufficient? What is the right number?
SamuelMulder 13y ago
He didn't ask whether it was an honorable, noble thing to do, he asked whether they were "obligated" to do it. Once you are obligated to do something, it is no longer honorable or noble just to do it. Your uncle stood out because he went beyond what he was coerced to do.
thatswrong0 13y ago
While that was noble, it was also risky. Firing a few employees to keep the business afloat (and thus preserving the livelihood for a few) would certainly be better than the business tanking and having all employees out of a job. I agree with your sentiment: employers should keep their employees happy and compensate them well. But there is no obligation to do so.

ChrisLTD 13y ago

Corporations are not legally obliged to pay their employees a living wage, but that doesn't mean especially stingy corporations should be free from criticism. Shame is a powerful motivating factor.

sixothree 13y ago

They definitely deserve criticism if they are purposefully hiring more employees with fewer hours with the intention of evading laws that apply to full time workers.

ajb 13y ago

Except that actually, this story doesn't mention the minimum wage at all. And if you look at his past articles, Yglesias is not exactly a cheerleader for it. I'm not saying Yglesias isn't partisan - he is. But a lot of the comments here seem to have seen the word 'Wal-mart' and just started firing away at a straw-man.