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Economics 101: Wal-Mart Hikes Minimum Wages, Prepares To Fire 1000
"Please remember, these people are our neighbors and friends. You have a skill that will be very much in need when this goes down. You are experts in the job market and you know what it takes to get hired. This is a time for us to step up and do what we can to help."
The quote above is from an internal memo sent to employees of Northwest Arkansas recruiting firm Cameron Smith & Associates and references an expected wave of layoffs at WalMart’s home office in Bentonville.
The memo was obtained by the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, who spoke with Cameron Smith himself via e-mail.
"The last time Walmart had a large layoff (800 plus), we were unprepared and overwhelmed with phone calls, emails, resumes and walk-ins," Smith told the paper, referring to a series of cuts at WalMart in 2009. The next round of layoffs are just around the corner and could affect as many as 1,000 employees Smith contends, citing conversations with company insiders.
As those who follow the retailer closely are no doubt aware, context is key here.
Back in April, we asked why WalMart was mysteriously shuttering geographically distinct stores nationwide for "plumbing problems." The company, citing the need to repair persistent "clogs and leaks", closed five stores across the country almost simultaneously. The 2,500 affected employees were in some instances given almost no notice whatsoever.
After a few enterprising reporters determined that no plumbing permits had been filed in any of the locales where the shuttered stores were located, conspiracy theories sprung up, the most outlandish of which posited a link between the store closings and the Jade Helm 15 military drills which began earlier this month in Texas and six other states.
For our part, we argued that the store closures were more likely the result of two things: i) the need to cut costs, and ii) the desire to close a "problem" store in California that had for years served as a hotbed for union activism. For now, we won’t dive into the union issue, but for those interested, see here, here, and her.
As for cost cutting, consider the following, excerpted from "Why Is WalMart Mysteriously Shuttering Stores Nationwide For Plumbing Issues?":
Earlier this year, WalMart became one of several corporate heavyweights to lift wages for its meagerly compensated workers, around 500,000 of which are now set to receive at least $9/hour and $10/hour by Q1 2016 (that of course assumes they make it on $9 an hour for another 12 months and don’t seek out other employment by sheer necessity).
Meanwhile, the move by the country’s largest retailer to pay a few extra pennies to its (basically) minimum wage employees comes at a cost to the company’s suppliers because when you operate on the thinnest of margins in order to be the "low price leader," someone has to pay for those wage hikes and you can’t pass along the costs to customers because many of your low-income patrons are operating from the same tax bracket as your low-paid employees. As such, the supply chain is forced to lower their prices and of course they’re going to comply because well, you’re WalMart meaning you’re your vendors’ biggest account pretty much by default. The outcome is that "while WMT (or MCD or GAP or Target) boosts the living standards of its employees by the smallest of fractions, it cripples the cost and wage structure of the entire ecosystem of vendors that feed into it, and what takes place is a veritable avalanche effect where a few cent increase for the lowest paid megacorp employees results in a tidal wave of layoffs for said megacorp's vendors."
If that doesn’t turn out to be enough in the face of an economy which isn’t really recovering and in which low-income shoppers are constrained by lackluster (and by that we mean nonexistent) wage growth, some sacrifices may have to be made.
The first such sacrifice (apparently) were the 2,500 or so employees at the five locations with intractable plumbing problems, but clearly that was not enough which is why now, the company is moving to cut 1,000 higher paying jobs in Bentonville.
Of course WalMart can’t come out and say that a lackluster economy and nonexistent wage growth for 83% of the nation’s workforce has ironically served to make the company’s own minimum wage hikes untenable and therefore some heads in middle management have to roll, so instead the cuts will be blamed on bureaucratic inefficiencies. Here’s the Democrat-Gazette again:
Cutting through red tape and trimming bureaucracy has been among the goals of McMillon, who took over as CEO in February 2014. Wal-Mart employs more than 2 million worldwide and has more than 1.4 million employees in the U.S.
McMillon mentioned the size of the company's headquarters as a possible detriment to quicker action at the store level and told retail analysts during a June question-and-answer session that employees should remember "there are no cash registers in the office." During a store visit last year, McMillon said he encountered an electronics department manager who spent five hours on the phone with the home office to get assistance with a problem.
"We want people to make decisions and move with speed and not have the organization run in a way that causes it to slow down," McMillon said.
He again referred to the "dangers of a big company" during a June 11 retail conference in Springdale.
"As we've grown and time has gone on, we've created pockets of our business, situations where people don't want to share bad news. Lots of PowerPoints get built, lots of pre-meetings are held to socialize things so people aren't surprised during a meeting," McMillon said. "That is bureaucracy. That slows us down."
Got it. Too many people are working on PowerPoints and when someone making $10 an hour calls the home office, the hold time is too long. These are clear signs of an elephantine, Washington-esque bureaucracy, which must be done away with.
Or something.
Just don’t dare suggest that the cuts are the indirect or even direct result of the wage hikes that will cost the retailer around $1 billion this year, because that would mean that critics of the push to hike the pay floor are correct to assert that forcing employers to pay more will immediately result in equal and offsetting layoffs.
Only here they aren't necessarily "equal" at all.
That's in no way a commentary on the "worth" (in a philosophical sense of the word) of an hourly worker versus a salaried employee, but if layoffs in Arkansas do materialize as Cameron Smith predicts, it seems entirely fair to suggest that the pittance given to hundreds of thousands of low paid workers will ultimately come at the cost of 1,000 or so breadwinner positions. We'll leave it to readers to determine whether that is a net win for the economy.
On the bright side for anyone affected by the coming round of job cuts, at least you know that this time around, the staff at Cameron Smith & Associates is "much more prepared" to handle the sudden influx of 1,000 distraught former WalMart employees.
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20-30 years from now Walmart will cease to exist
No.....in 20-30 years....Walmart will be the company store.......also the company prison.
I don't think it is going to take that long. Maybe that is just me hoping though.
It would be sweet to see small town main street America make a comeback.
Why? So you can pay more for less? If walmart's brick and mortar routine ends up choking it, then your megawarehouse mail order businesses will simply pick up the torch. The only way that local businesses have a chance to prosper is by actually making the good or service AND having transportation costs be prohibitive. Main Street America doesn't produce anything, nor are transportation costs exhorbitant. For high quality specialty goods, e.g. designer soaps, scents, baked goods, produce, etc., then the yokels are already kicking ass... but for the vast majority of products, main street will never see that again. About the only thing that can be done is to implement sales taxes upon the sales across state lines... and even then, all you're advocating is for the state to waste its tax revenues.
Say it with me, s.t.r.u.c.t.u.r.a.l.u.n.e.m.p.l.o.y.m.e.n.t
I don't know about that. Granted, the internet e.g Amazon et al is the wave of the future for many items and may be a reason for the closures of Circuit City, the future of Radio Shack, etc. But I live in a rural town of about 40,000 people and there is no substitute for Walmart here. Their competiiton is Family Dollar, Home Depot, and 2 supermarkets. The alternative: drive an hour to Las Vegas or shop on the internet.
Many items could be bought on the internet but then there's the hassle of return of said items when they don't work out.
Walmart has found its perfect niche here, and I suspect it will always be around. Maybe some closures in major markets, maybe not.
All in all, I think they fit the bill well for many people.
When I need 22LR, Walmart is the first place I look because they sell the same box of 100 for under $10 (when you can find it). Otherwise, their Columbian Coffee is the best for the price of all brands out there. And their prices on most other things are better than other outlets. Why everyone seems to hate them is lost on me. I've a son-in-law who has worked for them for many years and he's raising 4 kids. It's not all bad, but like everything else, it's also not all good.
It depends where you live. I visit the local Wal-Martistan (or Burka-Mart as I like to call it) very rarely for an item or two I can't buy elsewhere. The prices are higher, the stores are a dirty hot mess, and no one speaks english. The Wal-Mart in my home town is completely opposite of this.
That's what was said about both K-mart and Target; they are both still around. The problem is we are a nation that calls evil good and good evil because we are an immoral people with very immoral leadership. It only gets worse for most people and the nation. The best thing the youth of America could do is learn to farm and improvise with their minds and hands.
Knowing how the suppliers feel about Wal-Mart... fuck'em. I can use Amazon as a distribution channel and not have to go to Bentonville, AR to suck your sourcing director's dong? DONE.
Better move for Walmart: Everyone off the payroll. Compensation will be certificates to exchange for store goods, only usable by the person they were issued to. After all, Walmart has just about everything you need. Why not pay in store credits? I'm sure the unions will love figuring out their cut of burger patties and french fries.
Us us us us us us us and them them them them.....
And after all, we're only ordinary men,
Me and U-nion....
;-)
Don't be free!!!
https://aadivaahan.wordpress.com/2015/07/31/freedumbs-just-another-word/
WHO IS JOHN GALT????
Walmart is jump starting Obama's TPP tready to advance a secret deal discussed during the Bilderburg meeting. Have at it, won't shop there.
Walmart is a victim of their own success. They have been so ruthless squeezing their suppliers to cut costs that now people can't afford to shop at their stores. Throw Amazon into the mix, a company that doesn't have to worry about bricks and mortars and those pesky employees, and you have a disaster for Walmart. It will be interesting to see if small business starts to rebuild itself once Walmart is gone.
Walmart used to be a pleasant place to shop but now way too dangerous for me. I can't run fast enough thru their parking lot to my car while I carry my bag of groceries; those 14 year old, 6'2 210 "little angels" [or gentle giants whichever you prefer] run too fast.
Google Ruger® LCR® Double-Action Revolver and get you one in .357 caliber.
Or a little Glock 42 .380 will work very fine with Hornady or Critical Defense hollow-points. Fits right in your pocket or in a convenient holster under your beltline
I'd watch it with critical defense out of pocket guns:
http://shootingthebull.net/blog/final-results-of-the-380-acp-ammo-quest/
Ruger's LCR series also has DA revolver in a 9mm. It uses moon-clips. A sweet gun, actually. If you are looking for a sweet CCW, look to the Springfield Armory XDM series. Excellent shooting pistols, super easy to clean, and (so far) a tough weapon (as far as FTE or FTF issues). My 2-cents worth.
Walmart is my favorite place to shop to hear customers say to the clerk--"Give me my money, bitch!".
Walmart is like a visitation of hell.
Your first 5 seconds in hell will make that Walmart visit seem like heaven..really!
One of my favorite things is standing behind La'Queet'a in line and looking at her $50 fingernails, $1,000 in tattoos, and $100 shoes, watching her pay with her SNAP card, then seeing her roll her shopping cart out to her Excalade. As I walk to my car, I have to silence the voices in my head that are telling me to go mug her and take back the fruits of my labor.
How you feel about that woman with her SNAP card, is how I felt visiting the boneyard of Davis Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson. Billions of dollars of jets cut up and left out in the desert to rot because of a stroke of a politician's pen.
At least her SNAP benefits keeps Xerox, Walmart, and the PepsiCo products she bought a bottom line.
The biggest welfare queen is the bailed out banksters, followed by the MIC. The SNAP crowd gets doritios and TV dinners, and right-wing talk radio wants you mad about that petty nonsense. Well, the big businesses who manufactured those said food products aren't complaining, because they enjoy the guaranteed revenue.
Yeah, but the article is about Walmart.
Has nothing to do with Walmart. Has everything to do with living someplace infested by hood rats.
I shop at Wal-Mart.
Recently I noticed some of their bakery items are imported from Canada.
It’s beyond my comprehension that Detroit has a reported 10%+ unemployment rate yet it’s still cheaper to import baked goods.
USD/CAD exchange rate collapse?
The Canadian workers work much faster than the ones in Detroit. I can guarantee you that. Plus, in Detroit there is the added expense of adding overseers to the payroll. Otherwise, you would get no work at all.
The Canadian bakers would actually bake the product. Detroiters would simpily steal the dough. Pun intended.
Self inflicted wound really. Confused as to why WMT:
1. Has any debt at all.
2. Pays a dividend.
If they stopped doing these things, they would be in a lot better shape. They are well-insulated from a "takeover target" standpoint due to their concentrated family ownership structure, they should be able to do pretty much whatever the hell they want to do, and apparently the family decided "let's be short-term dipshits instead of thinking about the long-term viability of the business".
Amazon has another problem, even bigger than "bricks and morter".
Last year they lost $1.5 billion dollars on their "free" delivery. Those losses aren't sustainable.
Small business can't compete with walmart. They simply don't have the direct purchacing power. Sure, they will compete with selected items, but not on the vast variety of items that Walmart carries.
This sort of thinking has always mystified me. So, if we pay the workers a lot more money, they will be able to buy more stuff and their employer stays in business? It would seem to be quite obvious that if workers everywhere get paid more money without first showing greater productivity, then the prices of everything go up at least as much as the wages, and in the end nobody is better off. You just have inflation everywhere.
The problem is that when a society has gotten into the habit of pissing away its income and its wealth on stuff of no value whatsoever, or on Sybian machines, movies, golf, luxury cars, McMansions, etc. which do not positively increase the nation's productivity, then everybody gets poorer and poorer as the years go by and all sectors start fighting each other over whatever scraps remain until everything collapses. The USA is somewhere between steps two and three of that process, with most people whining about not being able to maintain step one anymore.
Where have I said anything about Walmart paying their workers? My comment is about Walmart squeezing the suppliers.
Productivity per (middle class) worker has increased markedly over the past few decades, where as (middle class) wages have not had a commensurate increase.
Raise their wages, they'll want less hours. Look at what's happening in Seattle...
"Employees are begging their bosses to cut their hours so they can keep their food stamps, housing assistance, and other welfare benefits.
Yes, really."
http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2015/07/25/hey-seattle-hows-that-15-minimum-wa...
As an ex-restaurant operator I can attest to that. I had many employees who would work until they were just under their limit before their benefits were affected and not a second more. Not only that, many would get a good sized tax return without even paying any taxes. I can tell you that we were paying a lot more than minimum wage too.
This is the problem with the liberal nanny state. It's basic presumption is that those who receive benefit from the social safety net are simply too stupid to take advantage of it. Nope.... rational actors. If I can work part time and net more on the dole, then guess what.
Waltons have already made the claim that employee theft is uncontrollable. 5 stores seem to be the worst
You steal and item and 4 weeks later have to steal it again because it broke.
Dutch, do you have a dial-up modem there in paradise? You have more douple posts than most than I have ever seen. You also have some triple posts.
You haven't seen his sextuple and septuple posts. Dude must monkey hammer that save button like it's his schlong.
You steal and item and 4 weeks later have to steal it again because it broke.
I think I've read in several places that 80% of "inventory shortage" is due to employee theft in the retail industry as a whole, so this is not just a WalMart problem. Employees...you can't keep them from stealing from you , and you can't run a store without them.
McDonalds didn't hire McMillion?....oh...McMillon spells his name wrong...
Watch Walmart go bankrupt. Free ZIRP money and aggressive store expansion. How's the China Silk Road globalization plan working out?
Bet Chinamart stops reporting monthly sales like McDonalds did.
Again, China is the semi peripheral country reporting to the core state. It's called the USD universal currency Statis.
Apple Watch has poked a hornet nest. Let's identify root issues.
Semi-Periphery engagement has become a falsehood. The core has lied to you.
The world would be a better place with out big box stores sellling chinese plastic shit to babies momma charged on fucking EBT cards
yeah ,we fired a few people .........
There really is a dizzying logic being employed here. The standard [flawed] logic that gets expostulated relentlessly by conservatives whenever talk of raising the minimum wage comes up is that it will destroy minimum wage jobs, collapse the economy and reduce everyone to cannibalism in order to survive.
Here, we have a situation where Wal-Mart is voluntarily raising wages without compulsion by minimum wage laws. It's a free-market decision. Instead of talking nonsense about how Wal-Mart is supposedly being destroyed by a policy change (they've chosen to make), you should be celebrating it as a free-market victory. After all, the free-market is raising wages without government intervention. Yet here you are arguing the opposite. By your logic, should we have federal laws to keep wages from rising too high? Is the logic that if there aren't people being forced to live on sub-standard wages, making up the difference in welfare, then the supposedly "free" market can't function?
The facts are these:
1. No layoffs have yet been announced for the bottom level folks most benefiting from the raises. The standard logic that increases in the minimum wage hurt poor folks is nonsense.
2. The mid-level bureacrats being laid off aren't making the minimum wage. Again, this is a clear benefit to poor folks. Your logic is nonsense.
3. The people being laid off had targets on their backs well-before the raise hikes, so to suggest that the wage raise is forcing Wal-Mart's hand is again, nonsense.
4. Given Wal-Mart's size, 1000 jobs really isn't very many.
5. The layoffs, like the wage increase, are a free-market operation. Wal-Mart is under no legal compulsion to make layoffs. They are merely trimming the fat, which is something every corporation has done regularly since the last time the minimum wage was increased. Again, your logic is nonsense.
Please, if you can't think compassionately toward minimum wage workers, then at least try to be logical.
Thanks.
ZH wont be happy till everyone is making the same as Chinese workers.
Who cares that most of Walmart's profit is offshored and not taxed.
(BTW, it is obvious no one on this forum has ever taken economics 101, since most economists agree that the biggest problem for the economy is shrinking wages and excessive profits to the few)
I know reading is hard, but you should try it some time. Nobody here is has said corporations should make more and people should make less. You're just making shit up.
I think I might have said that, if not I was thinking it. Long poverty.
That is correct about shrinking wages and rich profits to the few.Problem is that the current meme us one of hiking minimum wages only. Meme needs to be that benefits at the top must be better distributed across the firm.
Keep voting Democrat and believing they are going to benefit you more than any other politician would or could regardless of party affiliation. In a true free market; wages will always find equilibrium based on supply and demand principals. Forcing companies to raise wages will always kill jobs and Walmart does not do things for benevolence any more than Mr. Ford did. Which direction do you think employment protection laws are headed overall? Do you know that in many states; the 10-15 minute break is voluntary and not mandatory? Why are so many things made in China; the wage and benefits are low.
Try to be logical; you have allowed your relative moral values (values that guide thinking & behavior) to mix with emotional bias and dressed it up as logic; it is most peoples informal religion. You would do well in California or New York or D.C.. The issue with people has always been the same throughout human history; born to trouble as sparks fly upward or we are inherently bent toward selfishness. Amazing to me how many people hate the God of Scripture; yet envision and say they desire a world in which, if His laws, were obeyed, they would have what they wish for...and worse, He gives the way to obtain it and people will reject it, not based on logic, but on emotion substituted for logic.
"The standard logic that increases in the minimum wage hurt poor folks is nonsense."
50+ years of US minimum wage can't be wrong, right?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rls8H6MktrA
Amerika is fucked because people have such a shit education. I think we need to raise the minimum wage to $1000 an hour. Why not? The arguments against that are nonsense, right?
"Given Wal-Mart's size, 1000 jobs really isn't very many." Really, dumbass? It's not "very many" when it is not your job, right?
Did I mention that Amerika is fucked? I did? Thanks.
Stupid is what stupid does... look what 50+ years has done to the debt.... lets keep doing it. ;)
Yah, no problems here.... look away, nothing to see folks... lets just keep going full steam ahead towards the iceburg.
"The standard logic that increases in the minimum wage hurt poor folks is nonsense."
50+ years of US minimum wage can't be wrong, right?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rls8H6MktrA
Yah 50+ years of making the tax payer pay for health problems, social programs, rent controls, legal aid.
Stop putting the country into debt, by allowing Walmart to offshore profits, while the rest of us have to pay for the livelyhood of their employees.
50 years of crap policy is exactly the sort of economics that got us into this mess. I'll take America 50 years ago any day of the week.
sounds like the CEO is thinking about breakups and spinoffs - only way left to loot the till in a big way.
I suspect that more and more Walmart stores will close over the next 2, 5, 7, 10 & 15 years as the demographics change with an aging population...not to mention the stores are often "dump-marts" like the old dinosaur K-mart. If the number is increasing at a more rapid and sustained rate, then that is the signal of the falling state of the economy.
So the next step is to pass another law disallowing layoffs
The CEO isn't going to reduce his compensation to absorb the added cost.
Obozo is fine with that.
Those poor heirs of Sam and Bud Walton must be having a difficult time making ends meat.
ends meat is what they put into hotdogs: lips, tail, snout, and anus.
Could be the name for what Reggie and Mike shove up Obama's ass.
Only 1,000? Nearly 150 people work at most Wal-Marts if not more. This would be equivalent of closing 4 stores permanently, hardly a dent.
The will be building more stores than they will close in the US this year, but at a much slower rate than they had planned. They are expanding the most, where everyone else is, the East..particularly in China.
--------------
You can see that given enough time, we, the US will become the "cheap labor force", but a few things must happen before that can take place. The reason the borders are porous is because they need a future workforce that is not educated and easily entertained and content with bare minimums.
-----------------
Besides the superior people are self-appointed to determine who is superior and inferior & must save mankind (depopulation) as they worship their goddess "Mother Nature", whose logical end is the practice of Eugenics and Genocide...nothing new under the sun. Why macro-evolution is sold/taught as fact even though the "superiors" already know it is a lie. It is always an attack on the God of Scripture and many who perpetrate the lie will admit that. However, God does not show partiality as man does.
Walmart can make more money by retaining better employees at a higher wage than their competitors, and letting go of those that aren't worth minimum wage.
Assuming that all those who RUN walmart are worth their wages?
"Thanks for coming in, Jim. WallyWorld has a raise for you!"
"Wow, thanks, Leonard!"
"Oh, and here is your two-week notice."
I love it! Now, the mostly obese and smelly near-moron hamburger flippers that march and chant will be tossed to the curb, while out of work EDUCATED and experienced unemployed suddenly have a viable option to go to work at $30,000/year ($15/hour) until things get better (2017, maybe). Of course, the bloated, loud pig-drones will suddenly be "depressed" and go on disability. Welcome to ObamaLand!
Wow!!!! One person for evey 11 stores. That's got to take some serious preparation.
A Target supercenter recently opened as the primary anchor for a whole new strip of national retail names in my hometown. Two Walmarts over the past two decades have already driven most of the local retailers out of business. The 'urban renewal' mall that obliterated a charming downtown back in the seventies now itself is a lifeless derelict. In other words, the place is supersaturated with mega-scale retail establishments whilst not a single value producing enterprise of size has located there since I was a kid. And now Walmart thinks this is a good location to break ground on yet another store. Maybe Bentonville could let go of a couple of the cannibals in their planning dept.
If you look at long term cycles for many areas, the go from being the "place to go" and then they decline to being abandonded. After a while, they are rebuilt again and the cycle starts again. This cycle has a timeline of about 20 to 40 yars.
It doesn't happen everywhere, but it's quite common. Obvioulsy it doesn't happen where neighbourhoods become poorer, where those that can move out, do so.
Agreed. In this case however, I suspect Walmart will only cannibalize sales from their two other supercenters and sam's club. It's almost like they're willing to borrow tens of millions of zirp dollars to put in a store at the location just to insure that no one else does. It's only two and a half miles from one and four miles to the other, lol.
Yes. Bingo! This happens a lot more than you think in commercial real estate.
There's a cell phone company that actually pays leases but doesn't occupy any space in the strip malls to simply make a contract to keep its competitors out. It's extra revenue for the property owner. It's a ruthless business, let me tell ya. I can't beleive people actually think there is a "free market". I laugh at that theoretical nonsense. Markets are fixed and rigged. Period.
Of course,
Walmart could take the pay raise of "a few extra pennies"
from its ongoing profits and the accumulated wealth of its owners,
instead of abolishing "breadwinner" positions,
. . . but that is an option the article chooses to ignore.
(Is the article's purpose to give implicit approval
to the recent huge upward transfer of wealth remaining
as the "new normal" of a modern "Gilded Age"?)
Why is this news?
Walmart employs over 1M++ people. They are cutting 1000 which is 1/10% of their workforce (likely less).
yes but the extra pay for the other 99.9%
They'll continue cutting people out. They've already basically cut cashiers out of the business. Self checkout!
I was in a WalMart the other day. That place of just weird. Video ads on the aisles. Ads on the loudspeaker. Probably 30 checkout lanes with maybe 3 lights on with the self checkout packed.
Walmart will be fully automated in about 5 years and staffed by maybe 4 or 5 techicans per store with 1 manager. Millions of low waged workers are about to be out of work just as the GOP RINO establishment and Obama collude on full scale amnesty to bring in another 20 million Central Americans
Logged in just to say amen bra'
will these fully automated wallies have sniper towers to control looting and shop lifting??
RFID the products.
"Check out" is walking into an exit chute - doors both sides.
Scanner will scan you products and your form of payment. (RFID CC? Implanted chip?)
If you don't have sufficient funds the door to exit won't open.
You will have to go back in, ditch some stuff, and try again.
Believe me, someone is working on this.
Walmart CEO Pay: More in an Hour Than Workers Get All Year?
http://abcnews.go.com/Business/walmart-ceo-pay-hour-workers-year/story?i...
Walmart Slashed Tax Bill By Giving Top Execs Big Bonuses
http://www.forbes.com/sites/kellyphillipserb/2014/06/04/walmart-slashed-...
Wal-Mart Stores Inc /
Total Executive Compensation
http://insiders.morningstar.com/trading/executive-compensation.action?t=WMT
Yeah, those walmart greeters were killing their margins....
for fuck's sake.
Am I a "commie" suggesting Walmart needs to pay low/no skill people more than "the market" {Holy Be its Name} demands?
No - I'm not. But let's please not be the kind of dishonest cunts who peddle the myth that the {sole/major}} reason these people are getting shitcanned is the bonanza other low/no skill workers are going to get from their masters' table.
camern smith trolling the lake hoping 1,000 home office employees will be fired, they figure if they work at Bentonville they probably speak English and can read ,and write, more employeable, more money for themselves.
I shop at wal-mart not exclusively, as some do, and it's been my experience, with wmt who employ 1.4 million Americans, they could fire 1,000 a day per their co, policy clauses, just as their forced into hiring a 1,000 a day for legal clauses.
why doesn't Cameron smith set up a table the first of the month at the ebt swiper at wal-mart, or did the Arkansas democrat gazette lose that memo?
I know Obama is not leaving office, but it would be kinda awesome to see day 1 of a Trump presidency when the news media had as the lead story everywhere how suddenly the economy was bad because a R was elected
The biggest problem is employees of these mega plantations only have a choice of which plantation to work on. That's the result of all of these mega mergers and acquisitions. Not much of a choice, really.
Walmart Walmart
That's our store
We Shop there
C'uz we are poor.
good place to shop and feel good about yourself
C'uz we po'.
There ya go. Fixed for regional linguistic accuracy.
The scary thing is, when you look at www.dailyjobcuts.com, the job layoffs are coming more rapidly as the month rolls on. At the beginning of July there were days with no layoffs. Now there are lots each day.
Gulp.
The onerous burdens of socialism make businesses .... seem harsh .... compared to the land of rainbows and unicorns .... of the monster corporation of government !
in a decade people will be wishing wal-mart was still around, because in the progression in current day america, you'll you be shopping at Obama-mart.
I wish people would get this angry over the 10's of trillions of tax dollars that was ear marked to revitalize the inner cities, and their citizens, the poorest in america but all went to public sector unions, political cronies, and banks.
you don't have to shop at wal-mart, but you do have to pay taxes.
sure Walton's are 1%ers, so are 10's of millions of teachers, policemen , firemen, life-guards, bus drivers,garbagemen, city, county,state, and govt, employees, the poorest may not pay taxes, but the tax money that was meant for them, to provide better schools, streets, safer neighborhoods, and local jobs went to the listed above.
wal-marts not your problem.
Well actually, many life-guards and bus drivers tend to get (nearly) minimum wage.
In practice, people who make minimum wage and are "on the books" pay about 25% of their income to tax collectors. Plus they must eat as much as rich people.
You're quite right, although I don't see the difference between wal-mart and Obama-mart. Both would be examples of capitalism - one controlled by private individuals, one by the state, both with no worker input on their operation.
Here's what I think the real deal is:
A) California is turning into a dry dust bowl.
B) Therefor the price of food is skyrocketing.
C) Thus Joe Sixpack has to eat less and buy less at Wal-Mart.
D) So Wal-Mart Buys less junk from China.
E) Therefor America goes homeless and the Chinese convert the industrial system we gave them to weapons manufacture.
) So the future's so bright i am investing in a deep hole in the ground. See ya'll in the tunnels.
Not suprised. Allegedy, most WM stores in the US have been on EBT/SS/SSD life support for years. When those systems perish, WM may perish with them.
"Got it. Too many people are working on PowerPoints and..."
And to think I'm reading this on my lunch break from making a powerpoint. Should I just go home or should I finish it?
And to think that at one time, I was supporting (IT) all those doing those PPs. Did a few PPs myself, back in my PM days. Also Freelance Graphics (SmartSuite) at one time at IBM, before it (PSP) was sold to Lenovo. And what is IBM now? A shopping mall. Walmart et al is a harbinger of things to come. To come very shortly ..
Walmart is a microcosm of a much larger systemic problem that will show itself over time. As the recent data has shown, real wages have been in steady decline since '71. The cure to this would be logical in that of reversing the events of '71. (Not necessarily a return to a fake gold standard). The market can do so much when govt. policy is always in the way.
Here's a brutal example I just got informed of today. IT nationwide is in shambles compared to the 90s and somewhat marginally better before 2008. I'm an IT guy that has not had perm work since the summer of 2012, and at a rate 40% under my peak in 2000. I have yet to recover since.
I saw an ad for entry level computer drafters in North Austin. It was paid training. Prereqs were either some drafting or computer savvy. I had both, with 20+ years in IT (systems, networks, etc.) Applied yesterday via craigslist, and got a phone call this morning from the agency. (contract to perm) For either a HS, vocational, or college grad it was $11/hr for 4 to 6 weeks training (OJT), with a hope to $15/hr within 2 to 3 years. So, 2 to 3 years, with hopes to get to that "living wage." And this is in central Texas.
The agent said my resume was very impressive, and inquired why I was applying for such a low wage/low skill job. The disconnect among agents/recruiters is mind-boggling to say the least ..
In my area, WM seems to have mutated from a big box into a collecting point for assorted, MS13 acolytes. I stay the hell away.
I sometimes think there should be a sign over the entrance to WM saying something like, "Abandon all hope ye who enter here."
Yes, WM can easily fire 1000 mouth breathers. Just in the South.
Just wait... If you aren't designing the machine that is going to make you obsolete, you had better be able to repair it.
http://www.techrepublic.com/article/chinese-factory-replaces-90-of-human...
Standard Disclaimer: "Fight for $15" <- yes, you never studied, and soon you will be unemployed...
Hmmm ... the top 5 Walmart execs listed on Yahoo make between $2.85 million and $4.47 million annually exclusive of stock based compensation. I wonder how many other highly paid execs they have?!? Probably quite a few.
WalMart's FY'2015 operating income was $27,147,000,000.
1000 Full time (and that is an assumption) $10/hr employees costs the company ~ $20 million.
While it is the job of management to maximize profit for the company. I am thinking that giving the highly compensated execs a 50% haircut would save much more than $20 million and they would still be highly compensated.
Or if they decided to keep them then the operating profit would be $21,127,000,000.
Mostly I just do not understand greed and elitist privilege.
This is after they squeezed the Lifeblood out of Domestic Suppliers.
It's now an extaction/exploitation scheme now.
Yes, but they would have to vote on their own pay cut. What are the odds of that?
All corporations sow the seeds of their own destruction. In you are liberty oriented you say it is there problem and just decide if you want to use their products and services. Sears used to be the biggest in the world and now it is on life support.
In a collectivist economy you have to worry about all these things because the enterprise is either owned by the government or subject to being bailed out by your tax dollars.
I like just figuring out if I like the price of the burger. After that a thousand other people have to figure out everything from the right exec pay to the price of tomatoes. Freedom is way better and easier.
Millions of Russians took out loans during the economic boom years, but now they face crippling debts and the law is not on their side, the BBC's Oleg Boldyrev reports.
At the start of each month Elena, a 40-year-old Muscovite, spreads all the family cash on the table and starts dividing it into small piles.
"When I do this I shake, I feel nauseous," she says.
"This goes to one bank, that to another, then the third one… There's one more bank, but we don't have the money for them - I had to go and buy some food. I guess we'll have to put up with their telephone reminders."
Elena and her husband owe well over 1m roubles (about £10,800; $17,000) to those four banks.
After the cash piles are sorted the family of three is left with only 10,000 roubles (£107; $167). That puts them below the poverty line - and recently Elena lost her job.
Debt mountainMillions of those in debt live like Elena.
According to the Russian United Credit Bureau (UCB), 40 million Russians have loans or mortgages.
By June, 12.5m of those loans had not been paid for at least a month, and in another 8m cases the arrears stretched back over three months.
The Russian Central Bank says those chronic debts now total 1tn roubles (£10.7bn; $16.7bn). And that is at least 10% of the total personal debt - 10% which cannot be recovered by the banks.
For Elena and her husband, this is a story of almost two decades of borrowing. They started getting loans in the mid-1990s to pay for their daughter's medical treatment. Then they took a bigger loan to pay off the smaller ones.
It all seemed manageable, says Elena, but then new expenses came along - and two banks offered credit cards with generous conditions.
"We were a bit stupid," Elena says. "They told us the minimum payment was 5,000 roubles a month and we paid that every month. But that was just the interest, not the loan itself."
Sudden shocksDuring Russia's boom years credit history checks meant virtually nothing. An individual already saddled with loans could take out another one, hoping to pay off previous debts. The small print was often too small to bother about.
Then the music stopped. Money got tight after the 2008 global financial crisis and Western sanctions against Russia over its role in the Ukraine conflict.
The average personal loan in 2014 was 54,600 roubles.
Olga Mazurova is head of Sentinel Credit Management, one of Russia's largest debt-collecting agencies. She says that often Russians are hit by a sudden drop in income, because "the firm goes bankrupt, the working week is cut, there are layoffs or wage cuts - we see that especially in industrial cities in Siberia and the Urals". Few Russians have insurance for such contingencies, she says.
Debtors cannot get much help. There are plans to amend the law on insolvency, to allow individuals to be declared bankrupt. But nothing will happen on that until October.
Russian MPs decided that criminal courts were unprepared for the likely flood of such cases and that courts of arbitration should handle debt cases instead.
Each debtor has to beg the bank to cut them some slack. But Russia's financial ombudsman Pavel Medvedev says that rarely works if someone owes money to more than one institution.
A former adviser to President Vladimir Putin, he knows many top Russian financiers personally - but that does not help him to lobby on behalf of indebted callers. Typically, he says, lenders refuse to restructure personal debts with the words: "I've got a business to run and shareholders demand profits - I can't do it!"
Mr Medvedev says his success rate in helping debtors has dropped from 51% to 33% and "this year it's probably going to be around 16%".
No escapeHe had no solution for one caller, Vladimir Frolov, living near Moscow.
Mr Frolov started borrowing four years ago to help his partner, living separately from him, in Ukraine. The debts snowballed. Finally, unable to get an unsecured loan, he mortgaged the flat he shares with his elderly parents.
His father Anatoly, who co-signed the agreement, is bewildered when asked which bank it was. "How should I know? They took us into some room, the light was dim and the print was tiny. I just asked if everything was alright and they told me it was."
Besides the mortgage, Vladimir Frolov's parents took out two loans to help him, which eat up 18,000 of their 22,000-rouble monthly pension allowance.
And now Vladimir has defaulted on the mortgage. The bank is suing and they may well lose their only dwelling.
"There must be a normal way out - maybe give the bank a fixed share of my wages?" Vladimir wonders. But so far he has not found anyone at the bank to discuss his dilemma.
"Isn't there a law against this?" asks his father, equally helplessly. "How can they let people borrow so much without checking them first?"
After the good years many Russians are now getting a harsh lesson in capitalism - and inadequate regulations mean there is nothing to soften the blow.
Harvard Mafia, Andrei Shleifer and the Economic Rape of Russia
http://www.softpanorama.org/Skeptics/Pseudoscience/harvard_mafia.shtml
The Unstable Alliance of Nationalists and “Mainly Jewish Oligarchs” in the Ukraine
http://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/2014/03/the-unstable-alliance-of-na...
The Rise of Putin and The Fall of The Russian-Jewish Oligarchs (1/2 ...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2Cl8lSv9Is
Jewish banishment and the City of London
http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/?p=32142
https://youtu.be/77W2h6CFn_Y
Russia Awards Lucrative Crimea Bridge Contract to Putin's Crony
https://news.vice.com/article/russia-awards-lucrative-crimea-bridge-cont...
Alexei Navalny, scourge of Russia's corrupt elitehttps://youtu.be/fvavbtjZPkI
Why the Sochi Olympics are the Most Expensive in Historyhttps://youtu.be/R_MBOeqSYVk
John Oliver on Boris Nemtsov Murderhttps://youtu.be/zRer0ubNE0o
Putin's Gameshttps://youtu.be/H4TiOjt-tj8
Business Corruption in Latvia
http://www.business-anti-corruption.com/country-profiles/europe-central-...
CORRUPTION and rows about it have long been a hall-mark of Latvian politics. Now recent improvements are at risk.
http://www.economist.com/blogs/easternapproaches/2011/03/corruption_latvia
Latvia stood still in the past two years. As an overall conclusion, the corruption diagnosis identified by a KNAB 2008 report seems still accurate today. Thus, on one side, petty corruption is diminishing and at the same time grand corruption is developing.
http://www.againstcorruption.eu/reports/latvia/
Thats is all you could find? That's just pathetic. 2011, 2008... could mention 2002 :D
No real corruption scandal? No?
Why don't you clean up your own corrupt shithole country before bashing others , you son of a bitch.
Hey asswipe, look here ,where does the USA rank here?
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/21...
Now fuck off when you grow a brain, dipshit.
We know that sons of bitches like you want war with Russia. You are lowlife pondscum but thats expected from spawn of crackwhores.
We know that sons of bitches like you want war with Russia. You are lowlife pondscum but thats expected from spawn of crackwhores.
Hey, you pathetic fuckface asswipe.
How much does the Gestapo pay you to post your drivel?
Bet you have never been outside of your COUNTY much less COUNTRY.
You are a believer in myths and the typical brainwashed American retard.
In most countries, criminals need to make their dirty money clean in order to make it useful in the legitimate economy. As any Breaking Bad fan knows, that’s what money laundering is: a way to bring the proceeds of crime onto account books and into bank accounts as the proceeds of a legitimate business.
But in Russia, corruption has gotten so bad that the logic of money laundering has turned upside down. There, many companies face the opposite problem: In order to get things done, they need to take clean money and make it dirty.
As Joshua Yaffa reports in an excellent piece in the New Yorker, Russia's answer is a service known as "obnal," or dark money: the process by which legitimate companies take legitimate profits and launder them into off-the-books slush funds to be used for bribes and tax evasion. Though it's not a universal practice, obnal has become a billion-dollar business in Russia. One of the biggest players in the trade was a midsize institution called Master Bank, which reportedly operated at a loss in order to provide cover for its roaring trade in obnal:
But this isn’t just about financial crimes. Master Bank may have been the one stocking those airport ATMs, but the real power in the obnal trade is Russia’s internal security agency, the FSB, which is the successor of the Soviet-era KGB.
Yaffa quotes Boris Grozovsky, a financial journalist, explaining why a government security agency would get involved in a massive illegal money laundering trade: "Not only do they earn money for themselves but they also get to see who is doing what in this business, which, as we say in Russian, allows them to grab anybody by the balls at any time."
The real currency here, in other words, is not money. It’s power and control. Controlling the obnal trade gives the FSB levers of power that they can pull all over the country. If an individual or company is involved in obnal, then the FSB can use that as a threat to hang over their heads: "Nice company you have there. Sure would be a shame if we had to confiscate it and send you to prison."
This speaks to the real Catch-22 of corruption, not just in Russia but in many countries where the problem is systemic. In systems where corruption is widespread, it’s difficult to avoid: It feels as though to get anything done, you have to play by the corrupt rules. To get the contract, you have to pay the bribe; to win the bidding war, you have to arrange for your competitor to fail an inspection; to make a profit, you have to evade taxes.
And yet once you enter such a system, you’re stuck in it. Because corruption is still technically illegal, your corrupt activities make you vulnerable to blackmail. But because your corrupt activities almost certainly implicate others — the official whom you bribed, the institutions that helped you do it, the company that benefited from your crimes — they also make you a threat. Everyone is in danger, and everyone is dangerous. The only way to win is to trump everyone else’s information and control, as the FSB has apparently tried to do via the obnal trade.
That’s a problem for Russia, because it means that its corrupt system is not just harmful, it’s also self-perpetuating. Indeed, as Yaffa notes, when Putin came to power he made a show of rooting out the powerful network of oligarchs who'd taken hold in the 1990s, but that didn’t end corruption. Instead, it only brought it more thoroughly under the control of state officials. Putin’s efforts, Yaffa writes, had "the effect of further embedding the culture of corruption in civic life. The oligarchic class was subsumed by the bureaucratic and political elite, who, in effect, renationalized corruption."
In fact, corruption has been so successfully renationalized that it effectively has an immune system, which attacks law enforcement officials who try to root out corruption. Yaffa’s piece, which I would really urge you to read, focused on one particularly tragic example: a police officer named Boris Kolesnikov who led an aggressive investigation into the obnal trade, only to be arrested, imprisoned, and eventually pressured into suicide, presumably by FSB officials eager to protect their own power.
Sadly, Kolesnikov’s case was unusual mostly because of how successful he'd been in investigating corruption before he came under attack, not because his anti-corruption efforts eventually came to a violent end. Yaffa writes that Kolesnikov and his partner apparently had support from high up in the Kremlin, but even that was not enough to protect them in the end.
We would like to think that corruption is about bad people doing bad things out of greed or malice. But the truth is that once a system is corrupt, playing by the rules becomes a privilege, something that often requires skill and influence that few people possess. The others are left with no choice but to make their clean money and clean intentions dirty.
The resident shit for brains Russia basher is here. Too cowardly to come meet me face to face.
You know, I read ZH because there are many people who offer up the accumulated fruits of their research on many interesting topics.
This saves a great deal of time and often I find guidance to links I would never discover on my own due to lack of time, interest, or simple luck in finding them.
I am free to read or not read what they offer.
Free to agree, disagree, or ignore. And free to respond in any way that seems appropriate or effective.
Since we have, so far as I know, no other denizen of that area who regularly offers up a viewpoint, I enjoy seeing what he has to say. There have been times in the past where ZH has shown a definite institutional interest in happenings on the old Ostfront, and no doubt will regain its interest at some time in the future. At the moment, other crises warrant more attention-- but that does not mean that all is well in River Grad. So its nice to know that someone with a more direct connection is still on the ball even as we watch China, Syria, and Clarence the Cross-Eyed Lion.
So I say thank you to our Latvian correspondent for showing us what the Latvians think and I thank you and Mr. Genius for showing us what you guys think. Keep the faith and may God run with you all.
I, on the other hand, read ZH because I enjoy reading hurled insults, and vulgarities, sprinkled with a few opinions and anecdotal factoids.
So thank you little dutch boy for titillating me. (That last sentence could be misinterpreted; a caveat---mental titillation only.)
Many of the insults and sarcastic posts are quite clever and funny.
The resident shit for brains Russia basher is here. Too cowardly to come meet me face to face.
The resident shit for brains Russia basher is here. Too cowardly to come meet me face to face.
"Anti-corruption nonprofit Transparency Internationalhas released its 2013 Global Corruption Barometer, which surveyed residents in 107 countries. The world's corrupt nations differ in many ways. Four are located in Africa, three in Latin America and two in Asia. These nations also vary considerably in size and population. Mongolia has just 3.2 million residents, while Mexico, Nigeria and Russia are three of the largest countries on the globe, each with more than 100 million people. Based on the percentage of surveyed residents that reported corruption in the public sector is a very serious problem, these are the world's most corrupt nations."
Russia
According to 82% of individuals surveyed, it is important to have personal contacts to get anything done in Russia's public sector. Additionally, 85% of Russians stated the government was run by just a few large entities for their own best interests. The only two other countries where residents were more likely to feel this way were Lebanonand Cyprus. The latter was known until recently as a haven for Russian oligarchs' money. These hyper-wealthy individuals often have close political ties, which allowed many to become wealthy during Russia's post-Soviet privatization.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2013/07/14/most-corrupt-cou...
You could think a better topic where to challenge. Corruption is the biggest problem in Russia. It's well know fact - easy to find evidence for it.
I think most people would agree that corruption is a problem everywhere in countries large and small and would like to see it ended, punished, or at least diminished. In that regard, I'm sure that both you and our Baltic correspondent are united in sentiment.
Woiuld it not be best to see honest government come to large, nuclear-armed Russia as well as to its much-smaller rival?
If it were only possible to bring reform to one or the other of these countries, which one should be selected?
And for the record, I would prefer to see reform come to my own badly-in-need-of-it country as well as to all other lands everywhere.
Well, it seems like communism was much better.
Just the facts, Ma'am.
Such information. With all these sources, surely you have the inside scoop on Goldman Sachs and the failure of the US State?
These videos are for you numbnuts.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2oimP4bq74I Crossfire part one
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvMunsPH-kY Crossfire Part two
Opened link despite I dont watch putin regime propaganda as RT - some dude started to talk complete nonsense. I paused and googled his name -
George Szamuely. Well some strange "institution" come up created just in 2006. You know, 3 people can come together and create an institution with nice name like they would be credible. But they are not. Same here - again RT has brought in fake "experts" and has this discussion. Didnt watch it any further.That shows that you are a closed minded shit for brains asswipe.
Get lost, LOSER
You are wasting your time , shithead.
No one reads your goddam bullshit comments.
They should shop at walmart.
Tags:
A new information tragedy in Ukraine. It started so innocently: the nationally conscious patriotic website Nedelya.ua organized a survey. The question was: which politician would you entrust with governing your country?
41664 votes were cast. The results were a knock-out blow for the organizers--a full and crushing victory for Vladimir Putin. Treason!
J.Hawk's Comment: I'd add that even it was "bots and trolls" voting for Putin, where is the pro-Poroshenko/Yatsenyuk/Lyashko/Timoshenko enthusiasm? Right? That, in my view, is what speaks in favor of its authenticity, the fact that none (NONE, KARL!) of Ukraine's leaders elicit respect, admiration, emulation, gratitude, love, or even mere tolerance. No, they are all hated or, worse, despised. Putin, on the other hand, commands respect, grudging or otherwise, even in the US.
Read more: WHAT REALLY HAPPENED | The History The US Government HOPES You Never Learn! http://whatreallyhappened.com/#ixzz3ha9ldqHV
Wait. A former minimum(ish) wage walmart employee goes to a RECRUITING firm for their next job? Really? That has to be a joke.
In Bentonville they are not firing minimum wage employees. Walmart headquarters is in Bentonville. Home of millionaires and billionaires.
Headquarters is now a target. About to be a thousand less members at the Bentonville Country Club. Wonder how all those folks are going to like Arkansas unemployment check amounts? But at least it is comforting to know that Mr Sam's heirs will still be clipping those bond coupons.
Do they have 3x WMT ETF? Wallymart is looking like how the corporate bond market is going to look when everyone unloads all at once.
Then there's Walmart's stock share buybacks:
http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2014/10/02/is-wal-marts-15-billion...
So, greed is good?
Jobs are obsolete.
I'm obsolete, I haven't had a job in years.
Unless those 1000 employees were making $1 million a year, it's not going to offset the he wage hike. Look elsewhere.
Disappointed to see that ZH does not mention that the increased purchasing power of those raised to $15 per hour will increase demand overall, improve neighborhoods and overall optimism for the working poor. This will bring about an increase in real economic investment to meet this new demand, and enable new employers to hire those layed off.
They live in 'reality land', not 'fantasy land' so that could be why it wasn't propagandized out there
It's okay. They probably didn't want to eat anyway.
The past 5 years retail and minimum wage jobs has been the biggest uptake of unemployed all to support sovereigns. It could only last so long before profitability starts to be hit especially in a supressed consumer market.
Job losses have to come to restore profitability.
I hate going to Wal*Mart! Its a terrible. terrible experience.
Unfortunately, they may have some of the stuff that I am looking for, but hopefully they do not.
Everytime I go there though I glaze my eyes over immediately as I enter the door. I then start a beeline right to the department, mostly the auto department as soon as I enter looking no-one in the eyes and seeing nothing but colors and floor tiles.
Once there, to the auto dept I quickly scan the isles for what I am looking for. If I don't see one immediately I glaze over my eyes again and head directly for the exit.
It's a terrible experience to say the least and usually takes most of the day for my brain to absorb any visit to Wal*Mart.
I heard of some people that hate it so much they take a trolley, load it up with all kinds of crap and leave it in the aisle and walk out of the store.