Posted on 06/29/2006 10:15:13 PM PDT by Coleus
The line outside the new Wal- Mart in Kearny began form ing long before the 8 a.m. grand opening on Wednesday.
This corporate behemoth is opening stores everywhere on earth these days, including this 43rd outlet in New Jersey, built on the foundation of a vacant trucking terminal a mile or so from the New Jersey Turnpike.
You may have heard that Wal- Mart treats its employees as disposable parts, paying low wages, offering lousy benefits and crushing any effort to form a union. That's all true, which explains why almost half their employees quit every year.
But on Wednesday in Kearny, company executives did all they could to show the other side. They gave a giant cardboard check to a hospital charity. They invited leaders from the Hudson County Urban League to praise the company's efforts to recruit minorities. Middle-aged employees in matching blue vests cheered Wal- Mart's letters in unison, like high- school kids at a pep rally.
The emotional peak came when Wal-Mart vice-chairman John Menzer stepped onto a wooden po dium and told his new employees they were like family to him. "At Wal-Mart, we're all about our core beliefs, and respect for the individual," he said. Love it or hate it, Wal-Mart's formula works. Its low prices have made it the largest private employer in the world. It earns about $1 billion in profits each month.
The problem is the company is also a welfare freeloader.
It offers such paltry health benefits, at such a high cost, that most employees don't take any coverage at all. And many of them land in state programs designed for the poor. It offers such paltry health benefits, at such a high cost, that most employees don't take any coverage at all.
(Excerpt) Read more at nj.com ...
Such a pity. People leaving high paying, benefit giving jobs to go work at Wal-Mart, which apparently is too stingy to give either. Ah, well, what can you do?
...oookay...so where would these people be WITHOUT Wal-Mart?
Case closed.
If Walmart is such a terrible place to work, then why don't they have trouble finding new associates to hire?
S.O.S., different day.
Sure. Their low prices are no bargain for anybody.
Another way to look at this is if you don't want low wages educate yourself so you don't have to accept them.
Not a hard concept.
Walmart was the only business open for many weeks after Katrina. Walmart made it possible for people to return to their homes and begin the recovery.
Could you repeat that, please?
No matter how much liberal booty gets smooched and liberal groups get funded by Wal-Mart as is now happening in the Jesse Jackson shake down tradition, they still get dumped on by the MSM.
Btu this, this is as funny as the Olive Garden restaurant chain running the "When your here your family!" ad campaign in North Jersey. Yeah, family you can't bring to your regular Italian place.
The emotional peak came when Wal-Mart vice-chairman John Menzer stepped onto a wooden po dium and told his new employees they were like family to him.
Walmart bashing ping
Can you expand on that a little?
"Such a pity. People leaving high paying, benefit giving jobs to go work at Wal-Mart"
Uh, not by choice. Capitalism is the best economic system in the world, but it ain't perfect.
I agree, but not every American is destined for college.
still sittin on their front stoop drinking 40's. ;o
My sister lives in a small town and works at Walmart...they don't have much, 3 kids and she can't afford to get the crap insurance they offer...Go ahead, make your jokes, but lots of families could use a break from the company that makes a billion a month...she works her butt off for 40 hours a week and doesn't get weekends off...I'd say that the company could spare a bit of the profits to help her kids, my nephews, get decent medical care, wouldn't you?
The author is a total moran.
I think they just opend 1 or 2 new Olive Gardens on Rt. 17. They also opened up a Lowes and a few other box stores in the same area. Have you tried any of the Olive Gardens on Rt17? I know the one in midtown Manhattan is excellent.
Why should they? Where is it written that when a company hires someone they are responsible for the employee's health care as well as all their children and spouses?
At what point in history did we cross that line?
Years ago America's manufacturing base was something to behold. We literally won WWII because we could make weapons faster than anyone else.
Back in the 40s 50s and early 60s corporations hired folks to work and make things or sell things or design and repair things. Now a corporation must be responsible for health care and vacations and pensions and provide community services and expected to donate parks and other goodies to the community and even then they are ridiculed because they make too much money because and don' GIVE ENOUGH.
Gee I wonder why so many companies are leaving the USA?
Walmart is silent about price increases on thousands of items to support advertised price rollbacks on hundreds of items. I'm thankful there are Walmart stores, as they do offer superb variety (except if you are looking for something specific). On the other hand most if not all items they sell can oftentimes be purchased elsewhere at lower prices.
Great article to read from today's FR: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1657697/posts?page=101,6
Is that net or gross?
{" suggest that American kids might simply get off their collective asses -- and go to work!"
I agree. I too did most of what you did in my youth. But as an international financier who travels the world constantly, todays kids face a daunting task in deciding what to study, and where their future belongs. A degree in engineering is tantamount to financial suicide.
adjusted net.
Just checking. A lot of times the gross profit is used to artificially make it look like a company is rolling in more dough than it really is.
With all due respect, she works only 40 hours a week? Well, it's clear vaulting ambition is not one of her sins.
And we're supposed to wring our hands over the fact that she has to work weekends?
With three kids, has she ever figured out how much she really makes at work as opposed to being "just a" stay at home mom? What with that day-care/baby sitter(s) for her kids, a second car + all the expenses that go with it (loan payments, insurance, gas, maintenance; or bus fare; or her share of the car pool), not to mention taxes taken from her wages, plus all the times the family eats out, eats carry-out, buys from the QuickyMart, etc. etc. b/c she is too tired, to stressed out, to hurried to cook...I wouldn't be a bit surprised if it turns out she clears little to nothing per hour, or that,perhaps, it even costs her to work,i.e. makes $5.15 an hour - $5.90 an hour in expenses = ((-$.75)) per hour.
What a joke this clown is. Wal Mart workers are the least of New Jerseys tax problems.
Wal-Mart is about to go to school when it comes to doing business in urban areas. Trust me, in a year or so you'll feel sorry for the company.
and they wonder why there was five drive by shootings last weekend in newark?
But the one thing the stay-at-home-mom group doesn't take into account is that home mortgages are based on total family income.
Not that YOU can't make it on one income...but what they THINK you should make to get a mortgage.
If that would help them grow by making the employees more productive, sure. Wal-Mart has stuff like this down to a science. Which is why they can be enormously profitable on something like a 3% margin.
Has she thought to change jobs? My son just got hired right out of high school doing customer service at an airport for $9.00 an hour.
It's called retail. My sister is a manager for Burlington Coat Factory and doesn't get weekends off. She's been in retail management in different chains for 20 years; I don't think she's ever had weekends off. Nor holidays. That's the game she wants to play.
You want weekends off, that generally means office work or teaching. It doesn't mean retail, health services, communications repair, or any one of many other service jobs.
Many states offer state-sponsored insurance for low income children. Your sister might want to look into this in her state if she can't afford the WalMart plan.
oookay...so where would these people be WITHOUT Wal-Mart?
The same place they were before Wal-Mart existed.
(Denny Crane: "Every one should carry a gun strapped to their waist. We need more - not less guns.")
I disagree. With Wal-Mart they have a job that pays above minimun wage.
I'll bet that Wal Mart even has supervisors, managers, district managers, buyers, personel experts, drivers, mechanics -- Heck, opportunity abounds even in the worlds largest retail company. I started at a grocery chain, with a degree from UCLA, unloading freightcars as a teamster on the graveyard shift. Thats not where I ended up. The union sure didn't make me a manager.
yitbos
Bump for later. Got to go to bed.
If your sister doesn't like what she is getting at her job she needs to find another job with better benefits. Unless she has Wal-Mart people forcing her to go to work every day. I worked at a Wal-Mart Distribution Center for 7 years. We had good wages and good benefits. All 900 of us were full time associates and had all the over time we wanted. There is a Wal-Mart store right down the road and I used to ask the associates there why they didn't go to work at the DC and make the higher wages. I usually always got the same answer. They just didn't want to work that many hours and they didn't want to work that hard. No one is forcing your sister to work for Wally World. she is the one who took the job and the pay/benefits package. Nobody is making her do anything. We do not live in a socialist country. We live in a capitalist country. Get used to it, get over it, or get out!!!!!
I disagree. With Wal-Mart they have a job that pays above minimun wage.
It's possible to make more on public assistance and working under the table a day or two a week than working at wal-mart.
You can argue that public assistance is too generous or wal-mart is too cheap. Take yer pick.
Mate, going to Olive Garden in NYC should be a crime. Especially if vino is involved. I don't know where to start, Beppe, IlPalazzo, Mike's, Marinella's, heck, even ordering a Ben's sicilian pie to go beats out OG.
As to the new Ramsey OG location, I haven't been, probably won't. I pass the new one up in Ramsey enough though. Try La Gondola on Rte 17 North in the Kohl's shopping center, they have lunch specials that have lines going out the door 5 days a week. Olive Garden won't survive for the same reason Eastside Mario's(now the Houlihan's in Ramsey) didn't make it. You can't fake the sauce when the real deal is next door, costs less, and is locally owned.
Hey Jersey! Is Mike's the Garbage Burger Guy still on 17. Probably got the name wrong...I haven't been up that way for a few years.
But then again if the author of this piece did that folks might come away with a different impression than the one the author wants to leave.
I know folks who work at Wally. The bennies are pretty good to, my mind anyway.
Note to the MSM: Next time, let's see the details...
Hmmm...with three kids, can she afford NOT to have the insurance?
Has she thought about getting a different job, or moving up at WM? They promote from within, you know.
It's too early in the morning to get worked up about this. I'm getting tired of the constant barrage of propaganda/brainwashing.
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