Tuesday, February 03, 2009

Experience trumps theory ...

... Life at Wal-Mart.

I considered writing about my brief experience, but a book defending a company that has been demonized does not have a large potential audience, and the writer tends to be dismissed as either hopelessly naive or bribed by corporate America.

Similar factors result in someone such as Adam Shepard remaining relatively obscure.

Never heard of Adam Shepard? Then read the whole thing.

5 comments:

  1. The paragraph you quote certainly rings true with me. The rest of the article provides a different perspective that comes from some actual experience (albeit for a short while), and the comments that follow are also interesting. One negative note: the "obscure" author he praises was published by Harper Collins and has been discussed on The Today Show, so he doesn't seem to be as shunned by the media elite as one might think.

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  2. Wal-Mart has become the main target (a-hem) of people like Ehrenreich, who raise protest to the exploitation of minimum-wage workers in America. And that is perhaps unfair. On the other hand, success comes at more than a few costs. Should we not criticize companies like Wal-Mart that a) make huge contributions to politicians on both sides of the aisle, and b) enjoy a laughably low federal minimum wage standard? I worked for six years as a supermarket cashier, under the protection of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union. Yeah, I paid dues. But I also received—as a PT worker, no less—full medical and dental benefits (with no contribution), as my the trajectory of my “career” was locked into a pay-raise schedule (with additional opportunities for extra pay via promotions, different shifts, etc.). When I left the store in 1993, I was making $16/hr — with time-and-a-half on Sundays — as an unskilled laborer. Again, that was 16 years ago. A full timer could actually have a spouse and a couple of kids and pay a modest rent/mortgage with that type of job. Wal-Mart employees can’t say that. (And while the Adam Shepard story is interesting, what light does it shine? Yes, scrappy, smart, hard-working, resourceful people can make things happen in a free-market, capitalist system. And? What about the not-so-smart, not-so-resourceful, myopic rest of the workforce who can seem to muster the winning psychology necessary to do “make magic happen” when all they can see is a Wal-Mart apron that hangs on them? As a culture, we’re quick to slap the “lazy” tag on the low-income bracket. Why aren’t we equally quick to slap the “greedy” and “heartless” tags on the corporations that pay their workers far too little money (and the politicians who allow it)?

    -G

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  3. "What about the not-so-smart, not-so-resourceful, myopic rest of the workforce ..."
    What about them? Life,as John Kennedy observed, is not fair.
    I have no trouble with labeling coprporate greed, greed. But I don't see Wal-Mart offering its executives the outrageous salaries and perks that Wall Street, for instance, gives even its failed CEOs. Robert Rubin, for instance. I am a member of a union and have often been appalled by its myopia and lack of imagination. Also, I believe Wal-Mart's entry-level wage is $7.25, a dollar higher than the current federal minimum wage, and I believe their average wage nationwide is slightly more than $10 an hour.

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  4. You must be a father, Frank. "Life isn't fair" is just the kind of thing a father would say. But I'm not suggesting that life is or should be FAIR; our instinct for basic morality, our sense of civic duty, should (in my opinion, at least) push us to strive for a level of DECENCY.

    Don't get me wrong: I'm not defending labor unions in any sort of blanket way. I'm just saying that, given the absurbly low minimum wage -- which has set the benchmark for all labor (and a dollar over the benchmark isn't anything to brag about, Wal-Mart; if some 19th-century American slave owners were rumored to have fed their unpaid laborers well and refrained from beating them, would the Confederacy have been justified in lauding them? Yes, this may sound a bit hysterical, but everything is relative -- and our modern form of economic and social injustice is even more insideous because it hides, somehow credibly, behind a mask of false benevolence) -- unions have provided unskilled laborer the power to acquire a level of compensation that, if our corporate and political leaders were "decent" on their own, would already be the standard.

    Bottom line (for me, anyway): It may be unfair to single out Wal-Mart, since the vast majority of retail outlets with non-union workforces do the same thing, but any company that pays its workers an average of roughly $10/hr -- in this country, in this day and age -- is flat-out stealing their labor. So from my vantage point, anyone who wants to rip Wal-Mart a fresh one on those grounds...please, have at it.

    -G

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  5. There are, Greg, all sorts of factors involved here. $10 is a national average. Obviously some make a good bit more. Those making the least are those who are entry level. Many of the employees live in parts of the country where the cost of living is lower - amazing how cheap a steak dinner is in Elko, NV. There have been numerous studies indicating that every time the minimum wage goes up, a lot of people lose their jobs, because the little employer can't pay more. Wal-Mart will always match the legal minimum, probably even top it a bit. The idea that the employees would be markedly improved if they were unionized is, in my opinion, dubious. Yes, I do think we are obligated morally to help those in need. I do not think the best way to do that is through legislation or government programs. I think those are among the worst ways. The next time you think about the government running a business, stop into your local state store.

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