Wal-Mart Warns of Democratic Win »
Posted By idyll 1 year, 5 months ago in Business & FinanceWal-Mart Stores Inc. is mobilizing its store managers and department supervisors around the country to warn that if Democrats win power in November, they'll likely change federal law to make it easier for workers to unionize companies -- including Wal-Mart.
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idyll
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PsychoHosebeastComment removed: Spammer, Abusive2 Replies
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Harbeas1 year, 5 months ago
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Ther future of unions lies with them reinventing themselves. It is too bad that we have the type of executives we have running businesses today. The auto industry worker has just had their income cut in half and yet the executives are still making millions. This is where unions are needed. This type of disparity should not be allowed or tolerated. If the worker must have his income reduced, shouldn't the highly overpaid executives do the same? Hey, while we are at it, why not reduce the incomes of the entertainers and athletes. I am not advocating socialism or communism, just a fairer distribution of the wealth.
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Candida1 year, 5 months ago
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Harbeas: "Hey, while we are at it, why not reduce the incomes of the entertainers and athletes."
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That's what progressive taxation achieves in some countries. However, everybody knows in the US that no matter what problems the country faces, the solution is tax cuts, especially for the rich. -
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intheweeds1 year, 5 months ago
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"This type of disparity should not be allowed or tolerated."
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"I am not advocating socialism or communism, just a fairer distribution of the wealth."
LOL. Yes, you ARE a socialist.
"From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs."
-- Karl Marx, Manifesto of the Communist Party, 1848
(I'm not a racist either, but I'd like to own just a few black slaves.) -
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arcrftmech161 year, 5 months ago
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What really destroyed organized labor unions was when federal laws circumvented the rights or organized labor to fair labor and working standards. Business was allowed to fire all its union workers and hire new workers signing statements not to organize or join unions. Just as do all the Japanies auto assemblers putting together japanese cars. They must sign a statement of disclosure before being employed. The proposed democartic changes do not necessarily promote or demand organized labor unions, it proposed organized in house worker rights to report unfair working conditions to state and fedral agencies. The change will effectively debunk and destroy any states with Right to Work laws that shield companies from worker rights. My own children have been indoctrinated to think of unions as the cause of inflation and high prices. Well inflation is still present and prices are out of control, even without the presence of unions. Their wages are stagnated and determined by what the company feels they are worth and if they can easily be replaced. Cost of replacement is the driving value of wages for most companies, and cahsiers are cheap and easy to train. These large corporations have even lobbyied local education boards to have our education system train their future low paid employees rather than provide a good education. Organized labor in any form is a threat to company profits and state labor laws, of which Utah does not have and discourages.
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Tangent0011 year, 5 months ago
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I think this is going to backfire on Wal-Mart big time. Not just from a public opinion standpoint, but from when these middle-managers realize that a union could actually protect them from upper management doing these sorts of manipulative shenanigans!
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skeptic2711 year, 5 months ago
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The most common reason workers join unions is not for more money, it's because they feel the company has treated them unfairly. I have talked to union organizers who say that if a company treats it's employees fairly there's nothing they can do to persuade the employees to join. Basically, the companies who have unions deserve them.
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airwick1944Comment removed: Retracted by user1 Reply
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AnteUp1 year, 5 months ago
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nikkibabe ~
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Okay - now it's confession time. I'm no brainiac but I feel fairly competent -
so how could I be SO stupid? We NEVER shop at WalMart - I sent copies
of an LA Times 4-part expose about it to friends so we would all understand
just what the public was up against. THEN I made a comment to one
of those friends recently about "When we went to Sam's last weekend" . What
can I say? They blew their cork! They fired back,"You are the one that told
me about WalMart - HOW can YOU shop at Sam's??"
I just sputtered - couldn't even think of an intelligent defense for my
behaviour. We scrupulously avoid WalMart and then I shop at Sam's
regularly. Am I in denial? Is it really just as bad to shop at Sam's as
shopping at WalMart? I am so ashamed. But where will I buy my big
kitty litter and birdseed containers? Shoot!
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chevydog1 year, 5 months ago
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I've always felt that having unions is a price that is paid for not treating employees the way they should have been treated all along. So those companies that are -- and can convince their employees that it is more than just words -- don't really have to worry. It may work out that one comes up with the same dollar total either way; but I'd rather have comitted, motivated employees than ones that are ticked off because they had to fight tooth and nail for every morsel.
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Also, are companies "as companies" allowed to take political positions? I'm sure there are many ways to dance around this, but I'm just curious. -
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skeptic2711 year, 5 months ago
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>> Many quailfy for California welfare benefits for the low income, working poor. This costs the California taxpaper funds to subsidize Walmart's sh!t wages.
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Employers who offload their health care expenses onto taxpayers either by not paying enough for their employees to afford to buy their own or by not providing it are abusing the system. One of the best ways of resolving that problem is national health care. Everybody pays, everybody benefits. -
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HMMaceComment removed: Spammer, Hard Banned
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cushi1 year, 5 months ago
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Corporate bullies like Walmart and Verizon Call Centers are nothing but glorified slavemasters and sweat shop owners! I will never forget sitting in a Verizon Call Center, hearing the managers admonishing their employees that unions were "bad" and that they never wanted to hear their employees using that word.
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At the time, I really needed the job, so I kept quiet, but inside, I was doing a slow burn and determined to get the he ll out of there as quickly as possible! They dangled carrots in front of their employees and allowed a certain percentage of them to think they were moving ahead, but they never reached the level of pay that the so-called "managers" and corporate executives did. It was pathetic!! Employees had very few benefits and paid through the nose for them, and if they becamse disable4d on the job, they were nearly always denied long term disability by the fly by night insurance companies the company picked for them, and they could fire an employee for any reason at all, valid or invalid, and the employee had no recourse. Cruel and inhumane treatment was the order of the day.-
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cushi1 year, 5 months ago
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I remember a young lady who was a top seller for Verizon in the call center, but she suffered a terrible bout of gout and could not bear to stand, much less walk. She was very low income and had no transportation other catching the bus, but she was in too much pain to walk to a bus stop. She was expected to call in every single day, even though she had no phone at home, and would be forced to hobble to a phone booth to call in. Of course, she wasn't able to do that, so they terminated her. Top salesperson or not, their only concern was, if she ain't here, she ain't making us any money! This young lady was not trifling, either, she was hard working and loved her job, but the minute she developed a health problem, they tossed her aside like used tissue paper.
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arcrftmech161 year, 5 months ago
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By your actions to shop there you are ecnoucaging WalMart to mistreat and abuse their employees, discount or not. Many other stores also discount and offer better service than WalMart. Americans have been duped by WalMart as it actively destroys americas small business communities. WalMart neither offers quality or good service or safe products. It's is a throwaway store with throwaway goods, all poorly made in China to WalMart poor specifications and demands. Consumers that shop at WalMart are small minded uneducated shoppers that don't care about quality and safety. Cheap is never equal or better. Their volume buying throws quality out the window and demands only inferior products from its providers for the ignorant comsumer.
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JavaJoe20511 year, 5 months ago
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how great walmart owners find any way they can to take from america. The family earned over 18 billion last year and gave 51,000.00 to charity. (from there own money) do you know that these same employees through giving programs set up by walmart gave over 5.9 million to charity this is a good reason to get rid of the current political system. There is no reason on earth that any ceo of any company should receive 15 to 225 million in bonuses. If this money were responsibly distributed the average hourly wage for a typical cashier would be 63 dollars an hour. The super rich are ******* America and the current political system encourages this aborent behavior. Shame on America for allowing this to happen. We will pay the price the bad has barely started. Just wait.
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leighnenova1 year, 5 months ago
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Get your facts straight, then spout off about the WalMart regime. It's sad that people can suggest that WalMart is somehow the bad guy trying to keep it's employees down while packing the pockets of the stockholders. WalMart employees are given so many more opportunities to advance and improve their careers than any other company I have worked for. Oh, by the way, the employees are given bonus as well based on the store profits. Has anyone mentioned that? I was at the meeting this week about the union/democratic backed bill and no one at any time was anti-union or anti Obama. It was an informational seminar explaining what the bill was and how it would work. Nothing less and nothing more. I'm sick to death with the "know it all" that focus on WalMart and what a horrible organization it is. Only to see the same people that bash them on a daily basis shop at the store I work at and make weekly visits to Sam's club as well.
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intheweeds1 year, 5 months ago
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"The meeting leader said, 'I am not telling you how to vote, but if the Democrats win, this bill will pass and you won't have a vote on whether you want a union,'" said a Wal-Mart customer-service supervisor from Missouri. "I am not a stupid person. They were telling me how to vote," she said.
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You work for Wal-Mart? Yes, you ARE a stupid person. -
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arcrftmech161 year, 5 months ago
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Not only does Wal-Mart and other corporate american companies fear this so do many states with Right to Work laws that shield business from workers rights. Wal-Mart is misrepresenting in its report and i'm sure they will be campaigning and threatening its workers with job loss if they vote democrate. What the democrates intentions are is to give workers more rights to organize without the need for the implied organized labor unions. Wal-Mart wants to prevent its in house workers to file orgainezed complaitnts to state and federal labor departments and to preveent them from requesting company benefits. This means the CEO's may have to take a pay cut instead of its workers. Organized labor does not mean organized labor unions, it means workers wanting fair pay for fair work and possibly health care benefits. Government better watch this company and others closely to prevent it from running political campaigns with its employees to influence voter decisions. Job threats of job loss through political campaigning of it workers should be left to the political parties, not corporations. This is why we need the ability and right to organize as workers within a corporation when job safety, worker abuse, and workers are treated unfairly. Fear among its workers are the best friends at Wal-Marts and other companies like them. The american consumers need to stop shopping Wal Mart for the open worker abuse policies they force on its workers. This proposed democratic change in worker rights will have all Utah government businesess up in arms with major campainging and misinformation to stop this from happening. Corporate Utah thrives on worker abuse and workers inability to organize for fair labor laws. The mining industry is still ignoring safe mining for miners because the workers can't do anything about it as the state Right to Work laws shield the business.
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chartrandmax1 year, 4 months ago
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The history of labor unions in the US is riddled with control by criminal and underground forces, particularly the Mafia and other evil figures. I know from first hand the violent and despotic nature of labor unions, the ends they will go to to force themselves onto the workplace, the discontent and hate they continually foam, the liberal, democratic candidates they funnel money the use to buy influence. Whoever they support are always the most anti-American, anti-Contitutional candidates.
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Anyone who supports the unions 1) is ignorant of their violent history, 2) is on the take by or with them, 3) does not mind paying dues for little or no real benefit, does not understand how they destroy businesses and create massive unemployment, 4) is unAmerican themselves, 5) or really thinks the way to do handle worker issues is through the gun barrell. Wal-Mart, like UPS, General Motors, Ford Motor Company, and a dozen airline giants before them, will be brought to their knees and become uncompetitive if the unions take them over.
Employees who think they are benefiting from unionization will soon find themselves in a hostile, bureacratic workplace and not long after that, standing in the unemployment line. There is a reason that the markeplace has steadfastly rejected the good unions, and its because they cannot operate on an open playing field. They require politicians to conspire with them to promote illegal and unfair trade practices. I urge all to wake up before we are taken down that violent path by Obama and Co.!
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