Monday

wal-mart

Here's another great Wal-Mart watch site: WakeUpWalMart.com. It has a great deal of detailed economic research about how Wal-Mart's poverty-level wages contribute to public assistance rolls all over the country.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

oh please. so its WAL MARTS fault that these people are not equipped to get a higher paying job? do you really think grocery baggers and burger flippers at Mickey Ds are doing any better? again, the answer is to prepare yourself so you have more marketable job skills than being able to do something a trained monkey could probably do. I fully understand the full time benefits only business because having worked in a lot of transient types jobs none of them offer benefits either because then you have people working one or two shifts a week getting benefits that cost a company a lot of money. two years seems a bit long of a wait but most jobs that have a high turnover and hire unskilled workers have a wait of at least six months. they do not want to give insurance to someone who is planning on quitting the second it kicks in and then they can use the insurance for a lot longer than they ever worked at the company. it may suck but at least in part it can be alleviated by planning well. I realize in this economy skilled laborors often are reduced to finding work that is beneath them. but it seems like a real nice blame game to just throw it at wal mart that they are on public assistance. I would bet there are people who are underemployed taking orders at the taco bell window who are on public assistance as well. it is the nature of this kind of job.
I used to be on the no wal mart wagon because they are putting up a new one near where I live. but then I realized most of the people bitching about it are shopping at one in another town anyway, they just dont want it right next to them. further I saw the business about putting small business owners out and ALL big box stores do that to some degree or another so what are you going to do, ban them all? wal mart just does it better and cheaper than the competition so they make a convenient target. to attack wal mart means you really are saying that there are limits to capitalism and that you can do well but not TOO well, because that wouldnt be, well, FAIR. and we all know life is supposed to be FAIR. I do feel for folks who ARE skilled for a particular industry and due to cuts in that industry they have to work at wal mart or mcdonalds or somethign but the question becomes is it the job of that big company to make up for the fact that they have family men doing jobs that might be better suited to a sixteen year old earning gas money? and for people who dropped out of school did not prepare does a big company owe it to you to pick up the slack for you? wal mart DOES do a lot of charitable work in the communities it goes into. perhaps seeing this trend of people on public assistance they could donate to food banks or habitat for humanity and such charities as well.