400 jobs; 10,000 applicants

I really like going to the bathroom in Wal-Mart.

 

your boy's findings are far, far from empirical, so far, i think you probably should look into what the word actually means.

and logic such as "Firm growth, employment and total earnings were somewhat stronger in Wal-Mart counties and, in some cases, even in the retail sector. The research does suggest that retail earnings per job fell in virtually all counties studied. But they actually fell by less in Wal-Mart counties" is fucking stupid.

his logic suggests wal-mart creates an environment instead of having economists study and decide what communities wal-mart should erect stores. i'm not impressed.

what about the bigger effect wal-mart has on communities? i mean fuck, why not simply look close to what we know -- newspapers. how much money in advertising has wal-mart cost newspapers?

you might call what wal-mart accomplishes as capitalism, but we all know the tactics these fuckers took to "lower prices" never would have been accepted if we wouldn't have had a president from arkansas -- company headquarters -- and a right-wing, lovin' corporatate america fuck of a president we've had in office for the past 15 years.

fuck wal-mart, fuck david glass and hell, fuck sam walton. those cocksuckers (walton's soul) won't be happy until they create an america chock full of service-level employees who rely on the government for food stamps and medical care.

 

These folks don't think the government should be in the business of entitlements like food stamps and medical care.

 

nay, these fucks rely on it. otherwise, the cattle they hire to perform their tasks of collecting money couldn't be carried out. being able to eat and stay healthy, two things they don't provide employees, is essential to showing up to work day after bitter day.

 

Despite Ragu's defense of Wal-Mart and his belief that over the long haul they've had a more positive contribution to North American society than a negative one, let's look at some other facts.

Their aggressive anti-union policy is a direct result of state and federal anti-labour laws including the Orwellian "Right to Work" legislation. Wal-Mart has an organized system in place to bully workers who even talk of organizing a union. The fact is that Wal-Mart can intimidate workers because of weak labour laws which don't enforce the basic right of freedom of association.

US labour legislation goes against the international standard of prohibiting replacement workers in the case of a strike. This plays right into Wal-Marts hands.

People who routinely express pro-union sentiments are harassed, intimidated and in many cases, fired.

Wal-Mart has been fined repeatedly for child labour violations in their stores.

Labour violations in factories producing Wal-Mart products are commonplace.

They routinely force workers to work "off the clock" including breaks and overtime.

Doesn't sound like a good corporate citizen to me.

And this is one of my favourite examples of Wal-Mart's "corporate responsibililty"

In 1985, Wal-Mart began a “Buy American” program. According to a company release,
the retailer “asked American manufacturers and suppliers to mutually consider a ‘Buy
American’ plan of producing and buying U.S. products to help reduce the balance of trade
deficit.” Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton said, “Our company is firmly committed to the
philosophy by buying everything possible from suppliers who manufacture their products
in the United States….We must insure that American manufacturers continue to be the
entrepreneurs that provide the fuel that drives our economy"
Gee, what happened to that?

Well, what happened was that close to 200,000 manufacturing jobs, mostly well-paying, were lost between 2001 and 2006/ Ragu's assertion that it was due to incompetence, "corrupt" unions (wow!) and government interference is facile to say the least.

http://www.epi.org/content.cfm/ib235

If Wal-Mart has contributed to anything, it's the U.S's trade deficit, which is increasing year by year.

A continuing trade deficit points to one thing: the US. becomes a third world economy supplying raw-materials to other countries, who then ship back finished goods.

And part of the cause of this can be directly attributed to Wal-Mart.

So, the 10,000 people for 400 jobs doesn't look all that shit-hot, does it?

 

What happened to the "Buy American" policy is that Sam Walton died and the company became a much different creature than what it was when he was alive.

 

I grew up in Chicago, and then the suburbs, and had never heard of Wal-Mart or Sam's Club until at least the mid-1990s. How have they been able to infiltrate everywhere in the last 10-15 years?

 

I understand what happened to it. Doesn't justify it in my opinion.

Let's also look at the fact that Wal-Mart employs more people than any other company in the United States outside of the Federal government, yet the majority of its employees with children live below the poverty line.

It goes back that old saw about "no free lunch".

Everyone is going to pay for shitty wages and those cheap lawnmowers somewhere down the line.

The other strategy that Wal-Mart employs is to saturate a market with more stores than it can support, eliminates the competition, then closes the least profitable stores.

This strategy has been employed in other industries, notably the book business in Canada where Chapters would open say, four big box stores in a community, knock out many independent retailers and then close two of the four stores.

The net result is less choice for the consumer and less competition.

 

And a bunch of empty, blighted stores ...

 

Doesn't Wal-Mart money go a long way toward supporting University of Missouri athletics?

http://sports-att.espn.go.com/ncb/news/story?id=1763836

http://sports.espn.go.com/ncf/news/story?id=2285986

Just sayin'.

NOTE: While this post asserts that a lot of Wal-Mart money goes to the University of Missouri Tigers athletic program, it is not meant in any way to say that Missouri's other programs benefit from such money. Missouri is well-known for having a great journalism school, yes. But my post is no meant in any way to imply a connection between Wal-Mart money and/or business practices, and the current state of the journalism industry. Thank you.

 

Piotr,
It's not Wal-Mart corporate money.

It was (at least from my reading) a personal donation from the Laurie family