Here's how you know wages in the US are too low
slate.com
slate.com
Terrible, terrible story. To see why, simply ask yourself: is WalMart obligated to employ every person at a certain wage for a certain number of hours? And pay all of their bills? And make sure they have a good holiday? Of course not. Lots of folks work at various big box stores for 10-20 hours a week just for the holiday season. Raising money to help these people is a pretty cool thing to do. Turning that into some kind of linkbait? Reprehensible.
Well... yes. An honorable, noble employer would assume some responsibility that his workers are happy and healthy. These people do exist out there, who make an effort to be cognizant of their employees' situations, who try to resist actions that would hurt them in the long run, who go to great lengths to keep a good employee from getting fired just because upper management said so.
My uncle was one such person, he owned a store that sold farming equipment some years back, his business had been doing really bad at some point that it became clear he'd have to fire some people (he only had like 3 or 4 employees), one of whom was a family man whose wife was disabled. My uncle operated on a loss for a few months rather than fire these people. Eventually he turned it around too.
I agree with your sentiment: employers should keep their employees happy and compensate them well. But there is no obligation to do so.
I don't think an employer which didn't care at all about it's employees would lay out that collection in the first place. The problem is that different employees have different numbers of dependents and earners in their households, and need different amounts of money to support themselves well. But you can't really just pay the people with more need more for the same work without risking resentment. And WallMart's profit margins aren't very big, they can't just pay everybody a lot without raising prices. I'd be happy to pay those higher prices, but I don't shop at WallMart because I'm not they're target demographic. The people who shop there are mostly relatively poor people for whom those low prices are actually important.
So I think a much better solution would be to collect more in taxes and subsidize the wages of poor people more.
We already subsidize the poor to the point where everyone's consumption is $20k/year, even if they earn $0-5k/year.
ftp://ftp.bls.gov/pub/special.requests/ce/standard/2011/income.txt
Is $20k not sufficient? What is the right number?
If Mike Duke (Wal-Mart's CEO) were to say, hey, we're going to cut our profit in half, but pay our employees double, he'd be shown the door.
The question is tough. I don't know you, but for a second let's imagine you're an average American. A percentage of your 401k is likely depending on Wal-Mart's stock rising. And your wife/husband's. And your parents' retirement accounts (whether it's 401k, pension fund, whatever). How much are you & your friends & family willing to give up?
If you want Wal-Mart wages to go up, invest in them. And convince all your friends, family, coworkers, etc to do the same. And your 401k holders (or union representatives or whoever manages your retirement funds). Eventually, you'll have a voice big enough to bring up the issue in stockholder meetings & have it be heard.
As it stands now, the board has a duty to their shareholders to maximize holdings, not to be nice. That can change though.
So your saying that if we buy their stock, driving the price up that Walmart would take this a signal to invest in employee pay and benefit increases, and not a validation that their current minimum wage, weekly hour cap, and lack of benefit model is working?
I have heard of people who believe that voting with your wallet / investments is a way to apply pressure to change a companies practices (somehow dolphins and tuna usually gets brought up). But I have never heard of a theory in which investing in a business you think has bad practices will encourage them to get better.
I think that is a fundamentally biased description of the situation. It isn't necessarily about "nice" vs "profits" - its about corporate responsibility to the community that supports it. Or to over-simplify: short-term profits vs long-term profits. A store in a ghost-town doesn't do walmart any good in the long run.
Doesn't that just show how the current system of shareholder control of companies is broken.
I both value and appreciate the sentiment, but at the same time, some sort of balance must be struck between sentiment and pragmatism.
Let people be outraged at Walmart. Stop telling people to calm down and look at it from their perspective. The corporation as a whole doesn't need nor deserve your sympathy.
It's certainly nicer when they do care, but they aren't obligated to, nor should anyone expect them to.
A corporation, by its very nature, is obligated to its shareholders. They are in violation of the law if they do not attempt to maximize profits for their shareholders.
In order to shift any of that obligation toward employees, they'd have to get shareholder approval, and/or justify it in a way that made sense as a profit-motive (e.g., our workers will be more productive if they're happier or better paid).
The problem isn't that Wal-Mart is paying too little, it's that they're paying the wrong people. Those jobs are perfectly great for high-schoolers and those with little experience, but apparently horrible for others.
That isn't Wal-Mart's fault, it's a market problem caused by a poor economy and/or a dearth of existing jobs.
Walmart & target is starting to get more & more in canada & have a very pervert effect on the economy,
while it drive down the price a bit & also make all supermarkets cut costs, which mean trying to cut cost on employes, price they pay food & etc.
Customers win a bit, but all the rest loose a lot.
I'm afraid I can't agree with that. Raising the minimum wage either increases costs everywhere or makes jobs less available. In short, I don't pay the guy that mows my lawn enough money to live off of. I don't expect that I ever will. I have no idea whether or not he makes enough to live off of between me and his other clients, but I also don't really see that as my concern.
I pay him what I think it's worth for me to not have to mow my own lawn. If it cost substantially more, I'd mow my own lawn. If he were the only game in town, then presumably he could name his own rates -- but only to those unable or unwilling to mow their lawns at any cost. He's not making any more money off of me, at least, not without it being an incremental increase.
I don't know why Wal-Mart should be expected to pay their employees a 'living wage' at their own expense. They can either find other jobs or find additional jobs if they are unhappy with the arrangement. My niece works at Wal-Mart and loves it. I can't imagine that she would love working there in her thirties.
The level of pay at Wal-Mart probably isn't meant to be paid to bread-winners, and I don't fault them for that. I would have a pretty hard time paying somebody $50k to put groceries in a bag knowing that I could pay somebody else far less for doing so without subjecting them to hardship.
Which means they'd have to figure out how to justify paying somebody more money to do the same amount of work, in a position that is effectively fungible.
Failing that, they'd have to figure out a way to get more work done out of each employee for less profit, or convince all of America that they should pay higher prices for commodity goods and still shop at Wal-Mart while doing so.
I'm not saying Yglesias isn't partisan - he is. But a lot of the comments here seem to have seen the word 'Wal-mart' and just started firing away at a straw-man.
However, I am reminded of the various "support the troops" drives that all the major defense contractors run among their employees. They are clearly kissing the ass of their customer (the DoD), but they always struck me as insulting because if you have to run a food-drive for families of troops that says the troops aren't being paid enough to support their families.
Let's add one potential context. Over 80 tornadoes hit the Midwest yesterday. (Reference: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/chi-tornad...) I've seen friends on Facebook asking if everyone is okay, going out and helping people and towns that have been hit, and more.
Perhaps this picture is from a Wal-Mart in one of the affected towns. Perhaps it is not. Without context, we are left guessing. The article author has taken that lack of context and jumped to a whole boatload of conclusions that are not necessarily supported by the picture.
This is not, in any way, representative of "Hacker News." I flagged this article.
It hurts to think about this.
Or pay it's employees so they don't have to rely on the generosity of other underpaid coworkers? There's an idea.
If you are 50, your industry tanks, and you have a gap in your resume, you could be bagging groceries at Wal-Mart. You might also need some help to be able to afford a proper Thanksgiving dinner. In this hypothetical, Wal-Mart isn't an angel doing favors for the employee, but it is giving him an opportunity.
Requiring, through law or social forces, living wages (for some definition of living wage) will guarantee that fewer opportunities will exist for those who are struggling to get their feet on the bottom rung of the ladder. To top it off, if you raise the cost of employing someone at Wal-Mart or McDonald's, you just increase the attractiveness of automation systems that reduce entry-level employment opportunities.
If you are truly concerned about people not having enough to eat, I guarantee that there are homeless shelters, food banks, and soup kitchens in your neighborhood that would love to have your donations of time, food, or money.
Getting pissed off at Wal-Mart because it lets its employees start food drives for each other (notice the lack of corporate branding on the donation box) isn't helping anyone. It might convince Wal-Mart to ban this kind of charity in the future.
I would love for everyone to be successful but it's not the kind of thing you can wave a magic wand with a fantasy solution, dump blame on wal-mart, then call it a day.
Couldn't tell you why though.
Is there a public scoring/rating system for companies and how they treat their employees, environment, and other factors?
They rate companies according to an ethical standard which encompasses aspects such as animal cruelty, staff treatment, malevolent regime support, fair trade, origin of raw materials, etc..