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Comment by DanielBMarkham | Hacker News Reader

This is a drive-by shooting of Wal-Mart intended to play into U.S. domestic politics, where one group is pushing for a higher minimum wage (to divert attention from other problems, most likely)

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.

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> 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?

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.

Surely, you'd agree that at some point, that system cannot scale. According to Wikipedia, Wal-Mart has 2.2 million employees, and operates at a profit margin of 3.23%.

I both value and appreciate the sentiment, but at the same time, some sort of balance must be struck between sentiment and pragmatism.

Sure, I totally get that. But grand-parent post made it sound like a corporation has zero responsibility to give one shit for anyone it employs. I just think that's terrible, that's a terrible and dispiriting culture that permits and even encourages that kind of callous I'm-just-in-it-for-myself thinking.

Well, in all fairness, a corporation does have exactly zero responsibility to give a shit about its employees.

It's certainly nicer when they do care, but they aren't obligated to, nor should anyone expect them to.

Bullshit!

I can't vote that down, but I would if I could.

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.

I'm pretty sure if you wanna put it in terms of "scalable systems", vast numbers of humans are deadweight.

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.

With 15 billion dollars in profit, I think Wal-Mart could find some cash to pay it's employees.

Well, in order for them to arbitrarily raise wages, they'd have to be convinced that it was in the best interests of their shareholders.

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.

Well, I think we can agree that a company that encourage their employes to use food stamp is not a company that value much their 'associate' & that's clearly not sustainable full time wages.

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.

> Well, I think we can agree that a company that encourage their employes to use food stamp is not a company that value much their 'associate' & that's clearly not sustainable full time wages.

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.

Difference is, I imagine your uncle didn't have millions of shareholders who would lobby to fire him if he didn't lay someone off. What he did was noble, surely. But at the same time, it sounds like it was his business.

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.

the board has a duty to their shareholders to maximize holdings, not to be nice.

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.

>If you want Wal-Mart wages to go up, invest in them.

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.

>hey, we're going to cut our profit in half, but pay our employees double, he'd be shown the door //

Doesn't that just show how the current system of shareholder control of companies is broken.

I think pretty much any company is going to be willing to operate at a loss for a few months in order to avoid layoffs, even if you're a stereotypical heartless CEO there is such a thing as employee morale.

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.

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?

He didn't ask whether it was an honorable, noble thing to do, he asked whether they were "obligated" to do it. Once you are obligated to do something, it is no longer honorable or noble just to do it. Your uncle stood out because he went beyond what he was coerced to do.

While that was noble, it was also risky. Firing a few employees to keep the business afloat (and thus preserving the livelihood for a few) would certainly be better than the business tanking and having all employees out of a job.

I agree with your sentiment: employers should keep their employees happy and compensate them well. But there is no obligation to do so.

Corporations are not legally obliged to pay their employees a living wage, but that doesn't mean especially stingy corporations should be free from criticism. Shame is a powerful motivating factor.

They definitely deserve criticism if they are purposefully hiring more employees with fewer hours with the intention of evading laws that apply to full time workers.

Except that actually, this story doesn't mention the minimum wage at all. And if you look at his past articles, Yglesias is not exactly a cheerleader for it.

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.

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