NOTE: this blog is no longer active as of 12/07. New one: http://blog.kirchhof.com
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur.
Mon, 14 Feb 2005
Always Low Prices Wages. Always.
So you like to shop at Wal-Mart. Most of you know that I have been
pretty well informed on the subject for a while now. Just discovered a
piece in The New York Review Of
Books on the
current state of the monster. Here are some telling
excerpts. Remember, when they say "government", they mean your
money.
One of the most telling of all the criticisms of Wal-Mart is to be
found in a February 2004 report by the Democratic Staff of the House
Education and Workforce Committee. In analyzing Wal-Mart's success in
holding employee compensation at low levels, the report assesses the
costs to US taxpayers of employees who are so badly paid that they
qualify for government assistance even under the less than generous
rules of the federal welfare system. For a two-hundred-employee
Wal-Mart store, the government is spending $108,000 a year for
children's health care; $125,000 a year in tax credits and deductions
for low-income families; and $42,000 a year in housing assistance. The
report estimates that a two-hundred-employee Wal-Mart store costs
federal taxpayers $420,000 a year, or about $2,103 per Wal-Mart
employee. That translates into a total annual welfare bill of $2.5
billion for Wal-Mart's 1.2 million US employees.
Wal-Mart is also a burden on state governments. According to a
study by the Institute for Labor and Employment at the University of
California, Berkeley, in 2003 California taxpayers subsidized $20.5
million worth of medical care for Wal-Mart employees. In Georgia ten
thousand children of Wal-Mart employees were enrolled in the state's
program for needy children in 2003, with one in four Wal-Mart
employees having a child in the program.
[...]
Wal-Mart is a ferociously anti-union company, and the UFCW has yet
to organize a Wal-Mart store. Every store manager at Wal-Mart is
issued a "Manager's Toolbox to Remaining Union Free," which warns
managers to be on the lookout for signs of union activity, such as
"frequent meetings at associates' homes" or "associates who are never
seen together...talking or associating with each other."
The "Toolbox" provides managers with a special hotline so that they
can get in touch with Wal-Mart's Bentonville headquarters the moment
they think employees may be planning to organize a union. A
high-powered union-busting team will then be dispatched by corporate
jet to the offending store, to be followed by days of compulsory
anti-union meetings for all employees. In the only known case of union
success at Wal-Mart, in 2000 workers at the meat-cutting department of
a Texas Wal-Mart somehow managed to circumvent this corporate FBI, and
voted to join the UFCW in an election certified by the National Labor
Relations Board. A week later Wal-Mart closed down the meat-cutting
department and fired the offending employees, both illegal acts under
the National Labor Relations Act. The NLRB ordered Wal-Mart to reopen
the department, reemploy the fired workers, and bargain with the
union, but Wal-Mart has appealed the NLRB decision and the litigation
continues.
[...]
There's plenty more there. Give it a read.
Let's repeat: "The report estimates that a two-hundred-employee
Wal-Mart store costs federal taxpayers $420,000 a year, or about
$2,103 per Wal-Mart employee. That translates into a total annual
welfare bill of $2.5 billion for Wal-Mart's 1.2 million US employees."
Now go on ahead. Go to your nearest SuperCenter and buy a 50 lb
bag of "Sam's Choice" dog food.
Then donate it to the nearest Wal-Mart employee so she can go feed
her kids.
Posted at 10:38 by Randy Kirchhof [Permalink]
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You Heard It Here First
(Well actually, you heard it on MetaFilter first.) Anyway, California is in for a rough week, according to group of South African psychics:
A group of psychics led by colourful 'SilverJade', based in Johannesburg South Africa, have predicted that a series of earthquakes and other natural disasters will strike the western coast of the United States on or around the 23rd of February 2005.
As at the 11th of February 2005, they have successfully predicted a significant event, a 5.5 magnitude earthquake in south eastern Alaska, as being a first step in a series of smaller events leading up to the big bang. The next step of the prediction is set to occur at some time on or around the 13th and 15th of the month.
Posted at 09:56 by Randy Kirchhof [Permalink]
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