Is Wal-Mart Karl Marx’s dream company?
My apologies for not having enough time to read the whole document right now, but Wal-Mart Watch brings news of an important study out of UC Berkeley:
Wal-Mart could increase its minimum wage to $10 per hour and greatly boost the well-being of its low-income workers with little financial impact on most shoppers, says a study released today by the University of California at Berkeley’s Center for Labor Research and Education.
Campus labor center researchers report that a “big box living wage” ordinance would provide significant and concentrated benefits to workers, mostly members of low-income families, while consumers across the income spectrum would share the costs in small increments.
In 2006, the Chicago City Council passed an ordinance that would have required retailers such as Wal-Mart to pay a $10 per hour minimum wage, but the ordinance was vetoed. Researchers estimate that starting wages for most Wal-Mart positions range from $7 to $8 an hour.
Cutting in for a moment, that last paragraph is very important. Wal-Mart always quotes its alleged average wage to obscure the fact that it’s starting rate is much worse. With a 50%+ turnover rate, most Wal-mart workers get the starting rate. Back to the study:
The labor center study, “Living Wage Policies and Wal-Mart: How a Higher Wage Standard Would Impact Wal-Mart Workers and Shoppers,” concludes that if Wal-Mart hiked its minimum wage to $10 per hour and in the extreme case, passed on costs fully to consumers, the average impact on a Wal-Mart shopper would be higher product prices of 0.9 percent.
The study finds that close to half of the wage income gain, some 46.3 percent, would accrue to workers living below 200 percent of the federal poverty level. Less than one-third, or 29.3 percent, of the impact of the price increase would be borne by shoppers with incomes below 200 percent of the federal poverty level.
So why doesn’t Wal-Mart raise its minimum wage to $10/hour? Duh, they want to keep the money for themselves and return much of it to the Walton family in the form of dividends. The rich get richer, the poor get poorer.
Indeed, I’m starting to think that Karl Marx had Wal-Mart’s number:
“The directing motive, the end and aim of capitalist production, is to extract the greatest amount of surplus value, and consequently to exploit labor-power to the greatest possible extent.”
It’s companies like Wal-Mart that will make Marx’s revolution come faster around the world. Believe it or not, I actually think that’s a bad thing.
Except that here, you have a private company that people choose to work for. I believe Marx wanted the government to be in control of all such companies.
Gee, Government control over Wal*Mart… who seems to keep pushing for more and more of that around here?
Geez Bob,
Haven’t I taught you anything? Your use of the word “choose” is actually the kind of thinking Marx had in mind when he wrote about capitalists hanging themselves with their own rope.
More importantly, I’m referencing the early stages of Marx’s theory of history – the road to utopia. The state doesn’t own everything until the capitalists all hang themselves.
If Wal-Mart had a little more heart, it could save itself and all of us from this fate.
PS For point of fact, my advocating that position is precisely why I’m not a Marxist.
Do you all remember when WMT “donated” all that water to the flood victims? They donated NOTHING. They raised the price of Sam’s water drastically and have never lowered it back down. They passed the cost of “donating” water onto the moronic customers who continue to put the scam of bottled water in their shopping buggies. It’s just like the coat drives and food drives. They get customers and associates to bring in or donate these items and WMT take ALL the credit for being such “good citizens to the community” when in fact they didn’t put out a dime. WMT only does what benefits the corporation. I couldn’t agree more….WMT is helping destroy freedom and push us right into Fascism.
Are you sure the cost of the bottled water hasn’t increased because the cost of a lot of things are going up, mostly in regards to the price of gas going up? A pallet of bottled water is pretty heavy, you know.
Jonny: Like it or not, all Wal*Mart employees make the choice to work there. It’s a minimum wage job that requires little to no skills – if a Wal*Mart employee isn’t happy, he/she could go get a job at the local McDonald’s and probably make the same amount of money with his/her same (lack of) skills.
Or, of course, the unhappy Wal*Mart employee could, you know, actually make something of his/her self.
I know this is asking a lot. The idea of actually making an effort to better one’s own life is a scary thought for a lot of people. It’s so much easier to try to get others to make those changes for you.
Clearly Uncle Bob is out of touch with reality. Have you looked in the newspaper for jobs lately? They are few and far between. This country is headed for an economic disaster like none it has ever seen.
When I first started with WMT (the pre-Lee Scott years) it was actually not a bad place to work. Everyone was equal and they had promised they would NEVER cap wages. Then they took that promise bad (also called lying) and split us into levels. The lowest level being a one and the highest a seven. Level one caps out at about $13 per hour and that is with NO COST OF LIVING INCREASE OF ANY KIND.
I am in college now. But that takes time and money. I can’t just magically pull another job out of my a**. Let’s take a look at Costco who is another major retailer. They pay their people a decent wage, have excellent benefits and are coveted jobs. WMT could be the same kind of employer but greed runs Bentonville. No one person needs the $23 million per year that Lee Scott receives while the people go hungry and their children do without.
Oh…and as for the bottled water….I noticed the price increase about one week after they started shipping down to the hurricane victims. None of the other water products went up….only Sams. The Writing is on the Wal.
So… what you’re saying is that jobs are hard to find right now and anyone who has a job should consider themselves lucky to have it?
I’ll make you a deal, Catrina. Pick a city – any city with a Wal*Mart (ideally, your home town, but if you do pick your home town, don’t say it is actually your home town). Using the vast power of the interwebz, I will find another job opening in that town.