Those of you who read my other blog (and I recognize that might just be Robert) know that despite the fact that I don’t understand half the posts there, I am obsessed with the blog Boing Boing since the posts I do understand are REALLY good. Usually, they’re not even remotely political. But then I woke up this morning to this by Guest Blogger Charles Platt:

How did I move from being a senior writer at Wired magazine to an entry-level position in a company that is reviled by almost all living journalists?

It started when I read Nickel and Dimed, in which Atlantic contributor Barbara Ehrenreich denounces the exploitation of minimum-wage workers in America. Somehow her book didn’t ring true to me, and I wondered to what extent a preconceived agenda might have biased her reporting. Hence my application for a job at the nearest Wal-Mart.

Dude, Nickeled and Dimed came out in 2001. I think I’ve assigned it three times since then. What took you so long?

Getting in was not easy, as more than 100 applicants were competing for fewer than 10 job openings. Still, I made it through a very clever screening quiz, then through a series of three interviews, followed by two days of training. I felt ambivalent about taking advantage of the company’s resources in this way, but I was certainly willing to do my part by working hard at the store, at least for a limited period.

Here’s where Charles Platt’s pre-conceived agenda becomes apparent. Anyone who’s read Nickeled and Dimed knows that he’s skipped some of the most interesting parts of the Walmart story: the drug tests, the anti-union videos and my absolute favorite – their failure to tell you your salary before you start working.

The job was as dull as I expected, but I was stunned to discover how benign the workplace turned out to be. My supervisor was friendly, decent, and treated me as an equal. Wal-Mart allowed a liberal dress code. The company explained precisely what it expected from its employees, and adhered to this policy in every detail. I was unfailingly reminded to take paid rest breaks, and was also encouraged to take fully paid time, whenever I felt like it, to study topics such as job safety and customer relations via a series of well-produced interactive courses on computers in a room at the back of the store. Each successfully completed course added an increment to my hourly wage, a policy which Barbara Ehrenreich somehow forgot to mention in her book.

The plural of anecdote is not argument. On one side we have Charles Platt, Uncle Bob and Someone. On the other side, we have every single poster on Walmart-Blows.com, plus thousands of others who’ve filed lawsuits, NLRB complaints or just left the company silently because they couldn’t take it anymore. And the reason Barbara Ehrenreich didn’t mention that policy about the videos in her book is that she worked there TEN YEARS AGO!!! Not even Walmart could do interactive video courses with the technology available ten years ago.

Several of my co-workers had relocated from other areas, where they had worked at other Wal-Marts. They wanted more of the same. Everyone agreed that Wal-Mart was preferable to the local Target, where the hourly pay was lower and workers were said to be treated with less respect (an opinion which I was unable to verify). Most of all, my coworkers wanted to avoid those “mom-and-pop” stores beloved by social commentators where, I was told, employees had to deal with quixotic management policies, while lacking the opportunities for promotion that exist in a large corporation.

Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia. Or to put it another way: In a police state, everybody appears happy.

Of course, I was not well paid, but Wal-Mart is hardly unique in paying a low hourly rate to entry-level retail staff. The answer to this problem seems elusive to Barbara Ehrenreich, yet is obvious to any teenager who enrolls in a vocational institute. In a labor market, employees are valued partly according to their abilities. To earn a higher hourly rate, you need to acquire some relevant skills.

And what do you do when everyone else acquires those skills and bids down their value to survive or when those skills have been rendered obsolete by technology? I’ll give you a hint: It has five letters and starts with a “u.”

As for all those Wal-Mart horror stories—when I went home and checked the web sites that attack the company, I found that many of them are subsidized with union money. walmartwatch.com, for instance, is partnered with the Service Employees International Union; wakeupwalmart.com is copyright by United Food and Commercial Workers International Union. Why are unions so obsessed with Wal-Mart? I’m guessing that if the more-than-a-million Wal-Mart employees could be unionized, they would be compelled to contribute at least half a billion dollars per year in union dues.

This is what drives me crazy about the press these days. Barbara Ehrenreich is biased. Charles Platt is biased. Wal-Mart Watch is biased. Everyone is biased, including supposedly non-biased writers who just happen to be members of the media. However, just because they’re biased doesn’t necessarily make them wrong though. Loud cries of bias are just an advanced form of nihilism designed to prevent apathetic observers from engaging enough to seek out the truth for themselves.

Ironically, the best antidote to this kind of nihilism is contained in the comments to Platt’s post:

I think you lucked out.

I worked for Wal-Mart for a couple of years. In the Deli. At $9.60 an hour I was one of the highest paid non-management workers in the store (this was a Super Wal-Mart, BTW with groceries and such. Huge place.) with the only other highest paid folks working either in the Deli, or in TLE. The top paid deli worker pulled in $12.00/hr and had been there for several years.

As it happens, I was injured on the job, thanks to the horrendously slippery floors. I don’t care if you have the best-soled shoes in the world, an inch-thick layer of grease will knock you on your butt.

At first, it was fine, Wal-Mart of course paid work comp for all my medical expenses, and on top of that, every minute spent in the doc’s office was logged and I was paid for the time. I was put on altered duty. This means answering phones in the fitting room area. The doc ordered me there for six weeks and then a checkup from that point.

After three weeks, management started hassling me about bumping up my doc’s appointment (which I did.) Doc said I could return to the deli but work no longer than a six hour shift. I was closer, so that meant coming in around 2pm and staying as late as 1am, though we were supposed to be let go at 11pm every day.

Management would not compromise with the shift. I had to come in at 2 and work until everything was done, no matter what the doc said. Fine, I needed the damn job so I did as I was told. Couple weeks later, the injury was aggrivated and I was bleeding. All over the deli. Around food and equipment. Lots of blood. Literally leaving bloody footprints on the floor, through my shoe. I bandaged it up as well as I could, but it kept bleeding through.

I informed management and was told by the store’s co-manager “What do you want me to do about it.” When I suggested maybe I shouldn’t be bleeding all over the food people were eating, and wouldn’t mind taking the phones for the rest of the day and seeing the doc the next. That wasn’t acceptable and I was told I could go into the ER to have the stitches fixed, but I would have to do it over my lunch, and if I could not be back before my lunch was over, I would be fired.

In other words, my side will see Walmart one Wired Magazine dilettante and raise the company ten real people with their lives and livelihoods on the line. I have no doubt who will ultimately win this argument with “unbiased” observers.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 2nd, 2009 at 1031 by Jonathan Rees and is filed under Books, Employment. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.