I can still blame the lawyers. If the lawyer's she hired to file suit were really looking out for the woman's best interest, they would have realized that winning the suit meant that Wal-Mart would try to take the other money back. Obviously they overlooked this. Either they didn't care about actually doing what was best for the woman, or they were shitty lawyers and didn't realize.
You got me there. They probably had to do a crapload of work to get a big win like that, but someone should still have seen that coming. Maybe they just thought they could negotiate it away or win the subsequent Wal-Mart suit. Maybe that's why they're playing it up in the media now.
When you said that someone should have known, you reminded me of one of my earliest law stories. My first job was with a solo guy who did mostly worker's comp. He did have one huge car crash case. His client had slipped off the road into an gulley and had a terrible one-car accident. My boss sued the state DOT and said that they should have had a guard rail there and that the road was graded improperly and caused water to collect at the scene, causing the road to be too slippery. He paid an expert a lot of money to say this.
The problem was that the enabling statute for the Board of Claims, the administrative agency who would hear the case, only gave the Board authority to make a judgment for a maximum of $100K against the DOT and it had a collateral source clause (that is, a clause that said that any money paid by any insurance of any kind would be subtracted from DOT's liability). The guy had over $250K worth of medical expenses and lost wages that were all paid by insurance. I read the statute (I had been out of school for about two months at this point), and I said, "Dan, I don't think you're going to get anything at all from the Board of Claims." He harumphed and told me I was stupid but, at the hearing, the Assistant Attorney General asked for a directed verdict because (1) the Board could only give an award of $100K which would then be (2) diminished by any insurance paid to our client (just what I told Dan), so the maximum award the Board could give would be $0.00. They won that argument. It was a classic "I told you so", but I couldn't and wouldn't say it because Dan was pissed.
He harumphed and told me I was stupid but, at the hearing, the Assistant Attorney General asked for a directed verdict because (1) the Board could only give an award of $100K which would then be (2) diminished by any insurance paid to our client (just what I told Dan), so the maximum award the Board could give would be $0.00. They won that argument. It was a classic "I told you so", but I couldn't and wouldn't say it because Dan waspissed.
Well, it seems as if Dan at least cared. But yeah, I would guess many lawyers have similar stories about not noticing a clause somewhere that changes everything.
For anyone who is still looking for a really good reason to hate Wal-Mart here you go. As I've said before, I think we need unions when they are necessary (the only coal mine in town), and we need to remove them when they aren't necessary (convention centers). If ever there were a place where a union were needed, it is Wal-Mart.
If you want to hurt the poorest of the poor, support unionization at Wal-Mart. I contend that Wal-Mart's low prices have done far more to empower the lowest-income earners than any welfare program. I've said more than once that when you can give a family a can of generic Wal-Mart corn for 39 cents instead of name-brand for $1.29, you are doing better work than Mother Theresa ever did.
The problem is that pro-union activists don't look at their track records. They see unskilled labor as a market that demands a living wage, but they don't look at the failures of their efforts. Ford just posted a $1.7 billion loss because union labor has hijacked its profitability. Look at the U.S. steel industry. Prices at grocery stores that use unionized labor are much higher -- and the toll is evident at corporations like Giant Eagle, which is closing down stores all over the country. General Motors is sagging, too.
I'm not suggesting all unionization is bad. Look at what education unions have been able to do. The problem is that unions tend to work well inside a monopolized market, but elsewhere they only generate massive inflation by creating an artificial wage hike. Too many unions are busily pricing themselves out of jobs, and then wailing when industry fails and begs government for a bail-out.
Wal-Mart shouldn't be unionized. Shelf-stockers and check-out operators were never intended to earn living wages in part-time, unskilled positions. Upping hourly wages and benefits for unskilled workers might seem like a humanitarian thing to do, but consider the ripple-effect it will have on pricing; higher pay means higher prices means less purchasing power for the lowest earners. Lower purchasing power means less consumable utility, which means recession, which means lower purchasing power for everyone, not just the poor.
Chess players think at least a dozen moves ahead. The economic system is much more complex, and deserves a much deeper analysis.
Wal-Mart shouldn't be unionized. Shelf-stockers and check-out operators were never intended to earn living wages in part-time, unskilled positions. Upping hourly wages and benefits for unskilled workers might seem like a humanitarian thing to do, but consider the ripple-effect it will have on pricing; higher pay means higher prices means less purchasing power for the lowest earners. Lower purchasing power means less consumable utility, which means recession, which means lower purchasing power for everyone, not just the poor.
Wal-Mart has over two million employees. You're saying that those people who are just shelf-stockers and check-out operators are not intended to earn living wages. That's fine for the high school kids. How about the actual adults working there who need a living wage? They can't work anywhere else, Wal-Mart put those places out of business. They have no skills because they can't afford school on a Wal-Mart wage, nor could their parents.
Wal-Mart creates poor people while simultaneously giving them buying power. If Wal-Mart unionized, then sure they would be forced to get rid of many of those employees. That's fine. All the people still working at Wal-Mart would have a living wage. Everyone who is left unemployed will actually be able to get a job elsewhere because it will become possible to compete with Wal-Mart.
Allow me to also quote Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations. Page 96 in the Bantam Classic edition. The entirety of "Chapter VIII: Of the Wages of Labour" is relevant, but I'm not about to type in the entire thing.
But though in disputes with their workmen, masters must generally have the advantage, there is however a certain rate below which it seems impossible to reduce, for any considerable time, the ordinary wages even of the lowest species of labour.
A man must always live by his work, and his wages must at least be sufficient to maintain him. They must even upon most occasions be somewhat more; otherwise it would be impossible for him to bring up a family, and the race of such workmen could not last beyond the first generation...
They can't work anywhere else, Wal-Mart put those places out of business. They have no skills because they can't afford school on a Wal-Mart wage, nor could their parents.
There's nowhere to work? Wal-Mart put everything out of business? Ridiculous. Minimum wage jobs have never been intended -- and the minimum wage has never been intended -- to be sole financial support for a family. Also, I paid $32,000 worth of college bills working minimum wage jobs and attending college at the same time. I went to college with $0 and graduated on time. It just took a lot of work and making the right choices and the right sacrifices. It can be done.
Adam Smith says that if a job doesn't pay a living wage, it's not worth doing. A part-time job doesn't count because you are able to do other things besides that job. The wages of your 8-hour work day should add up to a living wage. What Adam Smith didn't anticipate was that people would be stupid enough to actually work for less than a living wage. He knew the employer had the upper hand, but he didn't think the laborer was so weak-willed. Also, he didn't anticipate that there would be a time when there would be such a low demand and such a high supply of unskilled labor thanks to science and technology.
This is the fundamental problem in an economy where people are supposed to live by selling their labor. When the supply of labor exceeds the demand, people can't live. Unless you own something important, most people have no means of creating any value other than selling or investing their labor. If labor isn't worth a living wage, how can people live without a fundamentally different economic system than the one we have now?
You either have to change the entire economy, or for laborers to get a living wage.
Adam Smith says that if a job doesn't pay a living wage, it's not worth doing. A part-time job doesn't count because you are able to do other things besides that job. The wages of your 8-hour work day should add up to a living wage. What Adam Smith didn't anticipate was that people would be stupid enough to actually work for less than a living wage. He knew the employer had the upper hand, but he didn't think the laborer was so weak-willed. Also, he didn't anticipate that there would be a time when there would be such a low demand and such a high supply of unskilled labor thanks to science and technology.
This is the fundamental problem in an economy where people are supposed to live by selling their labor. When the supply of labor exceeds the demand, people can't live. Unless you own something important, most people have no means of creating any value other than selling or investing their labor. If labor isn't worth a living wage, how can people live without a fundamentally different economic system than the one we have now?
You either have to change the entire economy, or for laborers to get a living wage.
Adam Smith also didn't realize the extent we would industrialize and eliminate most of the standard lower middle class jobs.
I'm with Jason except for the teacher's union part. Unions are designed to benefit the members, not those the members work for.
A union's first priority is to its members. Sometimes all sides benefit, sometimes not so much. They also work best when the other side (management) is not trying to destroy or antagonize them.
It can be hard getting members to accept their wages and work rules when they see their managers making 5-500 times as much as them for effectively doing nothing.
If Wal-Mart stars charging 1.29$ for a 39c can of corn after unionized labor, it is not because they couldn't afford to pay their employees otherwise, but because they do not want to diminish their profits. The source is not unionized employees but corporate greed.
If Wal-Mart stars charging 1.29$ for a 39c can of corn after unionized labor, it is not because they couldn't afford to pay their employees otherwise, but because they do not want to diminish their profits. The source is not unionized employees but corporate greed.
What? Do you understand how business works? Do you hate profit? Profit is what ensures you have a job.
No, I do not hate profit and I know how business works. I only hate profit schemes that try to gain more profit by the unfair exploitation of your workforce. There are minimum wages enforced for the exact same reason.
No, I do not hate profit and I know how business works. I only hate profit schemes that try to gain more profit by the unfair exploitation of your workforce. There are minimum wages enforced for the exact same reason.
What is an unfair profit?
Wal-Mart one-year net profit margin: 3.5% Difference from the company's 5-year average net profit margin: -0.1 pct. pts. Difference from the average for the Discount, Variety Stores group: 0.1 pct. pts.
Over the last 12 months Walmart has had sales of $387B with an income of $13.1B. Their net progit margin is 3.48%. Tell me again how they are exploiting their workforce to gain more profit.
. . . and they played "Land down under" Over the In-store PA/Muzak system.
Man I wish I could hear something that odd over the PA next time I am Wal-marting. Reminds me of the time I heard an instrumental version of River of Deceit over the k-mart PA.
Other issues make the narrow "wages vs. prices" debate described before particularly uninformative. One side of the debate assumes that the cost of higher compensation to employees at Wal-Mart is higher prices to consumers. This isn't necessarily the case—some (or all) of the costs of increased compensation could come from reduced profit margins, raising the living standards of Wal-Mart employees while preserving the benefits from low prices.
To get a feel for how much of a wage increase could be financed out of reduced profit shares, one can imagine Wal-Mart's profit margins falling back down to their 1997 levels, which would also cut half of the difference between their margins and a key Wal-Mart competitor, Costco (which posted a profit margin of 2.0% in 2005). Reducing the profit margin by this much would give Wal-Mart $2.3 billion to plough into improved worker compensation without the need to raise prices. In Wrestling With Wal-Mart, we calculate that this would translate into just under $2,100 per non-managerial employee. Simply returning to its 1997 net profit margins, Wal-Mart could give its non-supervisory workers 13% pay increases without raising prices, while maintaining higher profit margins than a main competitor.
Wal-Mart could definitely raise compensation for its workers and still have lower prices than its competitors. Note that labor costs for its non-supervisory staff account for less than 7% of its total sales. If Wal-Mart's price advantage relative to its competitors is even in the neighborhood of what its defenders claim, consumers would still find Wal-Mart's prices lower. To believe otherwise is to believe that Wal-Mart's price advantage comes completely from substandard worker pay and not through any cost efficiencies.
Thank you so much Steve for proving my point for me.
My statement was in regard that Wal-Mart could pay higher wages and/or give their employees better compensation by having a smaller profit margin which would still be competitive and probably the largest in the retail business. This is exactly the same thing that the paper you linked to states. Wal-Mart only keeps out unions and provides their employees with less benefits to keep a larger profit margin than is necessary. This is greed at the expense of their workforce. Nothing else.
Wal-Mart only keeps out unions and provides their employees with less benefits to keep a larger profit margin than is necessary. This is greed at the expense of their workforce. Nothing else.
Does Wal-Mart look like the Salvation Army to you? The whole point of business is to maximize your profits. There is no profit margin that is "too large". If they can screw the unions while they're at it, then more power to them.
I would like to know what you consider to be too large of a profit margin.
Because Walmart has such a low profit margin they would have to reduce their profit margin by 50% (half) to follow through with what the article says. This would put them near a 2% profit margin. Do you consider a 4% profit margin to be excessive?
We are discussing here if, why and how much Wal-Mart is on the evil side of things. I am in no way capable of judging profit margins and do not pretend to be and maybe my choice of words with "necessary" was not the best, but to me screwing over your employees for profit certainly counts a great deal towards evilness.
I would like to know what you consider to be too large of a profit margin.
Because Walmart has such a low profit margin they would have to reduce their profit margin by 50% (half) to follow through with what the article says. This would put them near a 2% profit margin. Do you consider a 4% profit margin to be excessive?
And sell their product at a reasonable rate that would allow for local business to compete? The horror!
If Wal-Mart stars charging 1.29$ for a 39c can of corn after unionized labor, it is not because they couldn't afford to pay their employees otherwise, but because they do not want to diminish their profits. The source is not unionized employees but corporate greed.
This statement is what moved the discussion into profit margins.
I countered by posting the profit margin of Walmart and linking to an article that stated Walmart could increase their wages/benefits by reducing their profit margin by 50%. At 2% the owners of Walmart would be better off selling the business and investing their money in certificates of deposit!
Comments
So now, I avoid Wal-Mart for the same reason I avoid hanging out in the ghetto.
When you said that someone should have known, you reminded me of one of my earliest law stories. My first job was with a solo guy who did mostly worker's comp. He did have one huge car crash case. His client had slipped off the road into an gulley and had a terrible one-car accident. My boss sued the state DOT and said that they should have had a guard rail there and that the road was graded improperly and caused water to collect at the scene, causing the road to be too slippery. He paid an expert a lot of money to say this.
The problem was that the enabling statute for the Board of Claims, the administrative agency who would hear the case, only gave the Board authority to make a judgment for a maximum of $100K against the DOT and it had a collateral source clause (that is, a clause that said that any money paid by any insurance of any kind would be subtracted from DOT's liability). The guy had over $250K worth of medical expenses and lost wages that were all paid by insurance. I read the statute (I had been out of school for about two months at this point), and I said, "Dan, I don't think you're going to get anything at all from the Board of Claims." He harumphed and told me I was stupid but, at the hearing, the Assistant Attorney General asked for a directed verdict because (1) the Board could only give an award of $100K which would then be (2) diminished by any insurance paid to our client (just what I told Dan), so the maximum award the Board could give would be $0.00. They won that argument. It was a classic "I told you so", but I couldn't and wouldn't say it because Dan was pissed.
If not them, then from the evidence given there was no evil involved at all.
The problem is that pro-union activists don't look at their track records. They see unskilled labor as a market that demands a living wage, but they don't look at the failures of their efforts. Ford just posted a $1.7 billion loss because union labor has hijacked its profitability. Look at the U.S. steel industry. Prices at grocery stores that use unionized labor are much higher -- and the toll is evident at corporations like Giant Eagle, which is closing down stores all over the country. General Motors is sagging, too.
I'm not suggesting all unionization is bad. Look at what education unions have been able to do. The problem is that unions tend to work well inside a monopolized market, but elsewhere they only generate massive inflation by creating an artificial wage hike. Too many unions are busily pricing themselves out of jobs, and then wailing when industry fails and begs government for a bail-out.
Wal-Mart shouldn't be unionized. Shelf-stockers and check-out operators were never intended to earn living wages in part-time, unskilled positions. Upping hourly wages and benefits for unskilled workers might seem like a humanitarian thing to do, but consider the ripple-effect it will have on pricing; higher pay means higher prices means less purchasing power for the lowest earners. Lower purchasing power means less consumable utility, which means recession, which means lower purchasing power for everyone, not just the poor.
Chess players think at least a dozen moves ahead. The economic system is much more complex, and deserves a much deeper analysis.
I align myself with Penn and Teller.
Wal-Mart creates poor people while simultaneously giving them buying power. If Wal-Mart unionized, then sure they would be forced to get rid of many of those employees. That's fine. All the people still working at Wal-Mart would have a living wage. Everyone who is left unemployed will actually be able to get a job elsewhere because it will become possible to compete with Wal-Mart.
Allow me to also quote Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations. Page 96 in the Bantam Classic edition. The entirety of "Chapter VIII: Of the Wages of Labour" is relevant, but I'm not about to type in the entire thing.
This is the fundamental problem in an economy where people are supposed to live by selling their labor. When the supply of labor exceeds the demand, people can't live. Unless you own something important, most people have no means of creating any value other than selling or investing their labor. If labor isn't worth a living wage, how can people live without a fundamentally different economic system than the one we have now?
You either have to change the entire economy, or for laborers to get a living wage.
Need I say anymore?
A union's first priority is to its members. Sometimes all sides benefit, sometimes not so much. They also work best when the other side (management) is not trying to destroy or antagonize them.
It can be hard getting members to accept their wages and work rules when they see their managers making 5-500 times as much as them for effectively doing nothing.
Over the last 12 months Walmart has had sales of $387B with an income of $13.1B. Their net progit margin is 3.48%. Tell me again how they are exploiting their workforce to gain more profit.
The Wal-Mart debate: A false choice between prices and wages
ps. If Wal-mart is evil, what is Exxon?
EDIT: Or Ruby-Eye Shabranigdo.
My statement was in regard that Wal-Mart could pay higher wages and/or give their employees better compensation by having a smaller profit margin which would still be competitive and probably the largest in the retail business. This is exactly the same thing that the paper you linked to states.
Wal-Mart only keeps out unions and provides their employees with less benefits to keep a larger profit margin than is necessary. This is greed at the expense of their workforce. Nothing else.
More on Cambodia
If the US made more trade deals like this I would be a lot happier with the way things are. However the US let this trade deal run out in 2005...
Full ep of "This american life" I am refering to
Because Walmart has such a low profit margin they would have to reduce their profit margin by 50% (half) to follow through with what the article says. This would put them near a 2% profit margin. Do you consider a 4% profit margin to be excessive?
I countered by posting the profit margin of Walmart and linking to an article that stated Walmart could increase their wages/benefits by reducing their profit margin by 50%. At 2% the owners of Walmart would be better off selling the business and investing their money in certificates of deposit!
Walmart is not a jobs program.