Wal-Mart Plans to End Extra Pay in U.S. for Sunday Shifts

[swampwiz]

There's no way American businesses can pay $35 an hour for the same work that can get done in Singapore for $4 per hour. No legislation, tariffs, unions, or beneficent actions by US employers can change that.

I don't think the wage rate in Singapore is that low - China, India, Bangladesh, Vietnam, sure.

As for legislation not being able to change things, I think one political organization begs to differ: Home » cpusa

 

[TomG]

Maybe Joe Jones believes he's not "average" and wants the opportunity to work hard, outperform the average member of the "employee collective" and provide a better future for his family by getting promoted within a growing company that can compete globally.

So does that mean above average employees will still be able to earn the pay differential and this only applies to the below average ones?

If not, that's just more evidence that negotiating as a single unit, rather than separate entities is most likely in the best interest of both the weak and strong

For those that are truly among the strongest, it might be in their best interest to go against a union, but by definition, that can only be a small fraction of total workforce

Though again, exactly like you said, if a worker truly believes management is so incompetent that they will give into demands that will ruin the entire company, they absolutely should try and get whatever they can before it all falls apart. That's true whether they are a strong or weak worker

 

[REWahoo]

Though again, exactly like you said, if a worker truly believes management is so incompetent that they will give into demands that will ruin the entire company, they absolutely should try and get whatever they can before it all falls apart. That's true whether they are a strong or weak worker

Hey, look how well it worked out for GM and their employees...

 

[samclem]

If management gives into demands that ruin the entire corporation, the union can only accept half the blame. And all of the benefits. If workers really believed that management would act that incompetently, they should be much more inclined to act together rather than alone

This is an interesting and illuminating way of viewing it. Substitute "tornado" or "riot" for "union" and it still works. Sure, periodic riots might might ruin a company, but it's management's fault, they should anticipate such things and take action to prevent them.

 

[ERD50]

Obviously they are using market forces and there's no grand conspiracy. And in a competitive environment, when one business does this, they gain a competitive edge that all their competitors feel a need to match. And so begins the race to the bottom (and that's exactly what it is, IMO). The exporting of jobs to places like China and India isn't helping in that regard, either.

The problem is that this corporate behavior just leads to more of the same.

And how is this different from the past?

Assembly lines replaced a lot of craftsmen. Computers replaced a lot of people entering payroll into ledgers. Tractors replaced many workers on farms using horse/plow. And so on.

In each case, it took fewer workers to produce the same output. Would you have been arguing against the tractor 100 years ago, on the basis that we just need to keep these people employed, and let's pay them the same wages regardless? You can kick and scream and say it just ain't right, or you can find a way to hop on that train. Who do you think did better back then - the craftsman who stuck with his buggy-whip shop until the bitter end, or the guy who said - 'hey, maybe I need to learn how to repair these new fangled horseless carriages'? The current "Global Revolution / Flat Earth" is just our version of the Industrial Revolution, IMO.

And in a way, I think it is a very good thing. A poor person gets a job and improves their lifestyle dramatically, while we sit in relative luxury. What makes us so special? I guess this is a form of "wealth redistribution" I can approve of - people putting in honest work to get their share of the pie, rather than the 'you have it so give it to me' style of wealth redistribution.

-ERD50

 

[dex]

And in a way, I think it is a very good thing. A poor person gets a job and improves their lifestyle dramatically, while we sit in relative luxury. What makes us so special? I guess this is a form of "wealth redistribution" I can approve of - people putting in honest work to get their share of the pie, rather than the 'you have it so give it to me' style of wealth redistribution.
-ERD50

It is wealth distribution - from the USA to poorer nations. And this too shall pass. Sometime in the future those poorer nations will build up their military, have wars, institute programs similar to SS, Medicare/Medicade, Health Care Reform, and run a deficit. While that happens, those very same things will go away in the USA & Europe (see what happened to the USSR) and the USA & Europe will become the low cost producer. Then the money will flow back to the USA & Europe if it doesn't make a stop in South America or Africa before then.

 

[Midpack]

But your post points out an appropriate issue--the interests of labor leaders are not congruent with the interests of the workers they represent. If the union extracts big concessions, they get big reward$. If these concessions drive the company out of business, the workers lose their jobs and maybe the value of any company stock in their retirement plans, but the few union organizers can move to another target company--their paycheck comes from the union, not the company. Employees are figuring this all out.

+1
There are exceptions where horrific management deserves to be organized to this day. But having spent 17 years of my career in three different union plants and 17 years in a non-union plant (surrounded by big union plants), it's clear employees have figured this out. In many cases, the union becomes worse than management, and more corrupt to be sure...

 

[TomG]

This is an interesting and illuminating way of viewing it. Substitute "tornado" or "riot" for "union" and it still works. Sure, periodic riots might might ruin a company, but it's management's fault, they should anticipate such things and take action to prevent them.

Neither tornado nor riots have destroyed Wal-Mart, so I'll support the position that management has dealt with those issues appropriately. If Wal-Mart workers unionized, management could deal with that situation appropriately to ensure the company was not destroyed. If an employee thinks management is not capable of doing that, why would they think the company is solid and stable no matter what negotiating tactics labor uses?

 

[samclem]

If Wal-Mart workers unionized, management could deal with that situation appropriately to ensure the company was not destroyed.

Yes,Wal-Mart management has done a good job of this so far. In the single case where workers at a Wal-Mart store in North America (Canada) have voted to be represented by a union, the company immediately closed the store. It's entirely within their rights, and serves as a good reminder of whose jobs they are (Wal-Mart's).

Business Week on Closure of unionized Wal-Mart store.

 

[haha]

Three separate groups of Delta Airline employees voted against unions in the last two months.
Story

Walmart, Delta, general nationwide declines in union membership despite tough economic times, how to explain it? Maybe workers don't want to pay the dues, maybe they don't like the way the dues get spent, or maybe they'd like their companies to stay competitive and remain in business so they can have jobs.

Just maybe. But unions are growing just fine in the public sector where competition is just not a problem.

Ha

 

[Westernskies]

Between WalMart publishing handouts for employees on how to maximize their government benefits (some borderline legal & morally wrong)

Inquiring minds want to know...more...facts

 

[Westernskies]

Wal-Mart Plans to End Extra Pay in U.S. for Sunday Shifts - Bloomberg

I'd like to see a poll on how many E-R.org members are working the Sunday shift at Walmart.

 

[M Paquette]

Inquiring minds want to know...more...facts

Hidden Cost of Wal-Mart Jobs - UC Berkeley Labor Center

 

[Andre1969]

I didn't even realize WalMart paid more on Sundays, until I read that article. Back in college, I had a part-time job working for a department store called Hecht's (now part of Macy's). I started in August 1991 at $6.50 per hour normally, but on Sunday I'd get $9.75. And they forced everybody to work one Sunday per month. After about a year, they cut out the 1.5x for Sunday, but then boosted everybody's pay to compensate. How much you got depended on how much overtime you had worked. I remember I got raised to $7.03 per hour.

Sad thing is, for the Christmas season in '08, a friend of mine picked up a part time job at Macy's for some extra money, and she was only making about $7 per hour...the same amount I had been making roughly 16 years earlier!

I guess those types of jobs really haven't kept up with inflation. And sadly, I had to dress nicer at that job than I do at my current job, so that ate up a lot of my income.

I finally quit working there in April 1996. By that time I think I was up to around $7.86 per hour. I do remember they'd give us OT if we worked more than 40 hours in a week, but the sweet thing was they'd also do it if we worked more than 8 hours in a day! So I'd try to get in a few 9-10 hour days every once in awhile.

 

[ls99]

Yeah, my step-son was pissed when he found out about this a couple of weeks ago..lol.....maybe he'll be ticked off enough that he'll go out & find a real job, or get his butt in school, or join the military....

The military never paid shift differential, plus we were on call 24/7/365.

 

[samclem]

Hidden Cost of Wal-Mart Jobs - UC Berkeley Labor Center

Not convincing at all. These people don't cost the State of California anything because they are Walmart employees, they cost Califirnia because they are poor and California (and the federal government) have put these programs in place. They'd be poorer still (and cost Calif more money) if they had no jobs at all, which in many cases is the alternative to employment at Walmart.

Does Walmart benefit the poor? Yes--it provides a greater benefit to the poor than does the entire Food Stamp program. Washington Post: Progressive Walmart. Really

As a force for poverty relief, Wal-Mart's $200 billion-plus assistance to consumers may rival many federal programs. Those programs are better targeted at the needy, but they are dramatically smaller. Food stamps were worth $33 billion in 2005, and the earned-income tax credit was worth $40 billion.

Set against these savings for consumers, Wal-Mart's alleged suppression of wages appears trivial. Arindrajit Dube [note: Author of paper at M.Paquete's link] of the University of California at Berkeley, a leading Wal-Mart critic, has calculated that the firm has caused a $4.7 billion annual loss of wages for workers in the retail sector. This number is disputed: Wal-Mart's pay and benefits can be made to look good or bad depending on which other firms you compare them to. When Wal-Mart opened a store in Glendale, Ariz., last year, it received 8,000 applications for 525 jobs, suggesting that not everyone believes the pay and benefits are unattractive.

But let's say we accept Dube's calculation that retail workers take home $4.7 billion less per year because Wal-Mart has busted unions and generally been ruthless. That loss to workers would still be dwarfed by the $50 billion-plus that Wal-Mart consumers save on food, never mind the much larger sums that they save altogether. Indeed, Furman points out that the wage suppression is so small that even its "victims" may be better off. Retail workers may take home less pay, but their purchasing power probably still grows thanks to Wal-Mart's low prices.

The article above also describes the demographics of Wal-Mart shoppers, and it's a good bet that about $50B of that $200B in benefits to consumers go to the poor. That $50B is more than either Food Stamps or the Earned Income Tax Credit. And it comes with no government overhead, no scams where people sell food stamps for other "needed items", etc.

Of course, if Walmart paid $30 per hour and gave full medical coverage and child care, I guess fewer of their employees would be getting help from the generous people of California. For about 6 months, when the company would go bankrupt.

 

[martyb]

The military never paid shift differential, plus we were on call 24/7/365.

yup, you got that right! Today's military also pays considerably more than the $8 an hour he gets at Wal-Mart, IF you figure it on an 8 or 9 hour day. I did work plenty of 9 hour days in the military, and also even had a few less than full days, due to the occaisional generosity of a shift leader when things slacked off a little, but the extra long days & nights more than made up for any slack time.

 

[M Paquette]

Not convincing at all. These people don't cost the State of California anything because they are Walmart employees, they cost Califirnia because they are poor and California (and the federal government) have put these programs in place. They'd be poorer still (and cost Calif more money) if they had no jobs at all, which in many cases is the alternative to employment at Walmart.

Exactly. That is what most of the folks shouting "Wal-Mart shows it's employees how to get foodstamps" tend to overlook. Folks working at Wal-Mart are there because it is likely to be the best job they can get (modulo the high 'friction' of the job search and hiring process). Wal-Mart specializes in cheap, and that extends to labor as well as merchandise.

If someone gets really good at what they do at Wal-Mart, there is always the possibility that they'll be able to get a position elsewhere, with better pay and benefits. Annual turnover at Wal-Mart was estimated at 70% in 1999 (Wal-Mart said this was down to 45% in 2002, the last recession), so we can hope some workers are moving up in the world. Note that the high turnover raises the overhead for Wal-Mart with higher hiring costs and training costs per position, which cuts into profitability per employee.

 

[jazz4cash]

I do remember they'd give us OT if we worked more than 40 hours in a week, but the sweet thing was they'd also do it if we worked more than 8 hours in a day! So I'd try to get in a few 9-10 hour days every once in awhile.

I don't think they were "giving" you anything. Isn't 1.5x REQUIRED for anything over 8 hrs/day and 40 hrs/wk REQUIRED by the minimum wage law for non-exempt employees? Some "free marketeers" folks believe the minimum wage law reduces employment. I remember my brother worked at Sears in the 60's and employees got a 20% discount....now THAT was sweet!

 

[Andre1969]

I don't think they were "giving" you anything. Isn't 1.5x REQUIRED for anything over 8 hrs/day and 40 hrs/wk REQUIRED by the minimum wage law for non-exempt employees? Some "free marketeers" folks believe the minimum wage law reduces employment. I remember my brother worked at Sears in the 60's and employees got a 20% discount....now THAT was sweet!

That's right, I forgot about the whole "exempt/non-exempt" thing. When I finally got a full-time job as a gov't contractor, I started off as non-exempt, but I don't think I got OT unless I went over 40 hours for the week. So theoretically I could work 4 10 hour days, take the 5th off, but not get OT. But that was also a long time ago, so my memory might be fuzzy on it.

I finally got moved to exempt status in 2001, but they cut a deal with me, giving me an out-of-cycle 10% raise, to offset the fact that I wouldn't be getting 1.5x for OT anymore.

And yeah, I had a 20% discount at Hechts, and that was pretty sweet. And where a good deal of my paycheck often went!

 

[Westernskies]

Hidden Cost of Wal-Mart Jobs - UC Berkeley Labor Center

Now, there's a unbiased source I trust...

 

[SunsetSail]

Hidden Cost of Wal-Mart Jobs - UC Berkeley Labor Center

Now, there's a unbiased source I trust...

Come on guys, this is an excellent study. It clearly shows that California has a bloated entitlement system and something should be done about it. Just because the clowns unsuccessfully tried to vilify Wal-Mart doesn't take away from the fact that there is real benefit in reducing handouts in California. UC Berkeley - thanks for the vote for small government.