HULK SMASHED
Fuck Walmart and their evil Uber-Capitalist ways. Fuck them right up the ass with their cheep crappy stuff!
I suppose WalMart execs will argue that their illegal immigrant workers are making $2 a day more than they were before WalMart put mom and pop stores out of business.
I first went to a Wal-Mart in Flagstaff, Arizona, where I was greeted with the banner "Arizona Proud!". I thought, "Wow, what civic engagement!". Years later, I went into one in Toronto to buy a super cheap Hoover canister vac and was greeted with the banner "Ontario Proud!". I haven't stopped throwing up since.
That is just so fucking disgusting. Some Walmart executive better go to jail over this!!! Grrrrrr!!!!!!!
$2 per day, huh? Well, as this guy points out in his blog, the thing that gets me angry is that that's where we're heading in this country, slowly but surely into this nasty banana-republic oligacracy.
Just the genius of free market capitalism at work.
Let me get this straight. We immediately lock up somebody who diligently tries to put food on their family with $2 per hour, but the execs who knew of and/or illegaly sought to hire these people for slave wages are still driving their SUV's home, free and clear? Yeah, we've got our priorities straight.
Can anybody honestly say the world isn't a better place without all those horrible mom and pop stores around?
That's some fucked up repugnant shit.
Employing workers at substandard wages is the conservative equivalent of an erotic dream. These galley slave masters must be pitched overboard before we all end up in the same boat.
Let me get this straight. We immediately lock up somebody who diligently tries to put food on their family with $2 per hour, but the execs who knew of and/or illegaly sought to hire these people for slave wages are still driving their SUV's home, free and clear? Yeah, we've got our priorities straight.
It's only fair though, right? I mean, the execs and business types work SOOOOOOOOO much harder than the those who depend on hourly wages to make a living. Of course they should get off scot free. They're not to blame for hiring those evil opportunist illegals at such low wages. The only reason the wages are so low is because those damn illegal immigrants are so willing to take AMerican jobs right out of the pocket of American People! *And in case you didn't know, this was heavy, heavy sarcasm*
Meanwhile, in Southern California, my regressive co-workers cross the supermarket picket lines and babble on about how unions aren't necessary any more.
See the UFCW web site for news
What I loved about the whole story is that first, I read that a Wal-Mart spokesperson denied any knowledge of illegals, and "we'll certainly cooperate with authorities to determine, blah, blah, blah."
The next day?
Associated Press, citing unnamed law enforcement sources, reported that recordings of meetings and conversations among Wal-Mart executives, contractors and managers suggested that the company had known about immigration violations.
Hahahaha. Oops.
want to tell Walmart what you think of their labor practices? Just use this handy form:
http://www.walmartstores.com/
wms...=OnlineForm.jsp
just remember, Walmart is infamous for its data collection practices and wanton disregard for personal privacy.
I doubt it. It's almost certainly a misquote. $2 per hour is believable, but $2 per day is not. See the New York Times story, where one couple is making $400/week each, and another guy is making $6 per hour.
Following up on Moyer's discussion last night on NOW, I wonder how we go beyond tut-tuting this and actually start to do something about it. Rather than civil disobedience, I think a better approach is to hit them economically. Perhaps a MoveOn type internet organization whose members agree to boycott the exploiters?
"I doubt it. It's almost certainly a misquote. $2 per hour is believable, but $2 per day is not. See the New York Times story, where one couple is making $400/week each, and another guy is making $6 per hour."
To quote the USA Today article where this allgeation appeared:
"The cleaning crews did not receive health insurance and were paid below the minimum wage, sometimes as little as $2 a day, a federal official said."
That is not a blanket statement that all Wal-Mart cleaning crews were paid $2 a day. As the same article points out, Wal-Mart uses "more than 100" contractors to clean "more than 700 stores." The facts cited in the NYT article don't contradict the facts cited by USA Today, but do point to the excesses "free market capitalism" will sink to if allowed.
In other words, don't kid yourself: all the sweatshops aren't just in Southeast Asia.
Hey, $2 a day is better than the $.50 a day the people who manufactured the actual Wal-Mart merchandise made.
"Hey, $2 a day is better than the $.50 a day the people who manufactured the actual Wal-Mart merchandise made."
Wow! What was I thinking! It's clear to me now Wal-Mart is a worker's paradise!
Sorry. Heavy sarcasm, no personal criticism intended. I actually came back to point out, on that very topic, that @2 a day or $2 an hours, either ways, it's an absolute scandal. So far below the minimum wage it's criminal, no matter how you account it on the per diem. Think of the number of "legal" workers who could have had those jobs at minimum wage, and thus improved this "Bush Boom" (sarcasm, again). One more way the empire assures its existence: by declaring those who are not citizens to be non-persons (Rome wasn't built in a day, but it was built on that handy distinction).
I doubt it. It's almost certainly a misquote. $2 per hour is believable, but $2 per day is not.
I agree. Everyone, please corroborate your numbers before believing such fanciful things.
how greedy is Walmart management? Check out their insider trading
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/it?s=wmt
Where's the outrage? I mean, besides on this comments board....
Robert Jeffers: for the record, I intended heavy sarcasm too. Of course that's now a problem. I'd bet you $2 that we'll see some wingnut making exactly these sarcastic arguments with a straight face sometime within the week.
Two dollars a day is what we will wind up with if the GOP gets it's way. The neocons in particular want to create an entire class of cheap labor for them to build their fortunes on. Call it wage slavery, call it peasantry, whatever it is, if we don't stand up for ourselves as working people, this will be the end result.
I had wondered how American executives would deal with jobs that cannot be outsourced such as cleaning and building maintenance. Of course, the Wal Mart execs should have known that the prices their contractors were charging were too low to be honest, the same way Wal Mart's shoppers know that its prices are good to be true.
but i thought these were 'good' immigrants. white european ones. you would think we would want to keep them.
This is just more class warfare from you liberals.
Stop trying to make the guys who earn $2 a day envy the decent people who made $3 a day. The $3-a-day people just work harder, that's all.
Quit trying to sew envy in our nation!
$2 a day is believable if, like many places who use illegal immigrants, these companies housed the workers and drove them to and from work. I've seen this in my home state -- the promise is work in the US, and once you get there they'll pay you whatever they want but meanwhile you're kept in a dorm and only allowed out to work and that $2 a day is sent home to your family (and so it is better than they'd make locally and so you put up with it).
dop,
Sounds like slavery to me.
How did the Waltons turn out to be so slimy? John Boy seemed so nice.
this'll get brushed under the table. a pity too, this is a scandal. one more reason why i'll never buy anything from walmart. (pilfer, on the other hand, i'll gladly do more of).
hey, quick, how many full-time illegal immigrant cleaners can you hire for the price of one CEO?
$2 dollars a day is believable. Hell, slavery still exists in the Jeb Bush's part of the country.
http://tinyurl.com/scan
Three citrus contractors were sentenced to prison terms Wednesday for enslaving undocumented farm workers, threatening them with violence and holding them hostage over alleged debts.
The three men were convicted in June of involuntary servitude, harboring undocumented workers, interfering with interstate commerce by extortion and using a firearm.
Brothers Ramiro and Juan Ramos employed more than 700 farm laborers, many of them undocumented immigrants from Mexico.
They each were sentenced to 12 years and three months in prison and must forfeit real estate and personal property worth $3 million. Their cousin, Jose Ramos, was sentenced to 10 years, three months in prison.
Defense attorney Joaquin Perez said the Ramoses were scapegoats for a larger industry-wide problem.
"The whole thing is a farce," he said. "They are victims in this case because growers and other members of the industry have their heads buried in the sand."
The FBI and Border Patrol investigated after the Coalition for Immokalee Workers, in southwest Florida's farming region, called attention to the abuses.
Staff member Julia Perkins said it was the fifth case that resulted in convictions on similar slavery charges in as many years. She accused the state agriculture industry of looking the other way as contractors employ illegal aliens who have few rights.
"We hope that it will send a message that it's time for these abuses to stop," Perkins said. "The agriculture industry is complicit in some way."
State agriculture department spokesman Terrence McElroy said the industry should not be blamed for the actions of a few.
"Most Florida growers treat farm workers fairly," he said. "It obviously is outrageous conduct, and to suggest that it is condoned is unfair."
damn lucky duckees
this'll get brushed under the table. a pity too, this is a scandal. one more reason why i'll never buy anything from walmart. (pilfer, on the other hand, i'll gladly do more of).
hey, quick, how many full-time illegal immigrant cleaners can you hire for the price of one CEO?
The Queen alien parasite Wal-Mart is always looking around for places it can suck dry. Once it finds it's victim, it sends out a scout Wal-Mart. This scout alien parasite Wal-Mart lands in a city and the Mom and Pop stores, which kept money and jobs in the community, are the first to die, because they can't compete. Then every dime in the community is vacuum sucked out by the scout alien parasite Wal-Mart, and sent back to the Queen. Soon the town is dry and left for dead, the scout Wal-mart closes, And the Queen alien parasite Wal-Mart is always 'on the look' for another meal. This ain't science fiction, it's happening right now.
damn doubleposts
Sounds like somebody got the invisible hand of the market jammed right up their ass.
As long as we are boycotting Walmart, which suits me fine, since I think they are responsible for the end of civilization, we need to boycot Taco Bell, too. Taco Bell is buying most of the tomatoes that are harvested in Florida by real slaves. Illegal immigrants are promised US jobs and are brought in, housed in substandard dorms and sent out to pick produce and never ever paid. The issue has been in court in Florida, and the judge refused to hold the corporate sponsors of this slavery responsible. There was an eye-opening article about it in the New Yorker last April.
These are both shocking stories (the enslavement of Florida workers, the fifth such case in five years; and the $2 a day paid to Wal-Mart workers). I'm sure the "liberal media" will have very little to say about either story.
Slave wages are the ultimate plan of Bush inc. for all of us. If the owners of everything can export jobs to slave labor markets and import the products of slave labor there is absolutely nothing holding up decent wages anywhere. Consider that when you hear some liberal economist gassing on about the necessity of free trade. That Wal Mart is in the vanguard of screwing workers here as well as in China isn't one bit surprising.
And Wal Mart pharmacies won't take VA insurance (Champ VA) at least the ones in my area won't. We might interest veterans in a boycott too.
We all know a lot of folks who shop at Wal-Mart. Let's start talking 'em out of it. Boycotts work.
OK, now we know why Walmart has low prices every day - they break the law by hiring illegal aliens and pay them starvation wages to boot! Time for a boycott!
I would love to put a dent in Walmart's corporate earnings. It won't be easy, however. In a lot of places, there is no other choice - people either go to Walmart or nowhere.
$2 a day and then get busted for it.
What a fucking country.
Look! J-LO and B-LO are eloping!
But really, Wal-Mart is rushing to address this issue--with an ad featuring a proud young Hispanic manager who worked his way up from the bottom. Which is pretty deep at Wal-Mart.
The problem with all of this is that these workers are going to get deported, Wal-Mart will get a slap on the wrist (if that) and everything will sail along just like it always has. The desperate immigrants will get punished, Wal-Mart won't feel a thing.
I've always wondered why labor laws are not enforced like all the other laws. If a guy is breaking into my house, I call the cops, they show up immediately and arrest him. If a company is refusing to pay me overtime, for example, I should be able to call the cops and have the manager arrested for theft, right?
(I must live in la-la land...)
The cleaning crews did not receive health insurance and were paid below the minimum wage, sometimes as little as $2 a day, a federal official said.
Yes, this excerpt does make it seem that some of those arrested in the sweep were making $2 a day--
But it's preceded by the following paragraph, and taken together, a different context emerges:
The arrests stem from a November 1998 investigation done with the Pennsylvania attorney general's office. That inquiry also targeted store-cleaning contractors and subcontractors used by Wal-Mart.
The cleaning crews did not receive health insurance and were paid below the minimum wage, sometimes as little as $2 a day, a federal official said.
What "federal official?" What contractors? What was the relation to Walmart? Sorry, but the USA article is so poorly written and sloppily sourced that I can't make out the facts here.
The Empire can't run without slave labour. Rome wasn't built in a day, and it wasn't built by its citizenry, that's for sure.
This isn't the first case of this sort of thing I've heard, either. When I was on Workfare in a local jurisdiction, even though the bureaucrats swore up and down that none of the workfare jobs were private-sector (they were supposedly all either non-profit or governmental), the local paper uncovered that Wal-Mart was using Workfare crews (at $54/mo on top of their basic allowance of $525 mandated by law) to buck crates off trucks in their loading bays. (I also edited the "placements" newsletter -- that was my Workfare job -- and saw lots of other "for-profit" jobs in there.) The abuses are endemic.
As much blame should be directed at the consumers who continue to shop at Wal-Mart. They don't give a fuck whether or not family owned businesses go under or people are paid crappy wages without benefits. They just want the cheapest prices.
I'm certainly not rich, but I NEVER shop at Wal-Mart. It's not like I'm missing out on much.
But, But Walmart has a gun department.
It's actually not slavery, but "indentured servitude."
Historically, I believe the practice was (ostensibly) banned long before slavery was.
I would like to point out that the investigation was from November of 1998. I am sure by now, the $2.00 wage is as high as $2.25 to adjust for inflation.
Did you notice the smiley face in their ad shoots prices with a bow and arrow? The poor guy can't afford a gun. Another victim.
At least in America, indentured servitude wasn't so much made illegal as it was discarded. White servants had a nasty habit of slipping away to another locale where no one knew they were indentured. The contracts were for specified time periods. Usually after seven years they were free.
Early attempts at making Native Americans slaves didn't work out well, either, because they'd also slip away to their villages or others where'd they be taken in.
So you needed to import people who looked significantly different enough from Europeans and Native Americans that their looks would proclaim their status. You could even pretend they weren't human so you get those pesky twinges of conscience. If a black person gained freedom, it was possible to grab them again -- their freedom papers could be proclaimed forgeries or even conveniently disappeared.
In our new system the elite will be such an in-group that if they don't recognize you they'll know you're one of the Great Unwashed and escort you back to your sweatshop.
Call it the Gilded Age redux. The Jay Gould uncut version.
Stop trying to make the guys who earn $2 a day envy the decent people who made $3 a day. The $3-a-day people just work harder, that's all.
Quit trying to sew envy in our nation!
Patrick Meighan | Email | 10.25.03 - 1:46 pm | #
Patrick,
I will bet you, 2 dollars if you like, that you personally don't hold a job where you get paid for your brains.
Because as the old joke goes.. if brains were dynamite.......
mdhatter,
Turn your sarcasm detector back on. I'm pretty sure Patrick wasn't serious.
If by chance he was, your post stands.
Though looking at Patrick's post again, I'm curious what sort of garment you end up with when you "sew" envy instead of "sowing" it. Perhaps new clothes that are all the rage?
Talk to the people you know that shop at Wal*Mart - tell them these stories. Put up something on your websites and blogs - I've posted a couple times on this scourge - put up a banner about boycotting Wal*Mart. Do anything you can to get the word out.
Maybe in doing this, someone with the time and the skills will decide to take up the cause in a more concerted way... Me, I should get back to work so that I'm not faced with the prospect of having to shop at Wal*Mart...
Phuckers.
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