Reason #1,873,319 To Love WalMart

bwalley

Is it the employers responsibility to provide and pay for health insurance for all of their employee's?

bwalley

The employees will only get a few dollars if they are lucky, it is the class action attorneys that get the bulk of the money, John Edwards got rich off of suing Doctors for BS claims, but it made him a multi millionaire.

Mike Finley

I think the point is #1 Walmart has been known as a bad employer for a very long time. Only recently have they actively changed their policies, due from the bad press they have gotten over being sued so many times for illegal employment practices.

And #2 the basic point is what difference does it make if the issue arrises from an employee being robbed of a penny or a million bucks? The point is Walmart benefitted from illegal labor practices with those practices adding up to hundreds of millions of dollars over the years. While the damages to a single employee might be small the benefits to the company were huge when multiplied every day for 10 years by a million employees.

But of course it's never about right or wrong in America anymore it's about me, me, me. Leave Walmart alone, those winey employees are the problem.

bwalley

Paid breaks are one thing, non paid breaks are another.

I do not bother my guys on their lunch break, but if they are on my dime and I need them to do something they do it.

Am I going to get sued now?

The employees are not the ones who will get the majority of the money here, it will be the lawyers.

Willie T

I never had scheduled breaks for my crews. Never. If the break truck arrived early for coffee and donuts, that's when people laid down their tools. If it was late, we all just kept working till it got there. And if it took a bit longer than usual for everyone to get waited on, we just hung around till most everyone was ready to get back to work. The guys bought their sandwiches for lunch then, in case the next paragraph applied.

Lunch came when it came. If the task we were involved in was going to be ongoing for a half hour or even an hour longer, and couldn't wait, we finished it. If there was no rush, the lunch could often stretch into 45 minutes or even an hour in really hot times. (Heat is the big problem here in FL)

If it was hot, we might have two or even three short afternoon breaks.

If anything came up that required some quick manpower during a break, I didn't even have to ask. The guys were quick to volunteer.

I "horse traded" all the time. Work a little over, get off early another day, usually the next day. No one "kept score", demanding their full minutes, one way or the other.

None of this sad whimpering about "inturrupted" breaks.

Oh, yeah, thermoses were always allowed by the men's sides. And they poured themselves coffee or cokes or whatever as they desired. Same with a candy bar, or something like that. Nibble as you go.

Sorry, Gents, I just do not view this legal action as even remotely justified.

__________________
"True eloquence consists in saying all that is necessary, and only that which is."
François Duc de La Rochefoucauld
Bill Everett - St. Petersburg, FL

bwalley

I agree, and am pretty much the same way, I am sure my guys get "over" more on me.

If you treat your guys fairly as you and I do, you don't have many complaints, but there will always be someone who gets upset when we want them to actually work 7 hours out of an 8 hour day.

Mike Finley

Have either of you tried to use 'comp time' instead of paying over time?

Have you forced your employees to work off the clock?

Have you denied lunch breaks at all for the day?

Have you denied advancement to one of your workers because she was a woman and would get pregnant someday?

Have you hired subs for over 10 years fully knowing they were illegals and admitting to it?

Probably not, so to have some give and take with you and your employees would not be a big deal. You've got a good relationship with them and treat them well. You have established a history of not abusing the relationship.

So if 1 guy in 10 years took you to the labor board because you denied him his 10 minute break in the morning I would be the first guy on your side to tell the guy to man up.

But if you had been sued for all of the above and you had 10 guys on your crew take you to the labor board over an issue, I'd be more inclinded to believe you're about to get what you deserve.

But that's just me.

bwalley

Someone said the average walmart employee is only working 34 hours a week, so I don't see how they are getting O.T.

As far as comp time, I don't use it and some of my guys who take off early were still paid a full 40 hours and I told them they owe me the time, but I haven't had them do it yet.

I guess if I get them to do it though, now I have to make sure I don't use them for more than 2 hours for 3 hours they owe me otherwsie I could be in violation of the O.T. laws.

tccoggs

What about supply and demand???? If working for Wal-Mart is so awful, how do they find 50,000 employees to staff their stores??

If the law is being broken, then they need to abide by it, but most of the wal-mart bashing is about things that are 100% legit, yet people feel they deserve better. If you want better you have to earn better. Do my job for less money and better that I can and you will win. It was a sense of entitlement that got the UAW into trouble and caused alot of the financial issues for the big 3. Not to say it was the cause of their collapse, but it was definetly a significant part of it.

We have come to expect that certain things are just given to us in this world, and that we have a right to them and that is just the wrong idea to teach to anyone. Work hard and earn what you have.

Mike Finley

You don't necessarily have to do what you do better than you for less money to win.

To win, you do what you do better for more money.

The former is the Walmart way, not the way a service business like home improvements has to work. (unless of course you get your work off of craigslist)

If you relate home improvements to buying a car. The mentality a consumer should understand is it's not like shopping for a new car where the product is identical from Chevy dealer to Chevy dealer. It is more like shopping for a custom hot rod builder where each car made is unique.

john5mt

Oh my

__________________
1st Gen tradesman
My summer job in college became my profession

Mike Finley

I think that would be Sam Walton's face book picture if he was still alive.

Willie T

There is a point to that remark?

I've just accepted your ravings about WalMart as some sort of personal vendetta due to a family member or someone being screwed by WalMart a few years ago. And, that's fine.

But to skim the bottom of the barrel by trying to ridicule Walton who died 17 years ago as an old man who probably hadn't, for a long time, realistically had much control of the day-to-day operation of any of the companies he first began on the year I was born (and I'm 64), is disappointingly poor form, even for you. (WalMart, itself actually began in '62.)

__________________
"True eloquence consists in saying all that is necessary, and only that which is."
François Duc de La Rochefoucauld
Bill Everett - St. Petersburg, FL

RobertCDF

I have never seen a walmart employee FORCED AT GUNPOINT to work there. If you don't like your job, then find another one.

If my employees started whining about me saying "when break is over I want you to move that material over there" and complain that their break was "interrupted" they would soon not have that problem...

__________________
Robert Shaw
Colorado Springs Custom Decks
Colorado Custom Decks
Custom Composite Decks

Cdat

People who shop at walmart should be tried for treason. Just my opinion.

Willie T

I'm still looking for the ALL American store.

I discovered some years ago, that even the great "American" motorcycle, Harley Davidson, is made from about 50% imported parts.

__________________
"True eloquence consists in saying all that is necessary, and only that which is."
François Duc de La Rochefoucauld
Bill Everett - St. Petersburg, FL

bwalley

Why is that?

Cdat

When was the last time you did work for an employee of walmart?

Willie T

Maybe everyone else got that. But I'm not a mind reader. I'm old and slow. Can you elaborate?

__________________
"True eloquence consists in saying all that is necessary, and only that which is."
François Duc de La Rochefoucauld
Bill Everett - St. Petersburg, FL

Mike Finley

It means that all the praise for a company like Walmart needs to be put into perspective which might be very revealing. What exactly are they providing our nation and at what expense?

Yes, it's is just miraculous we now have toilet paper that you can buy for $.25 less, and you have them providing millions of jobs for Americans.

On the other hand they have undoubtably destroyed many businesses, downtowns, small town and markets, many good paying jobs, they have been the root cause of a tremendous amount of outsourcing to foreign countries, been a tremendous influence on downward price presures on companies to provide their products at ever decreasing costs which translates in more and more well paying manufacturing jobs going away.

This of course is a whole nother discussion so I won't even get into all that because we all know that I just have... how was it described? A personal vendetta or something against the company. And has nothing to do with the facts.

But it's much easier to boil it all down to one common thing which puts it all into perspective as far as what Walmart has really acomplished --

When was the last time one of those employees of Walmart hired you?

I think it's pretty simple to understand.


That is the very thing that always amazes me when you have business owners in the home improvement industry defending that sh*t hole. A company who has single handedly been resposible for so much of what is wrong with our economy, being defended by small business owners. Makes zero sense to me.