I just went into walmart for the first time in months... I feel physically ill

[Tiamat]

Would you guys like to hear from a former Wal-Mart employee...........Moi!

[Oncle Boris]

Originally posted by Kucinich
The company should also be thankful for the workers, of course. My point is that WE shouldn't complain about this. If the workers want to complain, they can - by striking or passing laws requiring a minimum wage.

Try that in China, Indonesia, India, and see what happens. Hopefully your family can afford the bullet invoice.

[Tiamat]

Give me a freeking break! I worked at walmart until two weeks ago and you have no where to turn for anything in that company. You compain it's your job!!!!!!

I had a guy I went through orentation with named Sam. Sam was from Oregon and had gotten into a spot of trouble and had some tickets which in turn got his drivers license suspended. He informed them that his license was suspended on his application, informed them again in orentation, informed them everyday he was at work in the Tire and Lube Express that he had no drivers license. One day his supervisor ordered him to drive a car into the parking lot. Sam again informed him that he had no DL and that he didn't want to be held responsible if something did happen while pulling into the lot. He was trying to save walmart a lawsuit as well as himself. When he told his supervisor that he didn't feel comfortable driving the cars. We were told from day one that there was an open door policy there and that we could always utilize it.

When Sam utilized it he utilized himself right out of a job. He went to the store director and told him what he was trying to do.......be honest and the store director fired him. He told him he was of course eligible for re-hire but booted him right out of his job because he was being honest and trying to keep a lawsuit from happening.

On my note.....I worked in the deli. Walmart starts everyone off at $7.20 per hour. I was doing hard physical labor lifiting 30 pound slicers, moping the floor, doing dishes for over an hour and a half every night and I mean the slicers, scrubbing burned on grease in the pans and we were not allowed to use brillo pads or anything that would assist us in cleaning them. We weren't allowed to use rubber gloves and expected to keep our hands in steaming hot water along with sanitizer that made our hands crack and bleed. So who ever says they don't care is correct.

The managers don't give a flying crap about their employees or what they are going through. I also saw the store manager in the office with two other assistant managers talking to an employee....really talking down to her in front of the other managers and made her cry. When she left I rounded the corner to see him put his hand in the air and pull it back into his chest and say 'yeah baby! that's how you make them feel like crap and keep them in line" then he looked up and saw me. I just walked away.

I quit within two days after that.

[Oncle Boris]

Tiamat

[loinburger]

Originally posted by General Ludd
Obviously their society has changed so that farming for sustinance, or whatebver their previous way of life was, is no longer viable.

Did you cite a source for this claim somewhere in here, or are you just making stuff up? (I've been gone for awhile, and you seem to have changed your username, so I can't remember if you're one of the competent debaters, or if you're one of the people who go around making bald assertions and then challenging other people to refute them.)

As for Walmart treating employees like crap, I believe it. I had two retail jobs while I was in high school, one for a mom-and-pop shop and one for a store in a medium-sized hardware store chain (the chain was local to Illinois and Wisconsin, with maybe a few stores in Indiana). They were both crap jobs. My sister-in-law is currently working retail for a mom-and-pop shop out in California, and from everything she's said it's a crap job. Retail jobs are crap jobs, period. That being said, I preferred working at the chain than at the mom-and-pop store. My manager (also the owner of the store) at the mom-and-pop store made it clear to me that I could be fired on a whim. However, if they arbitrarily fired me at the chain then there were still several rungs of the ladder where I could file complaints, and in fact that was the only thing that kept me in that job for so long (the department manager hated my guts, but he was already on thin ice with the store manager, so he couldn't afford my causing trouble if he fired me for no reason).

The biggest difference I've found between various retail jobs, from my own experience and from talking to others, is that the major chains tend to be much more careful about not throwing some of the crap at their employees that the smaller chains will. The reason for this is that the major chains have deep pockets, so they're targets for lawsuits, and it's usually cheaper for them to settle out of court than to fight out the lawsuit. Some of the crap that my sister-in-law has had to deal with at her mom-and-pop retail job would be ground for a lawsuit if she were dealing with deep pockets, but as things stand it's her word against theirs, and the mom-and-pop store doesn't stand to lose any business over her suing them for treating their employees like ****. That's about the only difference, actually -- retail jobs are still crap jobs, either way you slice it.

[Oncle Boris]

Originally posted by Kucinich
If the country wants to pass anti-trust legislation, it can.

What if America withdraws military funding if the country does, thus allowing the regime to be overthrown by an enemy guerilla? Oh, that must be a huge revelation about the foreign policy of your country, isn't it?

[Kuciwalker]

[QUOTE] Originally posted by General Ludd
What?

I didn't say anything about price or quality, and I don't really see what it could have to do with anythign I said, either.

What i was talking about where factories that took away jobs, and destroyed the self-sustained way of life which was previously there, and made thus made themselves the only possible choice for people who didn't want to starve.[/q]

How did they "take away jobs"? By offering better employment, maybe?

How did they "destroy the self-sustained way of life"? By offering better products at lower prices, maybe?

Is there anything possibly wrong with that?

And, for your information, nothing mass-produced in a factory will ever be of the same quality as something hand-made by a profesional craftsman. You think the clothes coming out of the first factories made where of the same quality or better than what generations of weavers can produce?

Do you think the clothes coming out of factories now are worse than hand-made ones?

Moreover, what if I care about cost a bit more than quality? Or what if I want a balance between the two? I don't want to pay a LOT more for a product that isn't worth a LOT more.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Theben
I believe the country in question has AT legislation. However, the islands are territories of the U.S., in the example I had in mind.

There's also something about dictatorships in other lands where they seem to listen to corporate dollars more than popular demands.

So it's the fault of the political system, not the corporations

Quote:

Quite obviously there was an economy before the sweatshop arrived. The sweatshop offered more, didn't it?

Not always. Oftentimes they enter an agricultural area with an pre- or proto-capitalist exchange system.

Which is an economy, just a very primitive one

[Oncle Boris]

Originally posted by Kucinich
So it's the fault of the political system, not the corporations

You are joking, right?

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Kucinich
What's the point? The company doesn't have to offer them the job at all.

It's not like the companies have to employ them at all.

Ye gawk. Somebody could argue like this and still think they are smart. ::shakes head::

Why do you think TNCs (transnational corporations) open factories in third world countries? Is that because they are charitable and community-minded? Wake up! They do it because they can squeeze out more profit at the expenses of the workers in these sweatshops.

[Kuciwalker]

So?

EDIT: wait a second, how is it "at the expense" of those workers? If it is to their disadvantage, why the hell do they accept the job?!

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui

Quote:

One could make the argument that someone working 16 hours a day and making a shitload of money is saving up for retirement, or something. But someone who's making just enough money to feed his family is obviously doing it because that's what he HAS to do.

But if he is making MORE money than others in the society by working in sweatshops, obviously has enough money to feed his family and the extra can be saved up for retirement. So that argument is invalid.

Why do you say "obviously?" Where do these extras coming from? I can't see any extras for sweatshop workers in counties such as Thailand, the Philippines, and the PRC. For starters, the conditions of these factories are very bad and a lot of these workers will become disabled or even killed. Early retirement so to speak Secondly, a lot of these people actually prefer farming if their livelihood wasn't displaced by cheap foreign agri imports -- they are cheap because of subsidies.

Anti-globalisation groups have some good reasons.

[Kuciwalker]

Do you really think removing American agricultural subsidies would make the local agriculture competitive?

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Kucinich
So?

What kind of an argument is this?

Originally posted by Kucinich
EDIT: wait a second, how is it "at the expense" of those workers? If it is to their disadvantage, why the hell do they accept the job?!

Their work should net a higher wage, but due to local conditions their wages are artificially depressed.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Kucinich
Do you really think removing American agricultural subsidies would make the local agriculture competitive?

Not just US, but also European.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
Their work should net a higher wage, but due to local conditions their wages are artificially depressed.

If they think so, then they don't have to work for the corporation. If they do it isn't a failure of capitalism, it's a failure to implement capitalism (it isn't really capitalism if you're allowed to coerce people).

[Oncle Boris]

Originally posted by Kucinich


If they think so, then they don't have to work for the corporation. If they do it isn't a failure of capitalism, it's a failure to implement capitalism (it isn't really capitalism if you're allowed to coerce people).

Capitalism doesn't have anything to do with coercion. The obvious shortcomings in implementing capitalism, as you point it out, show how necessary it is to think of a different system.

[Kuciwalker]

It isn't capitalism if you are allowed to steal my property. Duh.

[Oncle Boris]

Originally posted by Kucinich
It isn't capitalism if you are allowed to steal my property. Duh.

Well, it is the consequence of unbalanced capitalism, one where corporations can use international organizations to their advantage by imposing free trade and implementing their rule on third world countries.

[Kuciwalker]

No, it's a consequence of a dictatorial country.

[Oncle Boris]

Originally posted by Kucinich
No, it's a consequence of a dictatorial country.

And dictatorial countries don't spring out of nowhere, silly moron. They need some help.

[Kuciwalker]

Not really. Liberal democracies are generally the things that need help - dictatorships happen pretty naturally.

[Oncle Boris]

Originally posted by Kucinich
Not really. Liberal democracies are generally the things that need help - dictatorships happen pretty naturally.

Most people want to live in democracies. Dictators are funded so that they protect the property rights of American corporations, or else true democracies would never do so.

[Tiamat]

It's a two faced company. They tout how they only by American and all their goods come from only American products.....bullshite!! Turn over a dish and see if it doesn't say made in china! Yeah it does.....cause I'm looking at the bottom of a bowl that I bought there.....yup right there on the bottom....made in china.

[Dis]

*sigh*

such walmart bashing.

Yes many products are made overseas, and this means that americans are not working producing these goods.

What people fail to realize is how cheap goods are that are made overseas vs. in the U.S. So even though some americans may be making less money working other jobs than manufacturing, they can still afford to buy more products, because products are significantly cheaper.

That said, I prefer Target . Only because Walmart is too crowded with too many kids running around. Far too much poor white trash and trash of other ethnicities as well. Yes I sound snobbish. But I'm not. Because I'm poor white trash as well. But that doesn't mean I want to associate with poor white trash. I don't even want to associate with myself

[Imran Siddiqui]

Why do you say "obviously?" Where do these extras coming from? I can't see any extras for sweatshop workers in counties such as Thailand, the Philippines, and the PRC.

Of course there are. The sweatshops are offering more money than the employees had before. That's why there gets to be so much demand for these jobs.

Secondly, a lot of these people actually prefer farming if their livelihood wasn't displaced by cheap foreign agri imports

Foreign agri imports don't have an effect on sustenance farming.

Anti-globalisation groups have some good reasons.

Not that I can see. If sweatshops is their only reason, then it is a failing argument. Because the US, England, as well as South Korea all had sweatshops and were a natural progression of all these country's economies.

Most people want to live in democracies. Dictators are funded so that they protect the property rights of American corporations, or else true democracies would never do so.

Man, are you deluded. Kucinich/skywalker is correct. Dictatorship is the natural political system and has been for centuries. Democracy has recently taken storm and requires much more work and effort than dictatorship, which can spring up very easily without much. Your argument is utterly silly when you see how many dictatorships were in existance before capitalism.

[General Ludd]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui

Quote:

Why do you say "obviously?" Where do these extras coming from? I can't see any extras for sweatshop workers in counties such as Thailand, the Philippines, and the PRC.

Of course there are. The sweatshops are offering more money than the employees had before. That's why there gets to be so much demand for these jobs.

But your own articles said that the alternative is sifting through a garbage dump. More then nothing is not neccisarily much (or even enough). How many times do I have to say this?

[PeteH]

Chances are, for most of the history of the area, there were no sweatshops, and people lived just fine. They may have been 'primative' but they also probably didnt have a garbage dump to sift through at all, never mind as an alternative to slave labor conditions.

It amazes me when people can just pick some arbitrary date and decide that after *this* point, its just how things are... "its either a sweatshop or garbage, but hey at least you have a choice" How about the choice to be de-colonized and their land repaired, that would be a real choice

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Oncle Boris
Most people want to live in democracies. Dictators are funded so that they protect the property rights of American corporations, or else true democracies would never do so.

*sigh*

Those countries are basically ancient civilizations that have been exposed to advanced civilazations. Name one ancient civilization that was truly a democracy.

Athens? Nope, not really - it was just an oligarchy of the aristocracy.

The Roman Republic? Nope, it was also just an oligarchy that they called a democracy to make it sound nice.

These countries tended to revert to dictatorship once those advanced civilizations left. They were going to go in the direction, regardless of outside influence.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by PeteH
Chances are, for most of the history of the area, there were no sweatshops, and people lived just fine. They may have been 'primative' but they also probably didnt have a garbage dump to sift through at all, never mind as an alternative to slave labor conditions.

It amazes me when people can just pick some arbitrary date and decide that after *this* point, its just how things are... "its either a sweatshop or garbage, but hey at least you have a choice" How about the choice to be de-colonized and their land repaired, that would be a real choice

Their land WASN'T destroyed... they are completely capable of going back to their old lifestyle.

However, we consider their old lifestyle poverty, and they consider their old lifestyle as worse than what they have now.