Wal-Mart’s image problem wasn’t helped much by the outing of an internal memo with suggestions for cutting health-care costs. The New York Times reported some of what the memo said: To discourage unhealthy job applicants, the memo suggests that Wal-Mart arrange for “all jobs to include some physical activity (e.g., all cashiers do some cart-gathering).”
It also said that “the cost of an associate with seven years of tenure is almost 55 percent more than the cost of an associate with one year of tenure, yet there is no difference in his or her productivity. Moreover, because we pay an associate more in salary and benefits as his or her tenure increases, we are pricing that associate out of the labor market, increasing the likelihood that he or she will stay with Wal-Mart.”
The memo doesn’t exactly back up the “we care about our employees” message the company is trying so hard to project.
Posted by Melissa Cooley
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15 Comments
(knee starting to knock) I have six years! I would have to take issue with the productivity. With each passing year, if the management team is what it should be. An assocate’s knowledge and skill should be improving. If an assocate is not more productive with seven years then with just one year. It would be those above that are lacking. That is the way Wal-mart operates.
I was fortunate to have been under two very sharp support team managers when I started. But there are two type of people that work at Wal-mart. One that come and does their job and then some. And those that come to pick up their paycheck. The customers seem to know which one is which. Often passing by those that are just there to get to the ones who will help them.
For the most part, it is a body count in the stores. Quantity over quality, in that light health is not a major concern. So this memo is odd, along with the point about cost. If I was Lee, I would be calling the person who thought up this memo and asking just how cheap I could find someone to replace them? There would have to be some undergrad who can think up things like this. But for half the salary,”Thanks for your suggestion!”.
What go for Wal-mart is what go everywhere. “Our people make the difference”, the CEO can set in their office all day passing papers from one side of the desk to the other. But it is the people that build the product, the ones who move the product, those that sale the product. That make the money for the company not the CEO.
You pay a person a living wage, you expect a hard days work and you will get it. Or there will be someone else waiting to fill the job. You pay low wages and expect a hard days work. You will get what you have paid for, it is that simple.
It is a vaild point about the pay become incentive to stay. This is the highest paying job I have ever had (note to any freshmen in high school. It is not too late for you to get your head out of your AZZ and build your future. My admission that working at Wal-mart is the highest paying job I have ever had. Is an admission that I was a lame student. Not dumb, I was stupid to have thrown away a chance for a better life. Your job right now is to build your future. What you do today, can determine what you will be doing in twenty years. That is a fact!) as such I would be hard pressed to go else where.
But in that, I am an asset to the company. The times I have worked for mininum wage, my loyality lasted just till the next paycheck.Because there were other mininum wage jobs out there I could have.Having a bad day was a good reason to walk off.
Having a bad day now is not a reason to leave…Its a reason to go smoke a cigarette and keep working!
This memo is not the result of some intense research, it is the result of some college grad who has never worked in a store.
As for needing to be more phyical at work. I have lost weight working at Wal-mart, how many can say that about where they work?
You bring up some great points RD, the only incentive that should encourage loyalty to a company today is the wage an employee earns. Today’s corporations put profit ahead of everything else, and certainly above the well being of it’s employees. They’ll suck the lifeblood out of you so the CEO’s can earn 6 and 7 figure incomes, then when you’re older and have given your best to the company for years, they’ll throw you away like yesterday’s garbage.Corporate greed is ruining our country and not enough of us are paying attention. Our kids will never have job security if they try to earn their living through corporate America.
I heard something interesting about why the companies may be acting the way they do. They are basically out of control (top level, Board of Directors), because they have no accountability. Basically if you are on top, it is a free for all to rape the company’s treasuries and drive it to the ground. Why should anybody care?That is exactly what is happening. And this one guy I was listening to, basically said that the reason why companies are out of control, because nobody is really controlling them.
He said that 50 years ago, more than 80% of corporations shares was held by individuals. Individuals that held stock activily were involved in the company, voting in Board Members, and they were long term holders of those stock.
But with the advent of Mutual Funds, Speculative Trading, and other creative investing, people no longer hold stocks. He said that less than 30% of individuals own shares in any one company. Most are being held by mutual funds, pension funds, and banks. Since these intitutions don’t really care who is in control of the company as long as they perform in a way to make them profitable in the short term as to show good returns to their mutual funds, pension funds, and etc during a single year they could care less about the company, who is running it, and where it is going. If it performs bad, then they dump the stock and buy some shares in another company. They don’t hold stocks for the long term. They literally speculative trade.
But since people (us) are lazy and want other people to control our investments, we like it when our pension funds and our mutual funds grow, since that is the only thing we look at, we could care less what company shares that were traded in a day, so long as our funds brings good returns.
In a way. We are responsible for creating this unaccountable corporate client. Because we don’t take a stake in a company and vote the damn board along with the CEO out.
He proposed that we make serious changes to our system, or we are going to see this happen with corporations again and again and again. Largest companies in the world are falling to pieces because of this. and the rest of them are becoming increasily greedy and impersonal.
Good point, Joe. When is the American worker going to wake up and work to change things? Have we gotten this complacent? Or maybe the average worker is overwhelmed just trying to make ends meet because of the influence that corporate greed has had on our cost of living.
Damoon,I’ll tell you what I told several employers; money buys my time and best efforts in your behalf, but the only thing that buys loyalty is loyalty in return.
In my opinion, R.D. Liebst did an excellent job of speaking for Wal-Mart employees. I only know a few but they seem to be thankful for their jobs.
Regarding increased pay for tenure even though production might not always increase, there are a number of reasons: inflation, pay for loyalty, increasing knowledge of the job, etc. Would it be fair for new employees to join the company at the same pay as veteran employees. Not all jobs are subject to much increased production.
For example, the Wal-Mart greeter, the cash register operator, the watch sales persons — production depends on the managers to bring in more business.
Actually most companies and government agencies increase employee pay on some basis for the above mentioned reasons. The exceptions would be if the company’s business is decreasing or operating at a loss.
In the case of Melissa Cooley of the Eagle’s editorial staff, I suspect she would prefer another system of determining pay: “From each according to his/her ability. To each according to his/her need.” Of course, that system was tried in the past without much success!
In the case of Mr. R.D. Liebst, I complimented your memo today to an assistant manager at the Wal-Mart at Pawnee/Broadway when I stopped by to buy some weatherproofing caulk.
My wife and I have decided immediately to boycott Walmart.
GregSo if I leak a memo about Wendys I can count on your business at Spangles?
Joe C, Spangles? I would have guessed you worked at McDonalds.
I do not shop at Wal mart. I never will.
I am sorry for those that work a Wal Mart. But unless and until they take a stand things will not improve for them.
I will not work at Wal mart. I refuse to become part of the problem. And there is a problem.
People should be free to work where they want to, not because they have to. Now there was a time when R D Liebst might have opened a little store. Wal mart killed that and we all helped them do it.
People look at themselves so wrongly in America. That’s because for whatever reason most of them have no unions. They are on their own and their employers use that against them. So, the worker is de-valued, seen as a thing not a person.
Folks? WAKE UP! These corps are making mega bucks on your broken back. They owe us all better or we oughta bust ‘em up.
Now my attitude may be a bit extreme, but “extremism in defense of liberty”…..well you know the rest.
Hi Wal mart. I’m an American. I do not share your visions of fiscal global empire. I simply want to get by and feed my kid. Now what that means WAL MART is that I won’t be coming to work for you. Now I WILL be advocating for my elected government to deal with you with the Anti trust laws. I’m also not liking the source of your goods (China) I’ll be looking to get some tarriffs imposed on you. Now failing THAT, register number 9 is looking to me not like a place of employment, but a target of opportunity……..and I gotta be far from alone.
Walmart has been sucking the life blood from small cities for years, but no one seems to care. Hardware stores,clothing stores, general care maintenance and such have been forced to close, and these are the people and businesses that caused the cities to grow and prosper in the first place.
I miss all the “mom amd pop” businesses of the past, some of my best memories are working in my dad’s grocery store as a kid. Corporations killed all that, I remember how sad it was when we lost the store, just couldn’t compete with Dillions, etc.The thing I miss the most though, is the wonderful and personal customer service that the family owned businesses offered.
Damoon,True, that customer service was a great thing, but obviously not enough people thought it was good enough to pay for! In our economic system, bottom line trumps everything else!
It’s only that way cause we make it that way Jed. It can get worse or it can get better.
Once again, American big business has proven that the only thing that matters to them is the bottom line. And that is PROFIT, PROFIT, and more PROFIT…… I am just amazed that anyone is shocked when the truth comes out. I guess that there are still alot of folks out there who want to believe.