Transcripts from an internal Web site at Wal-Mart were recently obtained by The New York Times, making the private — and sometimes telling — postings of the company’s chief executive, H. Lee Scott Jr., public for the first time. In one uncharacteristically testy exchange, a manager asked Scott why “the largest company on the planet cannot offer some type of medical retirement benefits.”
Scott responded: “Quite honestly, this environment isn’t for everyone. There are people who would say, ‘I’m sorry, but you should take the risk and take billions of dollars out of earnings and put this in retiree health benefits and let’s see what happens to the company.’ If you feel that way, then you as a manager should look for a company where you can do those kinds of things.”
Posted by Melissa Cooley
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47 Comments
Good for Wal-mart! He said the right thing. If you don’t like it here, you can leave.
Bravo!
Mr. Scott also said:
“General Motors is a benefit company that sells cars to fund those benefits.”
I thought it interesting that he was from Kansas.
and where would illegals work??
All I can say is your grandfather’s and great-grandfather’s union would have found ways to organize and protect Wal-Mart workers. Why can’t yours?
If Wal-Mart was unionized, the working poor and the middle class couldn’t afford to buy anything there. Plus Wal-Mart wouldn’t have near the amount of employees they have now, which is well over a million employees. You would be hearing about layoffs at Wal-Mart, instead of hearing more Wal-Marts being built. You would also see nepotisim, drunks, drug addicts, and fat slobs standing around with a Wal-Mart vest on not caring about anything.
Unions are a very bad thing. You leftist can keep on fighting to keep the communinist inspired labor movement, but it doesn’t work anymore.
GM and Ford are on the brink of bankruptsy. Non-union plants like Toyota, Nissan, Hyuandi, and Honda are cleaning up the market and expanding and providing employment.
At the risk of lighting a fire, I say “here here” jed. I last worked directly with unions in the early nineties, but even back then, effective and experienced organizers were hard to find. It is a very specific skill set, and not many of them left to go around. We need to be training and supporting new organizers in modern day situations. Hard to do though, when on so many fronts, we are just trying to protect the most basic of the last 100 years of gains.
Kfg, I did some organizing in the early nineties, and you’re right. The skill set requirements were pretty basic. You needed to be big, tough, and preferrably an ex-cop or ex-Marine. The AFL-CIO hasn’t changed with the times, and we’re paying the price now. There’s more to organizing than just paycheck issues.
Joe,”If Wal-Mart was unionized, the working poor and the middle class couldn’t afford to buy anything there.”As it is, many, if not most Wal-Mart employees can’t afford to shop in their own stores, even with the measly employee discount. If keeping prices and costs down is the only objective, the next baby step would be to reinstitute slavery.
XXX,If you were organizing in the ninties, why ain’t you doing that now? You are articulate, usually know what you are talking about, and seem to have the fire necessary to get the job done.
Understand, baby, MOTHER isn’t denigrating you, just asking a question. But the answer better be good, or MOTHER might have to pay a visit, and that would be too much fun.
Laughing X. I worked with CWA and IBEW and that wasnt the skill set we required, although I have some use for such a person out here now, but I digress.
The old ways dont work for anyone, but there have to be new ways that will work. Hard though since the regulatory environment reached a “tipping point” under Reagan.
Uh oh. That outta be raw meat for somebody. I’m taking cover!!
The people making Wal-mart goods have no benefits, why should the people selling them?
Joe,Unions are bad? Where do you get that from, Rush? Unions were formed because companies were taking advantage of their employees, not the other way around. I suggest you look up the history of unions on something other than Union Carbides web site.Joe, your pecking order is a bit topsy-turvy. If it wern’t for EMPLOYEES, there wouldn’t be any employers, there wouldn’t be any goods. It’s not the employer that creates the quality product, it’s the employee. I’m afraid your view of the corporate world is badly influenced by dollar signs. You need a major wedgy.
I think he already has one, mother, and that would explain his problem…
Farm Gal, XXX,Yes, our unions have gotten complacent. In the early days of the labor movement, organizers got beaten and killed by the goons and the ginks and the company finks, but they kept fighting and eventually won the battle. Where are those courageous organizers today? Sold out to a fat paycheck?Come on, unions, and remember your roots and ideals! Wal-Mart can be organized, just not one store at a time! Start a concerted effort to organize them all at once, and their union-busters will be stretched so thin they won’t be effective. You can win this one; the question is, do you want to enough?
Mom,I started a union campaign at a large company here in Kansas and fought through 4 campaigns in 3 years. Have you ever been involved in an organizing campaign in Kansas? Have you ever had to fight another union that tried everything to sabotoge your campaign, including slipping in bed with the company and buying off organizers? I testified in DC, faced thugs, and in the end, lost my job. Organizing can be a dangerous and dirty business.
I have and always will support workers right to organize in the workplace. I’m in management now, so I can’t legally organize. But anybody who works for me and with me knows where my sympathies lie.
Kfg, IBEW rocks! One of my favorite organizations, they were always solid allies. I worked for IUE.
And by the way, Mom, a visit would be much appreciated. Triple X has a deep and undying appreciation for strong intelligent women with guts and “sand”. I’d be proud to cover your and kfg’s 6 (back) any day.
Steve,”The people making Wal-mart goods have no benefits, why should the people selling them?”Actually, you’re quite right! Companies outsource because they can take advantage of poverty wages abroad. It’s time, past time, for the labor movement to become truly international! You think you can’t organize China? You’re wrong! It won’t be easy, but workers there want a fair shake as much as workers here. If they’re gotten together, that “worker’s paradise” could actually become one! Power really does flow upward; no government can last for long without the consent of the governed. So unions, get off your cans! What benefits Chinese workers will benefit you too!
And maybe even benefit Wal-Mart!
Bravo Jed.
X, your experience will also qualify you to be either the director of economic development or city manager of any community in kansas. Or a shooting range dummy at ft. riley. Sorry dude. Somebody always has to do the dirty work and lead the charge. Kudos.
PS–I said I worked WITH unions. I was a management consultant. Way down low on the snake scale….
I can laugh at myself too. I had a vision of myself at the bargaining table these days. From my posts here, you can tell that I have all the negotiating skills of cheney telling Leahy to go blank himself. ROFLMAO.
No doubt that unions vastly improved working conditions over the past 100 years. But have they shown much value in the past 20 or so?
Case in point..twice I worked during strikes at my former employer (magmnt, not scab). The salary agreement over the length of the contract never replaced the lost wages while on strike.
Granted, unions have other tools, but isn’t a strike a counterproductive weapon to use?
Since outsourcing has been the way of the global economy, it has lifted a billion people out of poverty. Globalization and capitalism has done more to help people out of poverty than government, communisim, unions or any other leftist agenda.
By outsourcing to China and India, we have raised people out of poverty. The protectionist view in America is not a good thing and only touted by facist union thugs.
We have an unemployement rate at 4.7% That is damn good. So a drunk, domestic abusing union worker is out of a job that used to pay him $45 an hour (way over what that person is worth) and so that person is considered a victim of the evil management, because he can longer afford his Hummer2.
Give me a break. I cannot believe how many leftist are on this blog, but that’s ok, at least they are in the super minority in America and growing much smaller each time. People are finally seeing the light and converting out of the Union leftist circle of failed socialism.
Even Bill Clinton was a champion of globalization and free trade. That is why Clinton was not a leftist. NAFTA, PTF for China, WTO for China, GATT removal, and so on. This has pospered the World and the United States.
I suggest you leftist take a history lesson. I’ll give you a website that will teach you the ACCURATE history of the economy and the failure of socalism and unionization. If you have an open mind you will see the light.
This is a Pulitzer Prize winning book. And the documentary based on the book is 6 hours long and done by PBS. So this no Right-Wing propaganda or biased in any way. It is the truth. Even Bill Clinton is in this Documentary talking about the importance of free trade and the market economy.
I know I will get nothing but talk back posts and insults from you leftist, but if one person took the initative to learn and have an open mind about the true history of our economic system, you will see why I have my certain opinionated perspective view.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/commandingheights/
If all barriers were removed, I’m afraid the entire societies of developed countries would look more like 3rd world societies, not the other way around.
Joe W.,
See my post to your contention that King was not a “leftist.”
You can either admit you were wrong, or you can prove yourself wholly without honor or honesty.
BTW, what firm do you represent? I want to make sure that I never do business with a company that would hire you . . .
Things were so much better in this country when 8 year old kids worked 14 hour days.
Damn unions!
Joe,I will take a stab at your nearsighted vision of the corporate world: As I stated earlier, unions were started by individuals who were being literally worked to death by the companies they worked for. The companies would promise them pensions after twenty or thirty years of back-breaking work. When retirement time was near, the company would fire them on some trumped up charges. That was a common practice in the early days.
Along came unions, working to get workers together in spite of being shot, beaten, spit on by morons who had no idea of what freedom was all about, and called communists by their own government, because the government and business were in bed with each other.
The Depression wasn’t started by union workers, it was started by greedy business’s. Those same businesses put millions on destitute row, fighting each other for scraps of food. Think that can’t happen again? You ain’t been listening to the news.
Now, you say that in the past twenty or thirty years, unions have outlived their usefullness.
I hardly think so, Joe. While third world countries could use a lift, ask yourself why they are third world countries. Ask yourself why there are millions of people in these countries living in poverty. Ask yourself if it is the United States job to send business over to these same countries, and take the food out of the mouths of the people who have worked and supported this country all their lives. Ask yourself if it is any of your business what a union worker makes.Ask yourself if you think it is okay to swell the ranks of people on welfare because they lost their jobs overseas. Ask yourself all of those questions and tell me that business is still not sticking it to the union worker.
Your turn, Joe.
Raptor,Something like 2% of all union negotiations result in a strike. Do you really think union brothers and sisters are sitting around just waiting to hit the bricks? They know what kind of economic hardship they face when they go out on strike, but sometimes, you have to fight for what’s right. When it’s only your voice, management will just laugh. When you’re backed up by hundreds or thousands of your brothers and sisters, they listen.
Organizing in Kansas can be heart-breaking. People here will sell their soul to make their own deal with management, often to the downfall of their co-workers. Why not work for the betterment of everybody instead of the benefit of a few brown-nosers and suck-ups?
Ian Santiago6
Sorry MOM, but you off by about 150 points! lol
White, Christian, American and Proud!!!
Okay, -156.
Dang, the cowardly, pc pukes censored my post on Professor Lynn’s research sowing the link between IQ and the wealth of nations. I guess that the truth is offensive to the propagandists here.http://rlynn.co.uk/pages/article_intelligence/t3.asp
White,Christian,American and Proud!!
Hmmm, interesting discussion here.
Thank you to those who do not view our world through rose colored glasses and realize that Unions fill an important place in the workings of our economy and the lives of their members.
As far as WalMart…I think that issue speaks for itself. When a person looks at their record, they look bad enough without anyone bashing them. Joe Williams speaking for them is another black mark on their workers rights record, though I doubt that either his diatribes nor my comments will raise many eyebrows in the grand scheme of life.
It speaks volumes that states have seemingly singled out Walmart as being so abusive of the safety net set up for citizens that they will pass laws REQUIRING an employer to take care of their workers. Specifically, Maryland recently passed a law and Kansas is considering one that would require companies that employee more than a certain number of people to provide health insurance in an affordable way and quit pushing their employees off on medicaid. I know Walmart did not set up the system but they are among the biggest abusers of our system, taking all the tax breaks possible and then pushing their employees (oh, I’m sorry..”associates”, since “employee” would confirm that it was really a job) into a system that was established for those who were so deep in poverty that the state had to take care of them.
As for Union representation for employees, I really don’t see what the big issue is with Walmart. I mean, seriously, labor costs is a very small percentage of Walmart’s overall costs. When looking at the costs of real estate, buildings, trucks, cost of goods, etc, labor costs in the Walmart empire must be a miniscule percentage. That is the big difference between the auto companies and retail. With a manufacturing company labor is a much larger percentage of overall expense. Yet Walmart is still rabidly biased against unions. There have been successful attempts to Unionize Walmart, at least to a degree. The meat department of a Walmart in Texas organized. They never got a contract because Walmart started bringing in prepackaged meat and eliminated the jobs in the entire department. A Walmart in Quebec organized and they closed the entire store. Other attempts in Canada have resulted in Walmart running to the government and tying up the process in court. But don’t get all this wrong! Walmart loves Unions, provided the Union is in their control. See http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A23725-2004Nov30.html
You see, many people see this issue as “conservative” or “liberal”. It is not. It is about “capitalism”, the unrelenting pursuit of putting more and more money in fewer and fewer people’s pockets. In our real world this is supposed to be, and most of the time is, balanced by “humanitarianism”, the knowledge that we all live together and should watch out for one another, for we might find ourselves in the other person’s place tomorrow. That idea doesn’t seem to carry much weight in today’s multinational company. I seriously doubt that Mr. Scott has a single thought that he will be working as an “associate” again, nor is he worried that his paycheck will be less this year than the 17 million he took home last year. He is far too quick to say he has to look out for the interest of the “stockholders”, of which he has a large share, and far to shy to admit that he must look out for the interest of the “stakeholders” in Walmart, which include many that deserve more consideration than they are getting now.
Insourcing of filthy third worlders is even more insidious than the outsourcing of good paying manufacturing job.
Ruling class hatred of blue collar Whites endemic
Mere weeks after the horrific deaths of miners in West Virginia, a coal company executive is urging the replacement of White miners with Mestizos. Sidney Coal President Charlie Bearse thinks that White miners — whose ancestors fought long and hard for unionization, fair wages and minimal safety standards while producing billions for wealthy and ruthless mine owners — wants to replicate inside the United States the success of many American firms that have outsourced and relocated to Third World nations, where regulations and wages are far below what is required in the US.
In a letter to Kentucky regulators Bearse stated: “It is common knowledge that the work ethic of the Eastern Kentucky worker has declined from where it once was,” citing “poor attitudes” and “drug use,” according to AP. He urged a change in rules that, for reasons of safety, now makes English the only accepted language in mines. While slandering Whites as lazy dope fiends Bearse hopes to undercut the hard-earned wages and benefits of the White miners.
The tough, though embattled White miners are unlikely to take the arrogance of Bearse and other capitalist executives lying down. According to the AP article, “Tim Miller, a United Mine Workers union organizer…called the supposed miner shortage “the biggest farce out there right now.”…Mr. Miller said there were 1,400 laid-off union miners in Western Kentucky alone who could go to work today. He echoed the sentiments of many who believe the industry was simply hoping to exploit Hispanics and drive down wages. ‘They want people who don’t have the ability to protect themselves,’ Mr. Miller said. ‘If they can flood the market with Hispanic workers, if they can get away with paying a guy $8 an hour, the next guy will be willing to work for $7.’”
The greedy desire for cheap labor and expanded markets is the leading driver of illegal Third World immigration into the United States. Supposed economic emergencies are also used to “sell” Third World immigration to Whites, who have never been allowed to vote on the question. Presently “fears” about pensions, competitiveness and lowered birth rates have been trotted out to “justify” the invasion, even though in Europe there is a huge unemployment problem and in the US Third World populations help drive down the wage scale, making pension payments smaller.Source: V-Staffhttp://www.nationalvanguard.org/story.php?id=8001
White,Christian,American and Proud!!
Ian,Some points here. Your post was pretty unclear and took up a lot of space. A likely reason it was deleted.
I visted the link -the guy, Lynn, reporting his research is clearly a racist, sexist, and probably other ists that I couldn’t fathom because getting thru his web site was kind of sickening.
He reported a male/female IQ difference of 4 points. The issues here – he doesn’t describe his sample, so it is not possible to know who we’re talking about. A second more fundamental issue is that for many tests 4 IQ points could be within the standard error of measurement – meaning that the reported difference would actually be no difference. Even if he argued that these are real differneces, 4 IQ pts fail miserably as an impressive effect size. The guy needs to study psychometrics some more.
One final thing, he compares IQs between countries – he clearly had to use different tests – how did he go about making these comparable? Answer, he could not in any percise way. This Lynn guy is a charlatan and anybody, except you maybe, would be able to intuit that obvious fact.
Ian, I bet I would not be the only one here who would encourage you to take up a different past time other than blogging.
Here, here, DD. Well put. I, for one, ignore posts put up by obvious racists, or neo-cons, as they are usually best read with a tinfoil hat on, and that somply messes up my hair.
I am neither a racist nor a neo-con.
V.L.R.B!!
What I’d like to know is, where the hell were you people when I was trying to organize at a call center here in the late 90s???
I am neither a racist nor a neo-con.
This coming from Ian Santiago? tsk tsk tsk Ian, keep living in DENIAL.
“White,Christian,SELF-HATING CUBAN American and Proud”
This is a more accurate description of you. :)
MrC, we were probably off fighting our own wars on the labor front. Or licking our wounds. I’d assume by your post that you were unsuccessful. My sympathies. Question:How do you get Kansans to think of anybody but themselves in a campaign? I used to believe that people were basically good, but after 3 years of campaign wars….
And they ask “What’s the matter with Kansas”
Walmarts legacy will be that of helping to destroy the North American manufacturing sector.Walmart has provided a ready made pipeline for importing low possible cost sweatshop goods from China.China owes much to the Walmart executives.
So what does China owe to Walmart executives? The last accurate information I could get is that 10 to 12% of the trade deficit with China is directly attributable to Walmart. In 2004 that was $18 billion, with a B.
I noticed that someone also mentioned Sidney Coal company Charlie Bearse’s comments. It really does seem that it is all about money for the big guys. If they can’t outsource the job to exploit workers in other places they will import cheap labor to the coal mines.
Melissa why don’t you just run Wal-Mart out of town if they are so bad?
People do not need lower prices and you can find a company that you can dictate what they will and will not do so that prices are sky high and unaffordable for those you say you suppport.
In recent news today, a deer was discovered inside a Kansas Wal-Mart; no clues yet if the deer walked into that Wal-Mart or if the Wal-Mart was simply built around it. :)
ROTFLMAO!!!
The “right to work laws” (even before bush the right managed to twist dark to equal light) were the death of unions in most of America.
I’ve lived it. I worked aircraft in Wicita. Last strike we had was in 1984…..before I worked there. (It won’t take much looking to find out where I worked) No willigness to strike got us worse and worse contracts and less and less treatment as anything more than “human resources”. Creative layoffs pitted the less seniority against those with longer service. That and the ever present threat of outsourcing, and the union where I worked was reduced to impotence. A union being only as strong as its members, mine had become one of snivelling back stabbing toadies to management. In this “right to work” evnironment, a union advocate like me became a target for spears from management, and daggers from co workers afaid for their jobs.
So I quit under pain of being fired.
That brings us back to Wal Mart.
I’d sooner rob a Wal mart than work there. Now that is a lesson that folks like Joe Williams ougtta listen to and make a choice. Either make America a place where folks can earn a fair living while being treated humanely (ya know like unions made it) or choose to relegate Americans third world status and living conditions.
The latter is not a place I’d teach my son to have any respect or loyalty to, let alone would I encourage him to fight for it in the future wars such policy will no doubt incur.
Guess ya better build more prisons Joe. Cause I prefer a government prison to a corporate one.
JR,Sounds like your union was much like the Trade Workers Union (TWA) in New York. They got no idea what the hell they’re doing.
JR, that was a rockin’ post!!!
“Guess ya better build more prisons Joe. Cause I prefer a government prison to a corporate one.”
Ditto man. Same with bushco wiping their hineys with the bill of rights. “Give me liberty or give me death!”