Left Side of the Aisle #83 - Part 3

Walmart and Black Friday

This could be filed under the category unintentional humor, where something strikes you as absurd or even hilarious - when you know it wasn't intended to be.

By tradition and in fact for the past several years, the day after Thanksgiving is the busiest shopping day of the year. It's known as Black Friday, which seemed an odd name to me. It supposedly originated in Philadelphia around 1960; the police there gave it the name because of the headaches for them that the increased traffic produced.

Anyway, this Black Friday may prove to be - or have proven to be, depending on when you see this - a black one for Walmart. Walmart, the nation's largest retail chain as well as the nation's largest private employer, with well over a million employees nationwide, is having some problems. It has seen increasing challenges from labor organizations such as OUR Walmart, which are responding to the concerns and frustrations of underpaid, overworked, exploited workers. Actions, including rallies and even walkouts are expected to occur on Friday at 1000 of its stores.

Walmart pays notoriously low wages with little chance for improvement. Workers often start at little more than the minimum wage and can get yearly performance-based increases of a maximum of 60 cents an hour. Someone starting as an $8/hour cart pusher could be making no more than $10.60 an hour after six years on the job.

And even those figures are misleading: Walmart keeps most of its hourly workers to part-time so it can skimp on benefits. On top of all that, there is a wage cap of under $20 an hour, a maximum you can earn no matter how long you work for the company or how many good evaluations you get.

And it's not like the company can't afford it: Walmart’s profits rose 9 percent in the third quarter of 2012; it was at that point raking in profits - not sales, profits - at a rate of over $14 billion a year.

Meanwhile, it's been revealed that the company may have used illegal bribery to expand its operations in four different countries: Mexico, Brazil, China, and India.

So where's the unintentional humor in all this? Walmart has filed an unfair labor practice complaint against the United Food and Concession Workers, or the UFCW, alleging it is responsible for the labor actions which have, to quote the complaint, "created an uncomfortable environment and undue stress on Walmart's customers, including families with children." Meanwhile, nowhere does it dispute a single assertion that workers have made.

So Walmart, the company that bribes officials in other countries while allowing its US workers such lousy pay and benefits that a good number are on Food Stamps while the company makes $14 billion a year, Walmart is claiming that it is the victim. It doesn't get funnier than that.

Sources:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/11/16/us-walmart-union-idUSBRE8AF1DB20121116
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Friday_%28shopping%29
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/16/walmarts-internal-compensation-plan_n_2145086.html?utm_hp_ref=mostpopular
http://www.dailyfinance.com/2012/11/16/walmart-mexican-bribery-probe-china-brazil-india/
http://static.reuters.com/resources/media/editorial/20121116/Wal-Mart-letter-to-UFCW.pdf