Walmart

[LuvMyPiggers]

Originally Posted by Guinea_Gal

i guess that i'd better stop shopping at walmart then, huh!

If you like walmart, you have every right to keep shopping there. It's all just personal Opinion.

[Sparky]

well, facts too

[LuvMyPiggers]

Originally Posted by Sparky

well, facts too

and Guinea_gal do consider other facts too. I know the facts but I choose to shop there.

Moomoo

[LiciaMommycott]

Originally Posted by Ketus15

I was raised in the Mid-West, and I was shocked and appalled at the Grocer's Union Strike. (I believe someone else on this post mentioned this also). Our three major stores were on strike. And very few people cared that they were crossing a picket line. No wonder unions are failing. How terrible would it feel for your neighbor to look you in your eye, and cross your picket line?

I crossed the picket line with glee. There was a time when unions did a good thing for the common worker. Today they are nothing but legalized organized crime that lie to their members about almost every issue. I know union leaders that called employees to vote to strike and then stood over each person's shoulder and watched their vote. Those who planned to vote against the strike were physically threatened, cars set on fire, bricks thrown through their windows, etc.

FYI in addition to hating unions I also hate Walmart, which is a horrible store.

[LiciaMommycott]

Originally Posted by Piglet

I think you're right rachy, our equivalent is probably asda

FYI - ASDA is owned by Walmart.

[Ketus15]

Originally Posted by LiciaMommycott

I crossed the picket line with glee. There was a time when unions did a good thing for the common worker.

I agree. They're different now than when my grandfather and great grandfather mined coal. But I can't control the actions of the union foremans. Only my own actions. That is why I don't cross picket lines. I lived too many long months on strike pay...

[LindaHartwig]

Is it ok for me not to shop at walmart because they gave away my daughters car and then to 4 months to pay us for our loss. ?

They just gave her keys to a guy who walked up to the service guy and said it was his car. It was a brand new Honda Civic Ex.

They have two people who work full time settling this one issue they don't even give you blue book for the car.

Not a single attorney would take a case against Walmart so we had to take what they would give us.

I shop local and small when ever possible. It keeps my $$ in my local community. I hate shopping in those oversized stores anyway I always am tempted to buy things I really don't need anyway. You don't really save a heck of a lot when you end up buying more then what you came in for anyway. I pay a little more and buy a little less and I still seem to have too much stuff anyway.

[John4216]

Walmart is a HUGE reason why we are having problems in this country. They are the largest employer in the country and those cheap prices COST taxpayers a lot of money. Walmart is slick, they have gone from being a place to get a good deal to a place a lot of people now have to shop at to get it cheaper. Here are some links that might enlighten some people :

http://edworkforce.house.gov/democra...MARTREPORT.pdf
Substandard pay and health care benefits for Wal-Mart workers allow the firm to charge very low prices that force nearby stores to slash their workers' pay and benefits in order to compete, said Miller, ranking Democrat on the House Education and Workforce Committee.


Miller released a 22-page report by the Democratic staff of his House committee detailing how nonunionized Wal-Mart, the largest employer in both the United States and Mexico, allegedly imposes financial burdens on local governments. A certain percentage of its workers must turn to subsidized medical care, free school lunches, housing subsidies and other taxpayer- supported welfare services, Miller said. A typical Wal-Mart store with 200 employees would cost taxpayers $420,750 per year, according to the report. Its employees were paid an average of $8.23 an hour in 2001, compared with $10.35 for a supermarket worker, the report said.

http://www.goodjobsfirst.org/pdf/wmtstudy.pdf

http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/77/walmart.html
Wal-Mart is not just the world's largest retailer. It's the world's largest company--bigger than ExxonMobil, General Motors, and General Electric. The scale can be hard to absorb. Wal-Mart sold $244.5 billion worth of goods last year. It sells in three months what
number-two retailer Home Depot sells in a year. And in its own category of general merchandise and groceries, Wal-Mart no longer has any real rivals. It does more business than Target, Sears, Kmart, J.C. Penney, Safeway, and Kroger combined. "Clearly," says Edward Fox, head of Southern Methodist University's J.C. Penney Center for Retailing Excellence, "Wal-Mart is more powerful than any retailer has ever been." It is, in fact, so big and so furtively powerful as to have become an entirely different order of corporate being.

Wal-Mart wields its power for just one purpose: to bring the lowest possible prices to its customers. At Wal-Mart, that goal is never reached. The retailer has a clear policy for suppliers: On basic products that don't change, the price Wal-Mart will pay, and will charge shoppers, must drop year after year. But what almost no one outside the world of Wal-Mart and its 21,000 suppliers knows is the high cost of those low prices. Wal-Mart has the power to squeeze profit-killing concessions from vendors. To survive in the face of its pricing demands, makers of everything from bras to bicycles to blue jeans have had to lay off employees and close U.S. plants in favor of outsourcing products from overseas.

"People ask, 'How can it be bad for things to come into the U.S. cheaply? How can it be bad to have a bargain at Wal-Mart?' Sure, it's held inflation down, and it's great to have bargains," says Dobbins. "But you can't buy anything if you're not employed. We are shopping ourselves out of jobs."

But you won't hear evenhanded stories like that from Wal-Mart, or from its current suppliers. Despite being a publicly traded company, Wal-Mart is intensely private. It declined to talk in detail about its relationships with its suppliers for this story. More strikingly, dozens of companies contacted declined to talk about even the basics of their business with Wal-Mart.

Here, for example, is an executive at Dial: "We are one of Wal-Mart's biggest suppliers, and they are our biggest customer by far. We have a great relationship. That's all I can say. Are we done now?" Goaded a bit, the executive responds with an almost hysterical edge: "Are you meshuga? Why in the world would we talk about Wal-Mart? Ask me about anything else, we'll talk. But not Wal-Mart."

No one wants to end up in what is known among Wal-Mart vendors as the "penalty box"--punished, or even excluded from the store shelves, for saying something that makes Wal-Mart unhappy. (The penalty box is normally reserved for vendors who don't meet performance benchmarks, not for those who talk to the press.)

"You won't hear anything negative from most people," says Paul Kelly, founder of Silvermine Consulting Group, a company that helps businesses work more effectively with retailers. "It would be committing suicide. If Wal-Mart takes something the wrong way, it's like Saddam Hussein. You just don't want to piss them off."


And beyond neighborhood issues, Wal-Mart has been drawing fire for other practices, including the treatment of its workers and its contribution to the outflow of U.S. jobs to Asia.

``A fair number of people are saying, `I'm not as sure I want to shop there anymore,''' says Patricia Edwards, who helps manage $5.5 billion at Wentworth, Hauser & Violich in Seattle, some of it in Wal-Mart. ``Then they look at their bank statements and say, `I'm not sure I can afford not to.'''

Which aspect of Wal-Mart concerns people most? Edwards laughs at the choices.

Here's one. To protect against employee theft, many Wal-Mart store managers until recently kept the overnight workers locked in, unable to get emergency help quickly for injuries or sickness, the New York Times reported last month.

Working Off the Clock

There have been stories and lawsuits alleging Wal-Mart managers force employees to work off the clock to avoid overtime pay. This sort of thing, along with low wages and benefits, encourages union organizing.

But, as Bloomberg Markets reports in its March issue, there is evidence Wal-Mart has spies to hunt for organizers and retaliate against union-friendly workers. Wal-Mart denies it.

Meanwhile, female Wal-Mart employees are suing in San Francisco, claiming some 1.6 million current and former employees were paid less and denied promotions because of their gender. And last October, federal authorities arrested 245 undocumented aliens working in 61 Wal-Mart stores.

Then there is the matter of squeezing suppliers and contributing to the national trade deficit and the loss of U.S. jobs. As the world's No. 1 retailer bent on constantly lowering prices, Wal-Mart muscles its suppliers to drop their costs, pushing manufacturing jobs out of this country and into low-wage ones. The magazine Fast Company had an extensive story on this in December.



All of this and more is why Walmart is a place to avoid. Remember the old saying "you get what you pay for" ?? Well guess what, keep going to walmart and eventually (and for many people and companies this is already true) you will have no choice but to have to go there because you can't afford to go anywhere else.

[John4216]

Oh and I personally am not a fan of many unions but to classify all of them today as bad is totally wrong. I know one union that is different (generally speaking) and trying to change things and go back to the way it was and is supposed to be, to the point of it may cause the afl-cio to break up. And to be blunt, this country is headed back to late 1800's, early 1900's labor/class standings. And all of you that have the "weekend" off, thank your unions for that, 40 hour work week, overtime pay, child labor laws and more are all because of organized labor. Its amazing how truly naive people can be about the past and think it cant happen again today. It is happening today and becoming more and more like it every day.

[bijouish]

my cavy mowed my lawn for me... she had the tiniest
feet in relation to her body...
God bless her and all departed cavies

re the Walmart discussion:
WALMART.. SELLING WHALE MEAT IN JAPAN, BURYING TORTOISES
ALIVE IN FLORIDA, SUFFOCATING HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF FISH,
DESTROYING WETLANDS, MONGERING MEAT ADS ON TV


http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/991643794
Walmart Selling Whale Meat In Japan
http://groups.msn.com/welcometoaworldwedontsee
Walmart buried tortoises alive in Florida
(see turtle section)
http://www.petlibrary.com/goldfish/walmart.htm
Fish Abuse by Walmart
Walmart destruction of wetlands http://www.greenpeace.org
Walmart mongering meat ads http://www.worldanimalnet.org
Walmart unionbuster http://www.ufcw.org
Walmart: glass ceiling for women (search for the best
sites.. since NOW has been a promoter of the war in Iraq)
Walmart: hiring illegal aliens
Walmart: Sam Walton left 85 billion to 5 heirs.. stolen from America's poor
Walmart: employee slavery.. workers locked in warehouses
midnight shift
PLS SIGN PETITION
http://www.petitiononline.com/khaki/petition.html

[WritingLife]

Have you seen this film?

WalMart: The High Cost of Low Price

You've got to see that film.

I second the vote for the book "Nickled and Dimed." WalMart isn't the only place the author worked, and she reveals one of the bitter ironies of poverty in America: it's expensive to be poor.

[i love piggies]

I haven't read all the posts, but I will have my say.
I live in Australia and the majority of fish owners get thier fish from pet stores. But I do know that occasionally some people advertise fish for sale because they can no longer look after them, or they purchased pregnant fish.
I know heaps of people who have fish and dont have a clue of their sex, one day there are lots of little fish, so they sell them.
Maybe fish could be purchased through private advertisement?

[pinkbunny]

I personally don't like Mal-Mart, really like Target tought, it's much better, cleaner and the merchandise is of better quality. A lot of my toddler clothes are from Target. It is true that if people don't want fish anymore they just flush them down the toilet. That's why there's no fish in a shelter. I'm a fish lover, but I don't have any at this time because I don't have time to take care of it(it's much more work cleaning a fish tank then a guinea pig cage) and I really want big salt water tank and that's expensive. If I were to get a fish tank I would probably buy fish from private parties just because I had bad experience with store fish, a lot of times they are sick and die out. I'm sure that you can find fish for sale on ebay and such.