Wal-Mart said on Tuesday that it would pay at least $352 million, and possibly far more, to settle lawsuits across the country claiming that it forced employees to work off the clock. Several lawyers described it as the largest settlement ever for lawsuits over wage violations... Union critics of Wal-Mart, the world’s largest retailer, saw the settlement as proof of their view that the company achieves its low prices in part by cheating workers. But the company rejected that characterization, saying it had already corrected wage practices that it has long attributed to local managers acting without authority. NYTimes
Barbara Ehrenreich documented this lameass tactic by Wal Mart in her first hand experience of " off the clock" tricks when she wrote Nickel and Dimed : On Not Getting by in America nearly 10 years ago. From her first hand perspective as a Wal Mart worker it was clearly policy for management to grab employees before punching in or after punching out and squeeze as much free labor out of them as could be had. Imagine the free toil that could be wrung out of a newly hired teen ager, a single mother or an immigrant who really needed the work but didn't know any better or knew better but feared for their paycheck.
Not that their door buster fatalities aren't enough to earn Wal Mart a WTF but something possibly more lowbrow and underhanded than that was brought to my attention after I lent my copy of Nickle and Dimed to my nephew Jordan who is currently employed as an apprentice electrician in the IBEW of Gainesville FL. He enlightened my on the practice known in insurance circles as "dead peasant" or "dead janitor" policies where companies like Wal Mart take out secret life insurance policies on their workers and collect when the workers dies. Not a cent of the money goes to the employees family, -- Wal Mart keeps it all. Is it a huge surprise that our recently bailed out AIG, the guys who just can't stop the party, was one of the companies writing these policies ? This Christmas Week's WTF of the Week goes down the chimney of Wal Mart Inc. And to all a good night.
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4 comments:
All this crap is being pulled by Sam Walton's kids who are all at least millionaires if not billionaires several times over. When is enough enough? How many millions or billions does it take to satisfy these people? Why not skip the little cheering sessions before you open your doors and just pay your employees a living wage with some benefits? The Walton family could certainly live with one fewer vacation house each or try to get by with one fewer Lear jet. When you meet your maker, it's all just stuff and we all need to answer for what we've done for each other.
oh no capitalism run amok is held too sacrosanct, it's a sin to even imagine asking these people to give up one of their Goddamn yachts or planes. if you do you must be a communist. this is what they have succeeded in convincing the huddled masses of. and then the huddled masses receive a nice clean blue vest and are told to get to work.
deregulation at its finest. i'm angry at walmart and american government today. angrier than usual.
the bottom line mentality needs to go the way of W. and soon. Mrs. comes home from her night shift at the ER center the other night telling me they worked short and so did day shift. Day shift's strategy for this is to close rooms and leave people in the front to wait which means they are all there for night shift. WHy is everyone working short I ask. Why don't they take care of you ? Because the hospital itself is working even shorter than we are. Oh. so that makes it ok says I. No but that's the excuse they use she says. So the bottom line is the bottom line. This is a huge CATHOLIC health care system who doesn't give a shit about its nurses or its patients which is obvious by its treatment of both. And when patients are forced to wait forever because the ER is understaffed who takes the verbal abuse ? Nurses. So once again we have the corporate a-holes turning a profit and encouraging those at the bottom of the corporate food chain to attack each other. If this is the American way and as of right now it is I wish I was in Dublin with 3 novels under my belt playing the bitter ex-pat to the coffee houses while my kids learn French. Happy new year !!!
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