The Times has a fantastic editorial on Wal-Mart's plans to screw its workers over. A taste:
For instance, Steven Greenhouse and Michael Barbaro reported yesterday in The Times that employees at several Florida stores say that managers are barring older employees with back and leg problems from using stools they had sat on for years.
Other employees are complaining of sudden scheduling changes they say are skewed to chase out long-term employees, and wage caps that act as a disincentive for those longer-tenured workers. In a stunning deployment of corporate doublespeak, a memo to store managers describes the wage caps as a way to maintain “internally equitable pay levels.” It is true that if everyone is making the same everyday low wages, a perverse form of equality is established among them.
The company says it is not trying to encourage long-term employees to leave, and that the caps encourage them to move up if they want higher pay.
How charming. It's worth noting the fatuousness of the "move up" rationalization. There are, to say the least, fewer managers than clerks, and more stockboys than supervisors. Wal-Mart would like to imply that the reason workers are languishing in low-level positions is an unwillingness to accept promotion. Of course it is. While there's nothing wrong with having fewer supervisory roles than entry-level positions, there is something wrong with working to subtly eject the sick and the old from low-level jobs by denying them stools, and capping the pay of those jobs so dedicated employees who aren't promoted can't continue to advance their own living standards. And that doesn't even get into the company's widespread discrimination against women.
