Hopefully, folks aren't getting tired of hearing me talk Wal-Mart, as odds are the chatter won't let up anytime soon. How could it, when each new day brings news this worrisome? Word from the retailer now is that Wal-Mart is set on converting its workforce to a heavily part-time, salary capped, labor pool.
Workers will never receive annual raises if their pay is at or above the cap, unless they move to a higher-paying job category. Wal-Mart says the caps will encourage workers to seek higher-paying jobs with more responsibility.[...]
No matter how hard people work, “we won't get anything else out of it,” said Mr. Gonzalez, who earns $11.18 an hour, or about $23,000 a year, after six years with Wal-Mart. “The message is, if I don't like it, there is the door. They are trying to hit people who have the most experience so they can leave.”
In the confidential memo sent to Wal-Mart's board last year, M. Susan Chambers, who was recently promoted to be Wal-Mart's executive vice president in charge of human resources, questioned whether it was cost-efficient to employ longtime workers. “Given the impact of tenure on wages and benefits,” she wrote, “the cost of an associate with 7 years of tenure is almost 55 percent more than the cost of an associate with 1 year of tenure, yet there is no difference in his or her productivity.”
Meanwhile, investment analysts and store managers tell the New York Times that Wal-Mart wants to double the proportion of its workforce that's part-time, moving it from 20 percent to 40 percent. Part-time workers, of course, make lower wages, are offered stingier benefits, and must work at the company's pleasure -- they've neither stability nor agency in their hours. Welcome to Wal-Mart's policy of "open availability," which demands 24-hour availability for work and puts those who decline or can't make it on the bottom of the list for future hours. All of which is just great for parents -- they'll have neither enough time or money to properly care for their children.
So Wal-Mart is not only demanding that work takes total primacy in the lives of their employees, but if the employees have the gall to accept the deal and do their best, they're capping salaries in order to ensure the position doesn't mature into decent wages and worthwhile benefits. These are the labor practices of the largest employer in the world, and these are the labor costs every competitor -- from supermarkets to clothing centers to hardware stores -- will have to compete against. Which they will do by aping them -- there's no other way to survive.
Folks forget sometimes that unions aren't just there to argue for better benefits and salaries, but better working conditions, more stability in hours, more respect for seniority, easier interfacing between family and work. They exist, in other words, to ensure that employers uphold their end of the "work hard and get ahead" bargain. Except, unions don't really exist anymore, and they certainly don't at Wal-Mart. And this is the result.
