necroth
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Take it from a former worker (that would be me, by the way), they won't go out-of-business anytime soon; but they are losing their foothold, slowly but surely. They did not give up on Layway because of "declining usage of the layaway department", as they have stated. I worked as a layaway runner (extra X-mas help to get packages) for 3 years. They gladly paid me overtime for 20 hours per week, as well as the 20 other people, per store, the same overtime. They had up to 20 trailers outside with layaways in them. My former store built an entire, new wing to the rear of the store just for regular season layaways two years ago. They would not have done so if it was on a decline.
No, they got rid of layaway for a much more, sinister reason. They want to push the Wal-Mart backed credit card. With Sears/K-Mart's store card and Premier backed (ie., useable everywhere) cards on the rise, and their own store-backed cards on a decline, they must force their customers to take the worse choise. See, layaway made 10$ or 10% on every layaway, but credit cards can make up to 24% on purchases. A hefty sum to such a greedy company; but where is the proof that they are really greedy?
Sam Walton refused to sell out and buy cheaper goods from companies that pushed all of their labour force overseas. Remember "Made in the USA"? The very motto that made Wal-Mart famous is now buried in a graveyard in Bentonville, Arkansas. With Sam's death, his children and the other shareholders began to slide downhill, buying from every chinese and taiwanese backed corporation in America. The prices went down, yes, but so did wages and benefits in the company, as well as jobs on this side of the ocean for those poor souls who had been employed by such giants as Green Giant, Del Monte, and Purina. Now, with Wal-Mart buying up to 75% of a companies product, Wal-Mart dictates price. If the president of Wal-Mart calls Del Monte and tells them they are giving Wal-Mart a 5 cent cut per can of food, then he has to do it. This causes a loss of profit for his company, so he cuts jobs. Then he sends those jobs to the cheaper labour market overseas. We all lose just so Wal-Mart can cut the cost of that can 2 cents. Thus making 3 more cents per can in profit.
Likewise, the illegal alien debachle of a few years back, wherein illegal alien cleaning crews were working overnights in Tenn., Alabama, Ark. and other southern states, was not unknown to those in positions of power within the company. (I worked for a Texas store right as it got rid of the aliens whom, it claimed, it had NO IDEA were illegal...strangely enough they fired all of them without "checking" to see if they were illegal, the very SAME day that the first reporter broke the story) The sexual harassment lawsuits were the same. Everyone knew about it in our store, and it only stopped after the first lawsuit. There is still two managers within the store I once worked for that continue to "go clubbing" with the young girls under their employ. Neither has been reprimanded.
Wal-Mart has grown corrupt, yet, too many people depend on it's prices because the gov't fails to raise minimum wage, but continues to raise taxes, continues to allow inflation to rise unchecked, and continues to allow companies to weasel out of taxes while we, the workers pay their balances. It's relly two-fold. You can't get rid of the low prices, without getting rid of the largest employer in the US. You can't get rid of the largest employer, without losing all of the people it purchases from. And you can't fix the people it purchases from, without fixing inflation. And the circle goes on and on.
So, no, Wal-Mart is not going-out-of-business; but alot of people are beginning to shop at Target, K-mart, Sears, HEB, and it's other competitors, even with higher prices, because they realize that Wal-Mart is a behemoth that needs to slowly be phased out, for the good of our economy. |
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