Tuesday, January 12, 2010

My two cents worth on Wal-Mart

I conducted a little experiment while I was at my nearby wal-mart recently. I wanted to see if I could take a random sample of clothing labels and find just one that was made in America.
I took a random sample of 4 items in the women's department. One item was from Bangladesh (jeans), another from Indonesia (a shirt in the plus size section), and two from China (big surprise there, NOT).
I need help understanding somethings regarding the way they do business.
First of all I want to know why it is with all the billions of dollars in profit you make, which you are perfectly entitled to make in what is left of our capitalist system, you can't suck up spending just a little more money to put some of our American manufacturers to work? I think you make enough extra profit that you could do this and still hold your costs to a competitive level. It angers me that it is more profitable to put someone else in a foreign country to work than it is here. I don't blame Wal-Mart for that by the way. They are just trying to make a profit by keeping their costs down. I blame the unions who drive up costs by their frequently unreasonable demands, the government for over taxing and over regulating the businesses that are left-to the point where it is cheaper to do business overseas just to survive, and a large portion of the American public for not holding our elected officials accountable for the things they do which very often have a negative impact on business in this country- both small and large.
Secondly, why are so many of your workers in certain areas possessing of such poor English skills? I would think it would be kind of obvious that if you are going to be in the public sector you would need to posses good English skills, but maybe not when it comes to Wal-mart (and a few others for that matter). I find it HUGELY annoying to go into a store, ask a question of a worker and a get this blank stare clearly indicating that they either don't understand me or can't speak sufficient English to respond.
The last thing I want to know is why you have these life insurance policies out on a lot of your employees? Set up in such a way that if they die you get all the money and the family gets nothing. How do you sleep at night doing something like that? I know they aren't the only business to do this, but regardless this is completely immoral and Wal-Mart should set an example by banning the practice.
One more side note what is up with the hideous jackets you make your workers wear? Those things are an abomination and need some serious rethinking.

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