Walmart plumbing?

[Bill Gill]

That could be a good a chance as any.

Bill

[Rachael Madcow]

Stop being so damn selfish, Robert. If each and every one of us working people would give just a little bit more, the wealthy one-per-centers could live really really well.

[Bill Gill]

It has occurred to me that if your conjecture is right then the reason they are planning for a 6 month shut down is that they really were kind of caught by surprise and don't have any idea what they are going to do about it. That would mean they have to start planning for the redo from scratch. That could mean a lot longer shut down than you would expect just for 'plumbing problems'.

Bill

[John G]

ed period of time. Not only will they lose business during the closing, bu t they will also lose market share which is even more valuable. No one wil l wait months before they go shopping again. They will go to other stores or perhaps look for their missed bargains online. Those former customers m ay find other places to shop that they like better.

d take my dad their once in a while. One day we went and it was closed. N o signs indicating what happened. For weeks it looked as though it was bei ng closed down. Still no signs. I discussed it with some of the locals an d my father's neighbors. We all thought it was closing down as another fra nchise in the next town closed also. I went by there a few weeks ago at lu nch time and it was open with a new look. However the parking lot was empt y. My father got used to going to another chain down the road and forgot a bout this one. I suspect it will take them a long time to get their custom ers back. They should have communicated to their community what was going on and kept them updated to keep them engaged.

hey are publicly saying. If there was long term leakage, there could be mo ld. They may be trying to avoid lawsuits and insurance claims by minimizin g the issue. By closing the stores, the public and employees will not be e xposed to any hazards.

I agree. Usually when a business has to do a shutdown for repairs, everyth ing is lined up ahead of time to minimize the downtime. Apparently in this case no plans have been made yet.

Incidentally my local WalMart completed a major remodeling and expansion se veral months ago. It never shut down.

[gfretwell]

They are just punishing the employees who said they would strike if they could not get $15 an hour. This is just firing a shot across the bow of people who threaten a union. Closing a few stores is chump change to Walmart compared to the amount of money a $5 raise across the board would cost them.

[Bill Gill]

That is one idea of why they are doing it. There are others. Do you have any evidence about it? I don't have any evidence for any of various explanations. They are all speculation.

Bill

[gfretwell]

The labor thing makes more sense than any other explanation I have heard. The "6 months to fix the plumbing" thing doesn't even pass the laugh test.

They are building a Walmart up the road from me and it will go from cows walking around in a barbed wire fence to cows walking around in stretch pants in less than 6 months.

[bubba]

That's hilarious!

[Bill Gill]

Well, then why are they closing stores where there haven't been any labor demonstrations?

Bill

[gfretwell]

Maybe they are just sending a message.

The point is, there are no "plumbing" problems that would take 6 months to fix.

[bob haller]

customers can end this instantly. organize a 1 day protest. have protesters at all stores caling for a one day sales boycott.

the company will realize what they are doing is self destructive.

here at store 490 sales are down significantly, protesters at lot entrances. and general unhappiness with the company and its president.

it will cause management churn and the stores after a quick repairs will reopen

[gfretwell]

In Walmart's target demographic, people shop there because it is cheaper and they won't be cheaper if their labor costs rise significantly. I doubt people who make a similar wage will be protesting what walmart pays if it means their prices will go up.

I bet you will see, most people protesting walmart, would never think of shopping there anyway.

[Ashton Crusher]

The same thing happened with the supermarket on my corner. They closed for months to remodel. So everyone got used to going elsewhere. A lot of people never came back. I don't shop there nearly as much either because I wound up going a little farther away and found there was a better selection and the same and lower prices. Plus they did a horrible job of remodeling and the store has a very unfriendly look now even though technically you could say it's "better".

[bob haller]

wall mart normally remodels stores while they are open. they just wall off a area and do the remodeling

[gfretwell]

"An extra million" added to the pay pool would raise everyone's salary less than 50 cents ... a year.

You can say all you want about the nazi Henry Ford but the fact remains, if they added $2 an hour to everyone in Walmart's payroll it would cost the company $8.8 BILLION dollars. Cutting the executive salaries to zero would just be a tiny drop in a very large bucket. The only way they could do that is to raise their operating income by

33% and that means much higher prices.

[Vic Smith]

Walmart's last year's profits was $130B. Giving 1M employees a 2 buck raise would cost $4B. That's 3% of profits. Probably less, and maybe profits will actually increase due to better employee morale and efficiency. But why do that? The extra $4000 would make many employees ineligible for food stamps. Why should Walmart pay out good money when you're willing to pay for food stamps? Well, they already raised wages to $1.75 above federal minimum wage. Affected about .5M workers. By next April the Walmart min hourly wage will be $10 from what I see. That's $2.75 above fed min wage. And they did it without raising prices as far as I know. But they'll still have you paying for food stamps. Pick your poison.

[gfretwell]

That would certainly be a surprise to the stock holders. Where did you get that number/

[gfretwell]

If they raised the overall salaries by another $3 they could still get food stamps, what's your point? All raising the bottom tier of wages does is raise what the government calls the poverty level and about the same number of people will get government assistance. Walmart is just the whipping boy for that fact that we have a significant number of people in the work force without the skills to get a decent job. Paying them more for menial tasks is not helping anything. It is only inflationary, pushing up the cost of living, particularly at the low end and putting you right back where you started. Bob whizzed out Henry Ford and the white washed story that it was his altruism that made him raise salaries. The fact is he did it to reduce turnover and retain skilled workers. These minimum wage jobs are not paying for skilled workers.

[Kurt Ullman]

In article , "Robert Green" wrote:

I haven't looked at WM specifically, but in most cases something like 60-70% of the money comes from non-cash sources specifically stock options. That doesn't translate to actual money for pay roll. Indeed most of the compensation comes from the shareholders (through dilution of shares, etc.) as opposed to out of the cash register. Three years ago I was talking about McD's and looked at their proxy and if you took away EVERY penny of actual cash compensation from those listed in the report, you could give every employee in the organization a 50 cent bonus. So keep it money to actual money.

His actual money was only around $4 million (1.2 in salary and $2.8 in cash incentives) the rest came from the stockholders. (BTW: That $19 million was down $6 million from the year before) If you took the cash part of the compensation, you could give the 1 million or do employees a one-time bonus of a whopping $4.00.

No, but I do get credits for overseas taxes I pay.

Then you work in strange places as WM's exec pay went down last year. A couple years ago there was a big hooha over the big raises at McD's. All of that was because McD's happen to do good enough that year that the bonuses (again about 7 0% stock-relate) to be triggered. They had gotten ZIP, nothin', nada except salaries for the four years before. Look through the 10-Ks and you will see many are set up that way.

The compensation packages just keep growing because companies

Actually they keep going because Congress (in its infinite wisdom and in a flurry of bipartisanship include unanimous or nearly so votes in both Houses) changed the laws in the mid- 80s. The really funny part is that they changes were brought about because they were concerned with what they then viewed as overly paid executives. In order to fight this Evil, they effectively capped executive salary (what they are paid to actually run the company) by making nothing more than $1 million deductible. (If you look at the proxy filings for most publicly held companies, a large %age of them still top actual salaries at that point). Then, in an attempt to "align the interests of the shareholders and the executives", tax-favored performance based things such as stock options, etc. So, instead of paying someone for actually running the company, they paid them to run the books. I don't think it was coincidence that first book-cooking scandal took place within the next two years after passage. Over the long haul, all sorts of things occurred. In no apparent order of importance: 1). Executive pay rose substantially (although interestingly enough if you look at many of the indicators they rise and fall with the stock) and execs were paid orders of magnitude more than even the most captive board would have had the balls to pay them before. 2)> The concentration of wealth starts the spike around the same time. 3). The marker people like to point to, ratio between exec pay and the average on the shop floor, ballooned. After bouncing around 30X or so during the 60s, 70s, and early 80s, it took off cresting north of

300x before falling back with the stock market and then back up with the stock market So to those clamoring for Congressional action I point to the above and suggest they be damn careful what they wish for.

Since that is 2.5 times the amount of actual cash compensation, you are so wrong.

Again only about 20% -30% of that is actual cash that could be divided up.

See above.

[Vic Smith]

Not true. An extra $6 would get many kicked. So will $4k. There are eligibility limits for food stamps.

"Skilled workers." Those were menial tasks. There will always be "unskilled workers." You have to decide if they will get a living wage or be on the dole. Pick your poison.