Walmart Internal E-mails

[AreYouReady?]

http://www.dailyfinance.com/2013/02/...otal-disaster/



Snippet: "February MTD [month-to-date] sales are a total disaster," said Walmart vice president of finance and logistics Jerry Murray in Feb. 12 e-mail to other executives. "The worst start to a month I have seen in my ~7 years with the company."

We already knew that retail sales were going to struggle to begin the year. The expiration of the payroll tax holiday meant consumers had less spending money in their pockets. And indeed, the first retail sales report since the end of the tax holiday showed spending growth grinding almost to a halt, with sales increasing just 0.1%.

But Walmart's sales woes appear to go beyond a mere slowdown. In another email obtained from Bloomberg, a senior vice president bemoans miserable January sales, asking "Where are all the customers? And where's their money?"



I certainly do not feel sorry for them. They cut the throats (figuratively) for their vendors and their workers to rack up billions for themselves. They force themselves into small towns, even when the people there do not want them by building just outside the city limits. They could care less that they hurt local business. Many of their workers have to go on public assistance because walmart owners are cheapskates.

Before they came to my area, we had a couple of local Christian bookstores. Walmart doesn't have enough Christian literature to hurt them very much but Lifeway comes in and seals the coffin and dug the grave on their business. I won't shop at Lifeway.

In fact, I have cut my shopping down at Walmart sharply because I feel like I am shopping at a prison where I live. They demand to see your receipt at the door while they watch you check out. Or they embarrass you nearly to death when the cashier forgets to deactivate the RFID at the register and you set off the booming voice that causes the workers to run and hollar at you to stop.

When we go out to eat, I look for hometown family restaurants. I do my oil changes at the locals. I buy my tires at the locals. Whereever I can, I buy from my fellow neighbors.

[CC1]

Here is the flip side to your take on Wal Mart. My mom became a widow in her early 40's. She had been my father's bookkeeper but did not even have a HS diploma because she had to quiit school due to illness as a teen.

She went to night school and got her GED then a few years later on to college where at the age of 50 she graduated with her Bachelors degree. She lived in a small rural town that did not have many job opportunities and ended up going to work for the local Wal Mart.

She loved the job because of her great co workers and many of the customers were local folks she knew. More importantly than that Wal Mart had great medical insurance and was probably one of only a handful of employers in that small town that offered optional long term disability insurance for a low group premium. My mom opted to take that insurance.

At around 59 years of age my mom suffered her first stroke. She spent two weeks in the hospital, several months in full time rehab then months more with daily visits to rehab as an outpatient and finally a year or so of less frequent rehab visits. Wal Mart's medical insurance was amazing and paid for all of this. They had a nurse assigned to my moms case and I would speak to her about any therapy or care that the doctors wanted to do. Not once did they deny anything. The only thing they did was negotiate special rates for the care. In addition the long term disability made up for my moms lost income until she reached the age of 65 and her SSI kicked in.

Contrast that with several years later when she had her second stroke and was on Medicare with an HMO supplement. The HMO bugged the hospital every day trying to kick her over to a nursing home before she was stabilized.

Do I wish Wal Mart would do a better job of sourcing goods in America rather than China? Sure. Do I wish it was run with the integrity it was run with when Sam Walton was alive? Absolutely. Is it a shame that the prices cause small local stores with high prices to close? Sort of. But in the end I think Wal Mart is as much as positive factor as it is a negative one in most communities if not all.

[AreYouReady?]

I am happy that Walmart's insurance did for your mother so well. I'm sure she loved her job as well.

Here is Forbes reporting what walmart is now doing:

After making a big deal of publicly supporting the Affordable Care Act, Walmart—the nation’s largest private sector employer—is joining the ranks of companies seeking to avoid their obligation to provide employees with health insurance as required by Obamacare.

It was not all that many years ago that Walmart announced, in response to harsh criticism over the low pay provided to Walmart ‘associates’, that the company would provide a healthcare benefit to its part-time, low earning employees. The uncharacteristically generous nod to worker needs was short lived as the company partially pulled back on the commitment in 2011, citing premium rate increases that Walmart deemed beyond their capacity to pay.

Now, Huffington Post is reporting that the party is over for many more existing Walmart employees, along with all employees hired after February 1, 2012 that the company can classify as “part-time.”

According to the 2013 Walmart “Associate’s Benefit Book”— the manual for low-level Walmart employees—part-time workers who got their jobs during or after 2011 will now be subject to an “Annual Benefits Eligibility Check” each August.

Employees hired after Feb. 1, 2012, who fail to average the magic 30-hours per week requiring a company to provide a healthcare benefit, will lose their healthcare benefits on the following January. Part-time workers hired after Jan. 15, 2011, but before Feb. 1, 2012, will be able to hang onto their Walmart health care benefit if they work at least 24 hours a week.

To read the rest of this article...here's the link.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/rickunga...lthcare-costs/

[AreYouReady?]

Here's what the Huffington Post writes:

Walmart, the nation’s largest private employer, plans to begin denying health insurance to newly hired employees who work fewer than 30 hours a week, according to a copy of the company’s policy obtained by The Huffington Post.

Under the policy, slated to take effect in January, Walmart also reserves the right to eliminate health care coverage for certain workers if their average workweek dips below 30 hours -- something that happens with regularity and at the direction of company managers.

Walmart declined to disclose how many of its roughly 1.4 million U.S. workers are vulnerable to losing medical insurance under its new policy. In an emailed statement, company spokesman David Tovar said Walmart had “made a business decision” not to respond to questions from The Huffington Post and accused the publication of unfair coverage.

Labor and health care experts portrayed Walmart’s decision to exclude workers from its medical plans as an attempt to limit costs while taking advantage of the national health care reform known as Obamacare. Among the key features of Obamacare is an expansion of Medicaid, the taxpayer-financed health insurance program for poor people. Many of the Walmart workers who might be dropped from the company’s health care plans earn so little that they would qualify for the expanded Medicaid program, these experts said.

“Walmart is effectively shifting the costs of paying for its employees onto the federal government with this new plan, which is one of the problems with the way the law is structured,” said Ken Jacobs, chairman of the Labor Research Center at the University of California, Berkeley.

For Walmart, this latest policy represents a step back in time. Almost seven years ago, as Walmart confronted public criticism that its employees couldn't afford its benefits, the company announced with much fanfare that it would expand health coverage for part-time workers.

But last year, the company eliminated coverage for some part-time workers -- those new hires working 24 hours a week or less. Now, Walmart is going further.


“Walmart likely thought it didn’t need to offer this part-time coverage anymore with Obamacare,” said Nelson Lichtenstein, director of the Center for the Study of Work, Labor and Democracy at the University of California, Santa Barbara. “This is another example of a tremendous government subsidy to Walmart via its workers.”

For the rest of this article...link

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/1...n_2220152.html

[AreYouReady?]

The Christian Post:

http://www.christianpost.com/news/wi...xpayers-85994/

Common Dreams:

https://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2012/12/05-6

Fox News:

http://nation.foxnews.com/obamacare/...io-coming-true

http://www.emptywheel.net/2012/12/05...it-championed/

[AreYouReady?]

The walmart heirs are billionaires...and they want more.

http://thinkprogress.org/economy/201...tom/?mobile=nc

[ILG]

I do believe that local is better in nearly every case. I can't say I always do local because it's very hard to sometimes choose between local and more economical.

CC1, I think the situation with your mother is great. However, if Wal-mart hadn't been there, perhaps she would have gotten a local job with great benefits. It's hard to say.

[Ferd]

Quoting HuffPo is like quoting Satlin on the best way to feed a nation.

[Michael Phelps]

Originally Posted by AreYouReady?

The walmart heirs are billionaires...and they want more.

http://thinkprogress.org/economy/201...tom/?mobile=nc

My personal belief, at least from what I've read about Sam Walton, is that if he knew where the company was today, he'd roll over in his grave....

[houston]

I shop at Target. WalMart attracts the worse of the worse. Ha. Anyway. What kind of living do people really expect from working at WalMart? It shouldn't be a career to the bottom tier. Really. That's like the guy at McDonald's complaining that he doesn't make enough for retirement.