bloggery gone awry: Taking one for the team…

Thursday, February 10, 2005

Taking one for the team…

Employees of WalMart in Jonquiere, Quebec found out today that they will be losing their jobs when the store closes in May. Walmart Canada blames the closure on the fact that the union demands require increasing workers' hours and hiring at least 30 more people. Apparently that would make it difficult for the store to make a profit.

My question is “How can a company that sells more than TWO HUNDRED BILLION DOLLARS worth of goods EVERY YEAR be unable to budget for 30 more staff?”

So I pulled up their annual report and behold, the answer: Each store only nets, on average, $1.2 million. In the big picture, that’s not a whole lot of money…

However, I find it hard to have any sympathy considering that the $1.2 million/store profit is only AFTER they take out roughly $20 BILLION DOLLARS for advertising and marketing! To make matters worse, a majority of that money goes towards advertising their “Goodwill and Charity work” (which was less than $0.16 billion dollars in 2003).

In summary, 190 unionized workers in Jonquiere, Quebec are losing their jobs. Why? One reason is because WalMart wants to continue spending 12% of their net sales to brag about donating 0.06% of their net sales to charity.

Press Release:
http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20050210-084807-8460r

Oh, and before you even THINK about making a positive comment on WalMart’s behalf, please read the report published by the American Government’s “Committee on Education and the Workforce”:
http://edworkforce.house.gov/democrats/releases/rel21604.html

processed for posting at 7:15 p.m. | 2 comments | Post a Comment

If they had to hire 30 people, the cost to the company would have been (in my estimate) $750K to the bottom line if the majority of them were full time. That would eliminate half the profit of the store. You need to keep a store profitable in order. Per store profit is a key indicator of the health of a retailer. The only thing I could say against that is that it's absolute bull$#!% that they need to hire another 30 people. Are they really short 30 people right now? How did they end up being 30 people short? Did they hire 30 students and they all went back to school?
Reality check: People shop at the evil Walmart for 1 reason: Price. Increase wages, take away price advantage. They are fighting that at all cost.
If everyone were so offended at their practices then we would stop shopping there. People get the government they deserve and the type of businesses that reflect themselves.
Tesh
by:

Anonymous, 3:11 p.m.

Tesh,

"...people get the type of businesses that reflect themselves."

Well Said!
by:

J.Garlough, 6:28 p.m.