Dead End Jobs (Wal-Mart & McDonalds)

[xrayzebra]

I debated on where to post this, in this forum or in the Club forum. But
since Wal-Mart and McDonalds seems to hit the nerve on all the Socialist,
I thought, nah, this is politics.

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Dead-end jobs
By Walter E. Williams

Nov 30, 2005


Certain jobs are derisively referred to as "burger flipper" or "dead-end" jobs. I'd like someone to define a dead-end job. For example, I started out as a professor of economics at California State University, Los Angeles and then at Temple University and for the past 25 years at George Mason University. It seems as though my employment might qualify as a dead-end job, for all I'll ever be is a professor of economics.

Those who demean so-called dead-end jobs probably aren't talking about my job. They're mockingly referring to jobs such as clerks at Wal-Mart, hotel workers, and food handlers and counter clerks at McDonald's. McJobs is the term applied to these positions. The term has even found its way into Merriam-Webster and the encyclopedia Wikipedia. Putting down so-called dead-end jobs is a destructive insult to honest work.

How dead-end is a McDonald's job? Jim Glassman, an American Enterprise Institute scholar, wrote an article in the Institute's June 2005 On The Issues bulletin titled "Even Workers with 'McJobs' Deserve Respect." He listed some well-known former McDonald's workers. Among them: Andy Card, White House chief of staff; Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon.com; Jay Leno, "Tonight Show" host; Carl Lewis, Olympic gold medalist; Joe Kernan, former Indiana governor; and Robert Cornog, retired CEO of Snap-On Tools. According to Glassman, some 1,200 McDonald's restaurant owners began as crew members, and so did 20 of McDonald's 50 top worldwide managers. These people and millions of others hardly qualify as dead-enders.

The primary beneficiaries of so-called McJobs are people who enter the workforce with modest or absent work skills in areas such as: being able to show up for work on time, operating a machine, counting change, greeting customers with decorum and courtesy, cooperating with fellow workers and accepting orders from supervisors. Very often the people who need these job skills, which some of us might trivialize, are youngsters who grew up in dysfunctional homes and attended rotten schools. It's a bottom rung on the economic ladder that provides them an opportunity to move up. For many, the financial component of a low-pay, low-skill job is not nearly as important as what they learn on the job that can make them more valuable workers in the future.

Some demagogues charge that jobs at Wal-Mart and McDonald's only pay the minimum wage. That's plain wrong, as are many other things said about jobs that start at the minimum wage. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics: Sixty-three percent of minimum wage workers receive raises within one year of employment, and only 15 percent still earn the minimum wage after three years. Moreover, only three percent of all hourly workers and two percent of wage and salary earners earn minimum wages. Most minimum wage earners are young -- 53 percent are between the ages of 16 and 24.

Furthermore, only 5.3 percent of minimum wage earners are from households below the official poverty line; 40 percent of minimum wage earners live in households with incomes of $60,000 and higher, and over 82 percent of minimum wage earners do not have dependents. My stepfather used to tell me that any honest work was better than begging and stealing. As a young person, I worked many jobs from shining shoes and picking blueberries to delivering packages and washing dishes. Today's tragedy for many a poor youngster is that the opportunities I had for learning the world of work and moving up the economic ladder have either been destroyed through legislation or demeaned by today's do-gooders.

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Anyhow, gives you something to think about.

[JoeChalupa]

I respect everyone who works.

[101A]

I respect everyone who works.

Ditto.

(after seeing the thread title I was hoping this could be a debate on what Wal-Mart means to our economy and country, oh well)

[xrayzebra]

Ditto.

(after seeing the thread title I was hoping this could be a debate on what Wal-Mart means to our economy and country, oh well)

It could be, I think he made the point that Wal-Mart and McD jobs are
worthwhile if a person applys themselves. I know of a couple of managers
with Wal-Mart who started at the bottom. Making big bucks now.

[101A]

It could be, I think he made the point that Wal-Mart and McD jobs are
worthwhile if a person applys themselves. I know of a couple of managers
with Wal-Mart who started at the bottom. Making big bucks now.

Wal-Mart is a well oiled, capitilist machine, to be sure. Your friends (assumption) must be good to work their way up. Promotions are not handed out willy-nilly their (which is appropriate).

[boutons]

"It boggles my mind how many people"

got any numbers?

[RandomGuy]

I am not a huge fan of wal-mart per se, but I read a very good bit in the paper the other day that points out that walmart's ability to bring prices down for it's shoppers FAR outweighs it's effect on lower wages.

Simply put: The amount of money saved by the generally poorer people who shop there FAR outweighs the lower pay that walmart offers.

End result is simple economics:

Walmarts net effect on "the poor" and their standard of living is overwhelmingly positive.

They may be bastards, but they are efficient bastards at selling stuff cheaply.

[101A]

^^^ Yeah, but an unfortunate side effect of low-ball pricing is the effect on the small business owner.

Local hardware stores, craft stores, bait and tackle shops, tire shops, and many others get blasted by Wal-Mart.

It's not that Wal-Mart does everything all of those stores do, they just take away the "bread and butter" sales, leaving a small, elite niche in whatever market they were in - which isn't enough to make a living on. The small guy goes out of business - at which point that elite level is gone and unavailable. This is really evident now that I live in a small town.

Everybody has the same stuff, kids wearing the same clothes, etc...

Not really anything you can do about, the market has defined a need for something like the big box stores - I can only hope it swings back (and thank god for the internet).

[boutons]

So there are welfare cheats. Happens in every country there is welfare, and govts have been and keep trying to reduce cheating.

There are also $500K year doctors claimng Medicare funds they shouldn't.

CA estimated there was $2.5B fraud/year in CA medicare/caid a couple years ago, and not all of it, or even most of it, was by the poor.

Look at the multi-$B settlements/fraud on Wall St under Spitzer, Enron, Adelphia, etc, etc, etc, probably 99% of them heavy Republican contributors and hard-ass conservatives.

But we only hear the Repubs going after programs for the poor. All-out class warfare. Has NOTHING to do with morality or actually fixing problems or improving govt efficiency, but everything to do with less "transfer/entitlemnt payments" for the poor meaning more govt $$$ available to be given to the rich and corps.

[cecil collins]

But white collar crime isn't a big deal is it? Bullshit. Just like the list of former McDonalds workers. Oh boy, successful guys who used to work at McDonalds. It's not like it helped them succeed, other than minimal monetary support. Bush used to be a drunk, did that help him become president? No.

Walmarts net effect on "the poor" and their standard of living is overwhelmingly positive.
What about the fact that almost all of the items in WalMart are made at slave wages in other countries. Surely if workers here or overseas were paid a living wage, people would be better off.

[SpursWoman]

What about the fact that almost all of the items in WalMart are made at slave wages in other countries.

I'd love to see some numbers to back that up. :lmao

Out of the massive array of products that Walmart carries, I'm sure we could find a few that were made by American workers, too. :lol :lol

[cecil collins]

I would also love to see those numbers. Good luck with that.

[SpursWoman]

I would also love to see those numbers. Good luck with that.


So you admit that you just said something you completely pulled out of your ass.


Cool. :tu :lmao

[Mr. Peabody]

I.E. I get alot of customers coming in wanting to do business with me that are getting disability even though they shouldn't.

How do you know they should not be receiving disability? Just curious.

[Mr. Peabody]

What about the fact that almost all of the items in WalMart are made at slave wages in other countries.

Is that necessarily Walmart's fault? Or does the blame fall on the shareholders of those companies?

[cecil collins]

So you admit that you just said something you completely pulled out of your ass.


Cool. :tu :lmao
I read books. I don't retain every bit of information from these books. The numbers would be dated anyway. If that means I pulled it out of my ass, okay.

[SpursWoman]

What books?

[Mr. Peabody]

What books?

I have many leather-bound books and my office smells of mahogany.

[SpursWoman]

Mmmmm....I love the smell of mahogany. And old books. :) :lol

[boutons]

Capitalism requires reducing costs to maximize profits, so buying products cheaper outside the USA is perfectly good practice (or firing employees as soon as possible, and hiring as few employees as possible), no matter what the social costs are to US citizens.

Capitalism is completely amoral, inhuman, ruthless system. Any restraints, like laws and regulations protecting employees, consumers, and the environment, are hated by "good" businessmen only because they see laws (govt) as increasing their costs.

When people boycotted companies or withdrew investments from companies doing business with apartheid S. Africa, some companies reacted by stopping (overt) business with South Africa, NOT because it was the moral thing to do, but only because it was the best business thing to do.

I remember a S. American cocaine kingpin saying a few years ago:
"I'm just a businessman meeting a demand for my products. I'll stop selling my products when the demand isn't there."

I bet tons of US businessmen would agree enthusiastically with the above esp knowing the tax-free profits on cocaine, just as their wet dreams are to run an abusive, price-gouging monopoly like Bill Gates.

Prostitutes and other sex industry works are entrepreneurial business people, too, with an eternal demand to meet.

[Mr. Peabody]

Capitalism is completely amoral, inhuman, ruthless system. Any restraints, like laws and regulations protecting employees, consumers, and the environment, are hated by "good" businessmen only because they see laws (govt) as increasing their costs.


If the purpose of a business is to make money and these restraints prevent businesses from making as much money as possible, then of course they are detested by the owners of the business. I don't think this necessarily makes them evil, it just makes them businessmen.

[boutons]

Still waiting on the numbers of welfare cheats/queens vs legit.

Also waiting on the %age of college students who pocket their loan money and quit school, which is the basis for dubya cutting federally backed student loans. The philosohpy here is not to improve management of the fed student loan program to reduce cheating by, what?, 2% cheating, but just blindly to cut it for all 100%.

An optometrist told me that he could do nothing for my mother, blind in one eye and 50%+ blind in the other. Didn't stop him from having his office girls "tele-market" me, A YEAR LATER, to bring my mother in for an eye checkup. I said she was immoblized with Alzheimers in a nursing home, nearing hospice care, and having no eye discomfort.

I asked how much the checkup would cost? "$200, but don't worry, Medicare would pay it all, and also for the amubulance transport". I consider that tactic to be fraudulent ripoff of Medicare by an optometrist probably making well over $100K/year, and voting conservative/Repub. Anybody wanna claim this optometrist is the only doctor/hospital/HMO/medical_service in the USA abusing medicare/caid?

[SpursWoman]

an optometrist probably making well over $100K/year, and voting conservative/Repub

You think Republicans are the only ones out to make a quick buck off the ignorance of others or by questionable methods?? *ahem*MichaelMoore*ahem*

Come on, now. :rolleyes :lol

[boutons]

Does MM cheat on welfare?

Like TV evangelists, he's in the entertainment business.
Does the fed govt subsidize buying of tickets to MM films?
going to films is discretionary, getting medical care isn't.

making money off stupidity is one thing, the "medical system" defrauding Medicare/Medicaid (and then buying congressman to keep it that way) is totally different.

But it's interesting/amusing that you say a doctor's medicare/caid fraud is no worse than, and is equivalent to what you think MM does.

[SpursWoman]

Does MM cheat on welfare?

Like TV evangelists, he's in the entertainment business.
Does the fed govt subsidize buying of tickets to MM films?
going to films is discretionary, getting medical care isn't.

making money off stupidity is one thing, the "medical system" defrauding Medicare/Medicaid (and then buying congressman to keep it that way) is totally different.

But it's interesting/amusing that you say a doctor's medicare/caid fraud is no worse than, and is equivalent to what you think MM does.

Dishonesty is dishonesty is dishonesty.

But whatever, if you think greed is exclusive to the Republican party you are seriously deluded.

[cecil collins]

Turning People into Profits
Wal-Mart's Magic Numbers

By STAN COX

The king of discount retailing is looking like a blue chip bargain.

James Hale, The Online Investor, March 4, 2004

Wal-Mart probably doesn't set out with the purpose of destroying lives and wrecking the American economy. The company is trying, in a bigger way than has ever been tried before, to achieve three contradictory goals: pay its workers enough, make its mechandise affordable to almost everyone, and increase value for stockholders. In doing so, it has been both a wild success and an utter failure. In its ultimate inability to satisfy all three goals simultaneously, Wal-Mart mirrors the economy at large.

A list of numbers serves to illustrate how Wal-Mart deals with tradeoffs among the interests of workers, customers, and shareholders:

Pay scales, high to low

$2,200,000,000: Total dividends Wal-Mart plans to pay its shareholders this fiscal year, after a 44% dividend increase announced March 2, 2004

$23,000,000: Average annual compensation for Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott, 2000-2003

$4,500,000: Average annual compensation for previous Wal-Mart CEO David Glass, 1995-2000

$70,000 to $150,000: Bonuses (coming on top of typical base salaries exceeding $50,000) commonly earned by Wal-Mart store managers in 2002 as incentives to increase their own store's annual profit, with profit increases coming largely through holding down labor costs

$9.68: Average hourly living wage as defined by 22 of the U.S. cities and towns that passed living wage ordinances between 2000 and 2004

$9.60: Average hourly wage Wal-Mart could pay if one-third of its current profits were diverted to pay its U.S. employees instead

$9.54: Average hourly wage Wal-Mart could afford to pay if it raised its prices an average of 1%

$9.32: Average hourly wage Wal-Mart could pay if the current annual dividend going to its stockholders were diverted to pay its U.S. employees

$9.15: Hourly wage that Dana Mailloux was earning at a Ft. Myers, Florida Wal-Mart when she and more than a dozen similarly paid employees were laid off because of "lack of work", after which, as they were leaving the store, they noticed "six new hires -- red vests in hand -- filling out paperwork," and then that next weekend saw Help Wanted ads on the store's bulletin board

$8.00: Approximate nationwide average hourly wage for Wal-Mart employees

$6.25: Starting wage for a cashier at the Wal-Mart Supercenter in Salina, Kansas, 2003

$12,192: Income earned by a newly hired cashier working 40-hour weeks (more than the 32-hour company-wide average) for a year, with no weekdays off, at the Salina Supercenter

$13,994: Minimum annual expenses for bare existence faced by a single cashier with children 4 and 12 who lives in Salina, Kansas and provides as many necessities as possible by shopping at the Supercenter where she works (Expenses do not include child care costs, which, if the cashier finds a qualified provider, are covered by a state subsidy.)

$6.00: Typical hourly rate being paid by Wal-Mart to custodial contractors for the services of more than 300 undocumented workers in late 2003 (with the contractor, not Wal-Mart, having to pick up the employer's share of the workers' Social Security tax)

$0.31: The legal hourly minimum wage in China

$0.23: Average hourly wage at 15 Chinese factories making clothing, shoes, and handbags to be sold at U.S. Wal-Mart stores, 2001

73: Average number of hours worked per week by employees at those 15 factories

Some other numbers

127: The number of Wal-Mart stores, out of 128 audited in 2000, that were found not to be allowing sufficiently for 15-minute breaks as provided for in company policy

$150,000,000: The total back pay Wal-Mart is estimated to owe employees in Texas for having compelled them to work through their 15-minute breaks over a four-year period

40 hours, 36 seconds: Amount of time worked in one week by Wal-Mart employee Georgie Hartwig of Washington State, for which she was upbraided by her manager for clocking more than 40 hours, which costs the store in overtime wages

45%: Proportion of her entire annual wage that a single Wal-Mart employee might have to pay out-of-pocket before collecting any benefits from the company-sponsored health plan

42,000: Number of Wal-Mart employees in the state of Georgia in 2002

10,261: Number of children of Wal-Mart employees in Georgia who are enrolled in the state's PeachCare for Kids health insurance program, which provides medical coverage to children whose parents cannot afford it

$420,750: Annual cost to U.S. taxpayers of a single 200-employee Wal-Mart store, because of support required for underpaid workers -- including subsidized school lunches, food stamps, housing credits, tax credits, energy assistance, and health care

5: Wal-Mart's rank, if it were a separate nation, among China's biggest export markets -- ahead of Germany and Britain

45%: Decrease in annual sales of Levi-Strauss clothing from 1996 through the first half of 2003, largely because of competition from less expensive jeans sold at Wal-Mart

6%: Sales increase in the third quarter of 2003, just after Levi-Strauss began supplying jeans to Wal-Mart

60: Number of U.S. clothing factories operated by Levi-Strauss in 1981

2004: The year in which Levi-Strauss will close its last two U.S. plants and stop manufacturing jeans, importing them from overseas instead

Stan Cox lives in Salina, Kansas, where he is a plant breeder and writer. He can be reached at: [email protected]

http://www.counterpunch.org/cox04202004.html

For those who wanted some numbers.

[AFE7FATMAN]

Compare prices at Wal-Mart and HEB, Why would you shop at HEB? They have been sticking Texas People in the rear for years, with their High Prices.

[Nbadan]

New National Zogby Poll Finds Americans Hold Diverse, Strong, & Increasingly Negative Opinions About Wal-Mart.


A national survey of American adults, conducted by Zogby Int'l, indicated that 38 percent of American adults now hold an unfavorable opinion of Wal-Mart. The results of the poll also found that a clear majority of the American public (55%) have a less favorable opinion of Wal-Mart based on what they have recently seen, heard, or read.

Zogby (http://www.zogby.com/news/ReadNews.dbm?ID=1045)

[101A]

^^^ Good news.

Before I moved from SA this summer, I was involved with the group trying to keep 'em out of Helotes. Now if people would stop spending all of their money there, we could get somewhere.

[101A]

Still waiting on the numbers of welfare cheats/queens vs legit.

Also waiting on the %age of college students who pocket their loan money and quit school, which is the basis for dubya cutting federally backed student loans. The philosohpy here is not to improve management of the fed student loan program to reduce cheating by, what?, 2% cheating, but just blindly to cut it for all 100%.

An optometrist told me that he could do nothing for my mother, blind in one eye and 50%+ blind in the other. Didn't stop him from having his office girls "tele-market" me, A YEAR LATER, to bring my mother in for an eye checkup. I said she was immoblized with Alzheimers in a nursing home, nearing hospice care, and having no eye discomfort.

I asked how much the checkup would cost? "$200, but don't worry, Medicare would pay it all, and also for the amubulance transport". I consider that tactic to be fraudulent ripoff of Medicare by an optometrist probably making well over $100K/year, and voting conservative/Repub. Anybody wanna claim this optometrist is the only doctor/hospital/HMO/medical_service in the USA abusing medicare/caid?


I will claim that it is easy to defraud a govt. system - and that Medicare encourages doctors to do so by being so lax in the claim's payment procedures. That is why anybody espousing an EVEN LARGER federal healthcare system is out of their minds. Glad to see we're on the same page with this, Boutons.

[Marcus Bryant]

The poor and working classes, primarily in rural America, should pay more to live and employment opportunities for them should be curtailed?

Some of you are redneck dumb.

[101A]

MB,

No problem with Wal-Mart being what it is, & certainly don't want anything done by our government to stop their growth.

That growth is SO explosive, however, and they are becoming so dominant, that choice and variety are being compromised in the market. Nothing we can do about it until the situation corrects itself (which it may never do), but it is disappointing.

Wal-Mart has certainly done good things providing jobs and low prices in rural America. That is now, however, well short of the scope of what Wal-Mart is today.

[Mr. Peabody]

I think the scariest part about the Walmart explosion is that there are so many people willing to work for such a terrible employer at such low wages.

I guess there aren't enough quality jobs out there to force Walmart to improve its employee compensation.

[Nbadan]

Sheeiitt, you wanna get rid of Walmart, just spread a rumor that your gonna unionize their workers. Costco manages to put out reasonably priced goods, without the slave wages.