Serious Question to anyone who works in retail

[mredskins]

Solid Snake you should watch this DVD:

WAL-MART: The High Cost of Low Price


Then come back here and express your thoughts, if you think you hate them now LOL watch the above.

[SolidSnake84]

Originally Posted by mredskins

Solid Snake you should watch this DVD:

WAL-MART: The High Cost of Low Price


Then come back here and express your thoughts, if you think you hate them now LOL watch the above.

They watched this video in the marketing classes when i was a sophomore in college. I am watching excerpts from it now.

Totally blown away that 80% of the walmart workforce is considered below the poverty level going by their salary alone.

A guy just said that if they only raised the price of every item by .10 cents, they could afford to pay their store workers 10$ an hour...

Watching this now makes me wonder why/how the government has not been involved yet....

[CRedskinsRule]

Originally Posted by SolidSnake84

They watched this video in the marketing classes when i was a sophomore in college. I am watching excerpts from it now.

Totally blown away that 80% of the walmart workforce is considered below the poverty level going by their salary alone.

A guy just said that if they only raised the price of every item by .10 cents, they could afford to pay their store workers 10$ an hour...

Watching this now makes me wonder why/how the government has not been involved yet....

To be fair, Walmart typically underprices competition by 1 to 3 cents for marketing purposes - lowest price etc. so if they raise prices by 10 cents they will have successfully undercut their main selling point and reduce their customer base. The logic on that thought sounds purely governmental, ie ignore real world consequences and force an action that sounds good to the masses.

I am fairly certain Target and Kmart would love to see Wal-mart make that pledge!

Yes I do shop at Wal-mart, I do like the self checkout lines, and I can be patient in line when at a popular market place. If I am in a rush, I probably would go to a slightly more expensive store and expect their lines to be shorter.

I don't work in retail, but I do know how expensive even part time workers can be on a company's bottomline.

[The Goat]

Originally Posted by SolidSnake84

They watched this video in the marketing classes when i was a sophomore in college. I am watching excerpts from it now.

Totally blown away that 80% of the walmart workforce is considered below the poverty level going by their salary alone.

A guy just said that if they only raised the price of every item by .10 cents, they could afford to pay their store workers 10$ an hour...

Watching this now makes me wonder why/how the government has not been involved yet....

I used to subscribe to Business Week. One of the most memorable articles was about the retail sector, with a lot of focus on Walmart. That stat of 80% is pretty much in line w/ the sector, about 3/4 of all retail employees earn below the poverty line, and that was 3 yrs ago so it's sure to be higher today. Anyway the gist of the article was that more and more of the workforce is retail and, according to the best stats available at the time, about 1/3 of the total workforce earns at or below the poverty level.

What's crazy is how freakin poor you have to be to fall under the line. I think a family of 4 has to have less than $31k household income to be under the line. That's insane. My wife and I had a couple years of making only around $50k between us and it was paycheck to paycheck.