WALMART managers must reduce labor costs by 0.2% every year in the UK???

[Karmadillo]

Does anyone know if this policy is planned for the US, too?

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=10&ItemID=8886

Asda Wal-Mart: Cutting Costs at any Cost
by Joe Zacune

Wal-Mart is the world's largest retail company and is more familiar in the UK as the supermarket chain Asda. Wal-Mart has built a global empire of supermarket stores on an image of 'always low prices'. This obsession with prices has led to poverty wages, ever-worsening sweatshop conditions and the destruction of local businesses and communities. These policies are well known but now new evidence has emerged on how Asda senior management are planning to deliberately "chip away" at workers' rights and working conditions in the UK.

War on Want has seen a leaked document titled "Warehouse Chip Away Strategy 2005" that outlines how Asda senior management are planning to drastically undermine labour standards. Asda management plan to breach these rights despite openly acknowledging the risks of trade union opposition and health and safety violations.

Work breaks are to be cut, grievance mechanisms removed and health and safety conditions weakened. The document also proposes removing the right to take individual grievances to external arbitrators. Asda management plans to include "single man loading" despite the fact that their own "risk assessment says 2 men (are) required for loading". Line managers are advised to "lead by example, not taking all the breaks that hourly paid colleagues get" in order to "take credence away from breaks".

Of the ten richest people in the world, four are members of the Walton family, heirs to the Wal-Mart fortune. Wal-Mart documents released in April 2005 reveal that the company's CEO Lee Scott was paid over $17.5 million in total during 2004.

Not content to pay its employees wages that are on average 20% lower than the industry standard, Wal-Mart seeks to cut costs through the routine violation of workers' rights. Wal-Mart requires that labour costs be kept to less than 8% of each store's sales. In addition, managers must reduce the labour costs at their stores by 0.2% each year. This drives managers to stretch their workforce to cover chronic staff shortages, and to break the law by employing children and undocumented migrant workers.

more...

[TheFarseer]

1. What? Instead of a raise each year

you get a pay cut? How the hell are they going to do this? Well, one answer is to have less people. So now I have to wait in line for 40 minutes instead of just 25? (actually I don't go to that place unless it's completely necessary, haven't been there in months)

[Elwood P Dowd]

2. They just borrowed the repuke's plan for the good ole' USA

Reduce incomes

Reduce worker benefits

Reduce consumer protections

Employ cheap illegal immigrants

Outsource jobs to slave labor countries

Increase CEO and investor compensation to absurd levels


Wal Mart is just a business version of the republican party and the Bush administration.