In Cleveland, 6,000 apply for 300 Wal-Mart jobs

[RamboLiberal]

Source: USA Today

Cleveland's first Wal-Mart is about to open, and with it comes 300 jobs in a metro area that is struggling economically. The result, according to the Plain Dealer: 6,000 people applied, or 20 applicants for every one job.

"We had to recount (the applications) three times," Mia Masten, Wal-Mart's director of corporate affairs in its Midwest division, told the newspaper.

Most of the jobs are lower-paying, lower-skills positions, and the demand for those posts disturbs some people.

"That's Depression-era kind of imagery," Amy Hanauer, executive director of Policy Matters Ohio, told the Plain Dealer. "You can't have an economy that works that way. It speaks to the need to generate a different kind of employment in Cleveland."



Read more: http://blogs.usatoday.com/ondeadline/2007/11/in-cleveland-60.html#uslPageReturn

[sasquatch]

1. I think I feel ill

:puke:

[OhioChick]

2. Yeah....

Times are damn good here. :sarcasm:

[sasquatch]

3. Fuckin' corpratist are trying to kill my state

Time for good ol' William Tecumseh Sherman ass beating is needed to put those swine in their place.

[budkin]

4. See, people really want to work there!

A great company like Wal-Mart! GO USA!

[asthmaticeog]

5. About to open? It opened a couple of weeks ago. Weird.

It's in my neighborhood. Imagine how thrilled I am.

Not one bit surprised by the demand for those jobs, though, the retail area it opened in straddles 3 or 4 neighborhoods, none of which is doing especially well.

[ohio2007]

10. I'll guess somebody was dumpster diving behind Wal-Mart and found reams

of the job applications thrown out

[scarface2004]

6. only 6,000 applied?!?!

things must be going well there...i would have expected no less than 50,000 applicants!

[YOY]

7. When I heard about them opening up a Walmart downtown.

I knew Cleveland would not be making a comeback ala Atlanta...

[ohio2007]

11. the Mini Mill Kucinich promised to keep open is the site of the new Wal-Mart

loss of decent paying jobs to foreign competition

[Deja Q]

8. Dang. How do you convince the manager you're the best pick of the litter?

Most of them are undoubtedly over-qualified... the under-qualified folks will have their resumes tossed out. After all, one typo alone will kill an applicant...

The ones they do hire are probably Gen-Y, Britney-coddling brats who'll simply gawk and gab all day... so in the end, it's still status quo for walmart.

[Duer 157099]

9. Well this quote certainly does not surprise me:

"We had to recount (the applications) three times," Mia Masten, Wal-Mart's director of corporate affairs in its Midwest division, told the newspaper.

Says alot about the caliber of their management doesn't it?

[TahitiNut]

12. Think of all the effort it took to remove their shoes and socks and put them on again on each time.

That's why they get paid the big bucks. :eyes:

[Dukkha]

13. not surprised from the biggest foreclosure city

Slavic Village was the hardest hit U.S. community with 783 filings. People are real desperate there now. It's depressing how far Cleveland came in the 90's only to fall apart like this.

[Selatius]

14. Cleveland used to be a large manufacturing hub in previous decades.

When they sent the jobs overseas, much of that disappeared. What factories are left standing are empty and rusting away. They don't call that quadrant of the country the "Rust Belt" for nothing nowadays.

[Faygo Kid]

15. George Bush's America. Right down the toilet.

In 2008, we will reap what we have sown. His dream? An America of gated communities for a few, no social safety net for the rest of us, and an America dependent on the whims and gentle nature of those privileged few he calls "his base." And despite the ignorance and idiocy of evangelicals, anti-gay haters, gun nuts, NASCAR dads, dittoheads, and so many others, I have news for them.

They are not "his base." They are his tools. And his fools. The neocons are his base, not the social conservative useful idiots.

[OzarkDem]

16. Part of the problem is education and skills

as mentioned in the article, is the lack of jobs for an unskilled labor force. If you have a college degree and some skills, jobs aren't difficult to find in the area.

But for so many years, Clevelanders were able to count on graduating from high school and getting a good paying job in manufacturing or a similar job. Getting a college degree wasn't considered necessary or worthwhile to many. But as high paying manufacturing jobs have gone away and incomes dropped, people aren't getting the training they need to move up in the workforce.

The area really needs to push people to get more training and relevant job skills so they're not stuck at the bottom of the wage ladder. A lot of Clevelanders have to overcome their traditional bias against getting a college degree or learning more modern skills.

[scarletwoman]

17. Think about what you are saying, you are blaming the victims.

Before you blithely make judgements about people being too short-sighted or shiftless to go to college, why not ask how many of them could have AFFORDED to go to college? How many of them received substandard elementary and secondary educations that never gave them any realistic preparation for college?

It seems rather callous and clueless to assert that "The area really needs to push people to get more training and relevant job skills..." How do you know that such programs even exist? Who would fund such programs?

I can tell you from personal experience, it's damn hard to get "more training and relevant job skills" when there are no "training" and "job skills" programs available where you live.

States' budgets have been shrinking relative to social and community needs for years now. Budgets for all kinds of social/civil welfare programs (including job training for the disadvantaged/poorly educated) have been constantly cut, year after year.

What's happened in Cleveland is that the human capital was strip-mined by the Owner Class. It's not easy to rebuild an entire ecosystem on a dump site.

sw

(edited for a missing one-letter article - duh)

[OzarkDem]

18. For clarification

I live in this area and have a pretty thorough understanding of the situation.

There are many, many programs to encourage people to increase their job skills, lots of assistance to help them do it. Some just won't, sadly, especially middle aged and older women.