Walmart Outsourcing Depresses Wages In U.S. Warehouses

[cynatnite]

Walmart, the world's largest retailer, has driven down wages in its retail supply chain by outsourcing jobs in American warehouses, according to a report issued Wednesday by a low-wage workers advocacy group.

The report, from the National Employment Law Project (NELP), said that Walmart's famously low prices carry a hidden cost for the workers employed in the company's distribution centers throughout the U.S.

Although these workers handle Walmart goods, many of them technically work for subcontracted "logistics" companies and temp firms, where wages are low and labor law violations are common, the group said.

"Contracting out is becoming increasingly common in many of the nation’s largest and fastest-growing industries," the report stated. "These outsourced workers laboring on Walmart’s behalf toil at the bottom of a complex hierarchy of intermediaries and in alternative employment schemes that leave them vulnerable to significant worker rights abuses and unsure where to seek redress."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/06/walmart-outsourcing-depresses-wages_n_1573885.html

What a shocker.

[Liberal Veteran]

1. Walmart: Always Low Wages, Always*.

*low wages do not apply if blood relative of Walton family.

[Smilo]

2. The Walmart warehouse near us does not do this...........

it hires its own employees.

However, the Amazon warehouse uses a contractor and the difference between the two is that Wal-mart starts out paying its employees about $4 more an hour.

However, the work is extremely hard at Walmart and it tough on the workers bodies. I have heard Amazon is also hard on the workers.

[LeftyMom]

3. They do that for everything.

A friend of mine worked for WalMart for years and never actually worked for WalMart. She was in a blue vest, in a WalMart store, helping WalMart customers, but always worked for some subcontracting company. She worked in the portrait studio.