2006 Projects?

And, in fact, just this week there was a survey out that the super-rich are not as generous as the middle-class. This is something that used to get to me ... you couldn't get your name in the Symphony program as a donor unless you donated at least $100. For me, that was more than 1% of my annual income. The family that owned McDs lived in town, and got their name in the program as having given $10,000, which was maybe .0001% of their annual income. No recognition for those of us who truly deprived ourselves to donate, while those who didn't even feel it were lauded for making, proportionately, a much lower contribution.

Even if it kicked in at 15 or 25 employees, a lot of the places I've worked would've been exempt. The last place I worked had 8 employees. The Medical Leave law didn't apply; if I had asked for a medical leave of absence, I was risking my job because we were too small for that law to guarantee I could come back. Ditto, they weren't required to provide me Americans with Disabilities Act accommodations, because we didn't have enough employees to be covered.

The majority of Americans are employed by small businesses; a lot of them by businesses who don't have enough employees to trigger the employee benefit laws that kick in at 15 or 25. So, if you're saying WalMart needs to be penalized for its size, they already are -- the small locally-owned stores in my neighborhood are exempt from so many of the employee benefit laws like ADA and FMLA that WalMart is already required to comply with.

And this is, in fact, what's behind all the negative publicity about WalMart -- big bucks unions who have their eye on all those WalMart employees who could be paying union dues.

Do you think the employees at KMart are unionized? Or Target? Or McD's? I doubt it.

As Linda and I have said, WalMart doesn't do anything that their competitors don't ... they just get accused as if what they do is an aberration.

FWIW, DBF has just taken a job in retail sales. Since the mall is open extended hours this week before Christmas, he was there till 11:30 PM last night doing closing, and had to be there at 7:45 AM today to open. Are you going to boycott his employer for scheduling him so that he couldn't get a full 8 hours sleep? For not being unionized? He has 25+ years experience in retail, and just muttered to me on his coffee break that after a decade in an office job, he'd forgotten that this is what retail is like. Most of his career was spent at a major retailer (not WalMart), and what he's told me about working there is *exactly* what I've heard in the anti-WalMart campaign. Yet, the campaign targets only WalMart, and not the other major retailers who do the exact same thing to their employees.

position to smack them. With Wartmart, a store in Jonquierre in Quebec, unionised. All of a sudden, Wartmart decided that was not a profitable store and closed it. Makes you think ~ they spent the money to build it, were clearly making a profit but were prepared to close it in order to demonstrate to other Wartmart employees what would happen if they had the idea of introducing a union. That's pretty brutal.

Amen, Dianne!

Again, it's not just WalMart with no insurance or too expensive insurance. I've worked in offices with the same circumstances. Where's the outcry because THEY paid practically nothing and made it impossible for the employees to get insurance?

A lot of major corporations -- names you'd recognize -- are now hiring much of their support staff through temporary agencies, so that they don't have to pay them benefits. People working "temporary" at the same company for 20 years. Where's the boycott against those companies?

I'm not saying that it's morally right for WalMart to do what they do. I *am* saying that their detractors have to stop making it sound like WalMart is the only one. I've heard statistics that anywhere between a quarter and a third of working California families have no health insurance. They don't ALL work for WalMart. They work for other stores, for fast food, for lawyers, for farmers, for janitorial services, for temporary agencies, for restaurants....

If you really want to make a point about working people being entitled to fair wages and health insurance, then get hold of your county's Living Wage statistics, and the next time you go to spend money, you ask the staff "do you earn $12.19 an hour, or $10+health insurance?", and if they say No, refuse to do business with that company. Around here, that means you can't park in the private parking lots, which pay minimum wage; you have to use the city-owned parking lots which *do* pay Living Wage. It means you can't go to the lawyer who wanted to hire me as a part-time paralegal for $10 and no health insurance. It means you can't do business with a lot of places that aren't WalMart, including the much-vaunted small locally owned businesses, where the owner and his wife have insurance and decent pay, but the non-family-member employees are making minimum wage and no insurance.

Do you really think your LNS is paying its employees $12/hour and medical insurance?

We have forgotten it because greed has taken the place of intelligence. The business people focus entirely on the bottom line.

I was fired on trumped up charges so that I could be replaced by someone half my age, half my size, at half my salary. At first blush, this looks like a great idea to increase profits (and hence, the partners' year-end bonuses). Small problem, she had less than half the experience and did less than half the work. So, instead of having a $15/hour legal assistant filling out court forms, you had a $50/hour lawyer dictating court forms which then took the same amount of secretarial time to type up. No savings there. I'm told when the bozo who fired me started getting complaints from the lawyers about how much of "my job" they had to do after I was replaced, and started having to pay overtime because she didn't produce the same amount of work in 8 hours, he realized that his little profit-increase tactic was costing him more than he'd saved.

This weekend (or maybe last weekend) there was an article in the paper about how much it costs to hire and train a new employee, i.e., it's more expensive to have constant turnover than to give your old employees a raise or some benefits so that they'll stay. I calculated once that the cost of the help wanted ad, the executive hours lost to interviewing, the week of upper-level people wasting time getting the new support person up to speed, was more than a year's worth of the raise I asked for. That doesn't factor into executive thinking -- all they see is that they're paying a long-time employee more than they'd pay a new hire.

And then complain because the employees show no loyalty to the company. Why should we? They show no loyalty to us. Get close to qualifying for the pension plan, they'll fire you so they can keep the money. Want to increase executive bonuses, cut the workers' benefits.

Just the same, I shall not shop at Wartmart, they came to town, artificially lowered prices and drove competition under. Now the prices are back up - I choose not to be in their party. If necessary, if they were the last store left, well too bad, I would make do.

Sorry, I live in Canada where I have paid much more for gas ever since I can remember. The gas in the USA is too cheap, I know you won't like that sentiment, but it is.

Read this

illustrates how fast freedom of movement is disappearing. Comingto a country near you next no doubt.

Unfortunately, they have a good reason for not allowing the SA.

My local Target allowed the SA in Christmas season, which led another "religious group" to conclude that it was OK to solicit in front of Target. (In fact, the guy in the backward collar was not a priest, and his favorite charity was himself, but that is neither here nor there.) Once he installed himself, every other group in the universe started soliciting there, too, till leaving the store was like walking down Beggars Row in Calcutta. And some of them were downright menacing.

In order to prohibit any other group from soliciting in front of Target, they had to prohibit ALL solicitation. They could not say "SalvArmy is OK, but Father Finagle's Fake Charity, no", not unless they wanted to get hit with one helluva discrimination lawsuit.

In this neighborhood, it means "boutique".

The only Army Navy store is at the far end of the county; don't know if they're locally owned or not. The only locally owned discount stores I know of are dollar stores. I can pay $4 bus fare to get there, HOPE they have what I want, and consider it a waste of four bucks and most of a day changing buses to find they don't because all you can get out of the staff is "the selection changes every day, you'll have to come look". Or I can invest the time and money on a one-bus trip to WalMart and KNOW that I'm coming home with what I set out for.

There were some that are machine *washable*, but you have to find a place to air-dry them flat, which several of my friends have said is (1) difficult to find in a small apartment and (2) takes two days to dry thoroughly. I'm not going to tie up their dining room table nonstop for the next 6 months with a blanket or sweater that gets washed every time the baby's used it for 10 minutes. Not when I know there's yarn out there that's not only cheaper, but can go in the dryer, making it far more convenient for the recipient.

I guess what I'm trying to get at is why is Walmart being targeted when Sears, The Bay, Zellers, and whoever else does the exact same things as Walmart? Walmart is even better to their employees in some ways than the other stores that I named.

Btw, the retailers don't "lay off" staff necessarily, they give them few if any hours. This means they don't qualify for EI because they are working, but have reduced hours due to the time of year. EI would only pay them 55% of their average wage anyway, so figure out how much these people would get less the 4 or 8 hrs. a week they are getting from January thru April and it's hardly worth even putting in a claim. Plus, they still wouldn't have anywhere near enough to live on. I work with these people, I know what I'm talking about.

...Linda

Remember the journey of a thousand miles that begins with a single step ? Same principle. If we are careless at the lowest level with our freedoms, soon it gets bigger and bigger...

I'm a fan of the Hanes Her Way briefs, myself. They're "square", they don't ride up, the elastic doesn't get stretched out, the cotton isn't thin, and they hold up over time. Granny-pantie or not, they're a fashion "do" in this household!

Probably TMI, Jinx

I'm sitting here in my home watching for the 15th time "Mona Lisa Smile." It is almost over and the usual tears are welling up in my eyes for the same reasons they always do when I see this film. Not all wanderers are aimless...beyond definition, beyond the image. Then again, I've been told by someone I deeply trust that my compliance is my defiance.

Not all is as it seems, Sheena. It's not always the aim to "get us" for one reason or another. Sometimes things just simply are the way they are.

I'm the last person on this planet to make any false claims about myself and how tolerant I am or not, but there are certain things in life which I do not get foamed up about. This issue we are discussing is one of them.

I am not very concerned for my freedom. If I am supposed to have it, I will have it. I think differently than you do, I suppose. It's not better or worse, but different. I am not worried about certain things because my life is important to me and it's far more important that I can still cry at a particular point in a film over an over because it tells me that I am deeply who I am and I know who I am.

Who I am, simply, is not bothered about the small stuff. I don't envision it as turning into a huge pile down the road. I am mindful of what I do, and who I am now. My head is where my feet are. I no longer get drunk with anger and angst over certain things. Yet, other things rush up a passion in me which is (many times) overwhelming.

So, we're different, but also the same. No worries.

V

Yessssssssss!

I know someone who works at WalMart, after having worked at other stores. She doesn't agree that the things alleged are happening only at WalMart; after several years, she's still happy at WalMart and won't go back to her former employers. That says more to me than a bunch of activists who've never worked there.

Technically, she is one of the WalMart employees without company health insurance, because she's got an even better policy through her husband. But the statistics don't have a third space for "insured through other source", only "Yes, has WalMart's insurance" or "No, doesn't have WalMart-provided insurance".

And don't be fooled into thinking that a union will magically make everything all better. The ex was one of the union reps for his employer, so I know whereof I speak because I read the contracts. The union got them good health insurance, but the pay was still dreadful. After working there 5+ years, he still got less than half what other members of the same union earn for doing similar work; $8.50 an hour when other Teamsters I knew were earning $20. Some of the employees covered by the union contract were earning just over minimum wage, but still had to pay union dues from their meager earnings, which meant they netted less than if they'd been flipping burgers. For those who had health insurance from other sources (spouse's employment, military retiree, etc.), they would've done better at some other job where minimum wage meant you took home the full minimum wage and didn't have to pay union dues.

In fact, let's talk about some of the Teamsters I know who are earning $20/hour, our city bus drivers. When I first heard that, I suggested the ex apply for one of those jobs. He reported back that new hires work only part-time, so his income would NOT double if his hourly rate doubled. Since I knew he'd do anything to avoid "real work", I started a discussion with my bus driver to verify that information. New hires are the ones who work a split shift (2 hours early morning and 2 hours late night), and it might be as much as FIVE YEARS before they had enough seniority to get a full-time, continuous shift. After hearing that from my driver (who'd been working there for years), I was convinced things had changed, so I asked one of the newer employees who was still doing the rush hour split shift. She confirmed that she had been there for several years and was still too far down the seniority list to bid on the full-time jobs. As she said, this part-time stuff was OK when she was married and her husband could watch the baby early mornings and late evenings, but now she was paying a substantial chunk of her income to the one day care she could find that was open at odd hours ... since they were the only one, they could charge anything they liked. "Someday" she'd be doing well, but till she had enough seniority for a full-time job, she was barely making it, and it was hard to keep her eyes on the long-term, when she knew she could get an office job and immediately earn more while paying less for day care.

Publix Supermarket has an SA person in front of the store and a disclaimer in the window stating that they had no choice but to let him be there. I thought that was odd.

Lucille

What on earth do you mean that they're not "square." How do you put a round body into a square panty?

:^)))))

Lucille

>

I often buy Hanes or Fruit of the Loom bikini panties and I find they hold up very nicely even though they're tossed in the washer and the dryer.

Lucille