Thursday, October 27, 2005

Wal-Mart Memo & Asks Employees to Steal Pens

NYTimes: An internal memo (PDF) sent to Wal-Mart's board of directors proposes numerous ways to hold down spending on health care and other benefits while seeking to minimize damage to the retailer's reputation. Among the recommendations are hiring more part-time workers, discouraging unhealthy people from working at WM, reducing 401K contributions and wooing younger, and presumably healthier, workers by offering education benefits. To discourage unhealthy job applicants it is suggested that WM arrange for "all jobs to include some physical activity (i.e. all cashiers do some cart-gathering). Guess it's gonna suck to be a retired granny door greeter now, huh? Poor lil multi- billionaire Wal-Mart, I feel so bad for them being squeezed by increasing med costs (yeh, and everyone else doesn't?) Next time ya flip thru a WM sales paper w/the employees & their kids featured, consider this: 46% of the children of WM's 1.33 million US employees are uninsured or on Medicaid. And also think of this: "Most of what we do is driven by the fact that we make 3 cents on the dollar." [Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott] said. "As we travel, we ask our employees to take the ink pens from the hotel and use them at work." So, WM's CEO wants his employees to be pen thieves to save WM money? Maybe he could save them lots of money if he took a pay cut: CEO Lee Scott made $17,543,739 in total compensation last yr - nearly twice the average of $9.6 million for leading US CEOs as a whole, according to Business Wk.
Posted by Tina :: 12:30 AM :: 2 Comments:

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