Wal-Mart moving employees to new schedule system
Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is moving workers to a new advanced scheduling system, building on a pilot program it tested last year that schedules hourly employees based on the number of shoppers in a store.
“This is exactly what we were piloting before, and it has been introduced to cashiers and customer service positions,” Wal-Mart spokeswoman Sarah Clark said.
The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday that Wal-Mart will start moving many of its 1.3 million workers from predictable shifts to a system based on how many customers are in stores at a given time.
Wal-Mart said last year that it was testing the system as it looks to cut labor costs. Clark said Wal-Mart plans to move all hourly workers to the new system this year.
Critics contend the advanced system takes hours away from full-time employees and demands more flexibility from workers.
“You are saying to workers who are already getting paid poorly … if you want any hours, you have to agree to work when we want you to work and to agree to a schedule that changes,” said Chris Kofinis, spokesman for WakeUpWalMart.com, which has pressured Wal-Mart to improve pay and benefits.
I’m crying a river here. I worked in retail right out of high school many years ago, union store to boot. I had no control over my schedule other then to give the manager my college class schedule. He would not schedule you hours during class or 1 hour either side of class.
That’s it.
You only knew your schedule the previous week’s Friday. You had no set times you would work and it would change on a weekly basis. In one week I might work a couple “firsts”, 5am-1pm. Perhaps a “mid” from noon to 7. Even an overnight or two. All in one week. The next week might be all overnights. The following all firsts. And I was happy to get the hours I could get.
They would shcedule you based on what days were busiest. For example we’d have extra staff on the 2 days after the old people would get their social security check as they would all shop those days. Fridays and Saturdays were the busiest days. Weekend off? Yea right. Holidays? See at 8. Managers schedule already based off of busiest times, the computer can just help narrow that down better.
The thing Walmart is doing is no different then what is done in every other retail business for decades, union or not. Don’t like it? Go work somewhere else.
It is not Wal-Mart’s or anyone else’s job to take care of you or your family. THAT IS YOUR JOB. If you can’t get a better job than Wal-Mart and you are not either in high school, college or retired, then you have NO SKILLS. That is YOUR fault. No one else’s. You had the opportunity, same as everyone else, High School is free, and community college is not that expensive, plus there are student loans. No one is going to give you an education or skills; YOU have to go GET one. WELCOME TO REAL LIFE. That isn’t me being mean and heartless that is life. I grew up poor, my dad was laid off when the steel mills closed in Pittsburgh, and I still managed to get through grad school. I am no different than anyone else, so if I did it you can too.
I’ve worked retail for over 30 years and I can tell you, you can not predict when or how many people are going to come into a store to shop. You can not predict inclement weather which causes people to get out and shop in your stores. Walmart can use their last years sales and make schedules accordingly, but they cannot predict people. When hurricanes are predicted, people swamp the stores to buy. If last year their was no hurricane, then they would schedule for slow sales. This year, you might have the worst case scenerio. You just can’t predict weather and people. Yes, most working class people tend to shop after they get off at 4:00 or 5:00, you also have the first of the month folks who get food stamps, wic, or military people. We know when they shop……….. Walmart’s scheduling does interfere with people who work two jobs to make ends meet. They also change schedules during a week to accomodate for call ins and other problems. You can’t predict when someone is going to be sick or have a death in the family. In fact, being sick is not an excuse to be out of work. They would rather you work sick and make everyone else sick, then to tell you to stay at home and get better. Yes, before you even say it, there are those who take full advantage of the sick rules. Its the ones who are actually sick and have worked sick, who pay the price. Walmart has its good and its bad. You just have to make the best of it, as it happens in all walks of life. I have worked for two companies, one for 16 years and walked away with nothing, except friendship from fellow employees. The other, for 13 years, and I hope to be able to leave with more than just friendship this time.
#24 ,#25 & #32 – You seem to make a good case for tax reform along with the elimination of other burdens every citizen is forced to pay into such as Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. Is it hard for a single mom, who has a low level of human capital, to provide her family with everyday necessities? Yes. But she made the choice to start a family at a time when it was most economically infeasible to do so. If she lives in New York City her burden is made worse with high taxes, and price controls in the form of rent controls.
Ron (#36) hit the nail on the head in his write-up. A person who chooses to not seek higher levels of education and instead invest in a family early in life will undoubtedly be worse off than the individual who remains single, works 20-30 hours a week, attends and completes a community college.
I am a Walmart employee,also a Walmart customer.I see the coin from both sides.This company has been great to work for and the variety of merchandise and the low prices are hard to beat. Over my career with Walmart,their have been numerous changes,but like with any family,you work through them,You have each other to complain to,also Managers and the store Manager.This is just a small bump in the road and Walmart will triumph.I will conform to this change,but it’s nice to know that upper management listens to our concerns and they try their best to satisfy our needs as well as the customers.We are given our schedule three weeks in advance which allows us to make Dr. appts.etc. We are given many perks that the public never hears about,little things that let us know we are appreciated! Our customers are #1,,that,s the bottom line!!!!!
C.S.C if you don’t mind me asking what do you think the average wage is for a Wal-Mart employee for the first 3-4 years of employment? Also what kind of opportunities are available to a worker to reach higher levels of management (i.e. department head, inventory manager, ect.) and what are the costs (increased hours/ responsibilities) and what are teh benefits (increased wages)?
In the news Radio Shack was mentioned as a company who uses the same system. When I worked as seasonal help for RS before the computer system was implemented, I was able to work on Saturday and Sunday and get all of my required hours. This was great because I had a 55 minute drive each way. After the computer was implemented, it said I had to work 3 hours on Tues, 3 on Thur, 4 on Sat, and 6 on Sun.
Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.
Corporations are fictions granted life and relief from personal responsiblity by the government. They are chartered to exist for the sole purpose of benefiting the nation’s people — not the corporation. If the corporation pursues policies that underemploy and impoverish the country, that corporation has broken the contract implicit in its charter.
Yes, the corporations owe us good jobs. That’s what WE MADE THEM FOR. We don’t exist for their benefit, they exist for ours. The “they owe you nothing” argument is pure feudalism. They owe us everything.
And to top this off: corporations, as a whole, excluding financial institutions, have a record amount of cash on hand — nine hundred billion dollars, as of this moment. So much they actually don’t know where to put it. Some corporations actually are making th majority of their profits through interest paid on their cash deposits! And they are CUTTING HOURS?
This is fucking madness. Re-regulate these cash-mad bastards. They”ve broken their corporate license. Time to bring back some ass whuppin’.
And another thing: if the poor rich corporatists don’t like being regulated, they are welcome to quit their career manipulating public opnion and get a real job. It’s not the nation’s responsibility to make rich lazy white men richer by squeezing everyone who didn’t go to Harvard.
42.
Main Entry: cor•po•ra•tion
Pronunciation: “kor-p&-‘rA-sh&n
Function: noun
Etymology: Late Latin corporatio, from Latin corporare to form into a body, from corpor- corpus body
: an invisible, intangible, artificial creation of the law existing as a voluntary chartered association of individuals that has most of the rights and duties of natural persons but with perpetual existence and limited liability
(Corporation. (n.d.). Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of Law.)
I don’t see where it says it owes you a job or anything. Corporations exist to provide revenue to their shareholders. If you think a corporation is making too much money, buy stock in it. It’s called capitalism. If you don’t like Wal-Mart, don’t work or shop there. Go somewhere else. That’s called freedom.
damn I give. Corporations are:
1. Licensed by the government to exist.
2. Are a legal fiction.
3. Are not created to exist for their own benefit — otherwise, why involve a government license? It’s not a license to print money.
4. Governments are instituted by men for their benefit, not a corporation, which doesn’t actually exist except as a legal fiction.
5. The exist at our pleasure, for our benefit. If they don’t think this is true, let’s see them try to exist without a charter. Personal liability is SO constraining.
All of this is obvious. That it is verboten in the U.S. says something about what our culture has become under Reaganism and the Federalist Society surge in the higher courts. Anyplace else on the planet, a corporation is the bitch, not the master.
If we go with the Randite definition of a corporation as an entity that exists soley for the quarterly profit, then it answers to no citizen, no man. It is a self-contained feudal keep. It is immune to the government, has no responsibility to the country that permitted its existence. It is a cancer.
How many post-ers are going to have to say ‘you don’t like it? get another job’ before someone else calls them on it? It’s like that other hoary cliche from the seventies: ‘don’t like the government or the vietnam war? move to russia!’ It assumes you have infinite freedom of choice. There is a pair of concepts from political philosophy — negative vs positive liberty — that comes to mind, just for starters.
Right now, in Alberta, workers do have something vaguely approaching the mystical ‘choice’ you guys drone on and on about. There is little competition between workers and McDonalds employees are pulling down 15-20 CDN an hour … but then unemployment is way below its ‘natural’ level there.
But there’s a resource boom going on there, and elsewhere in the world, it ain’t so easy, and no amount of slogan spouting is going to change the fact that by definition capitalism exists if and only if people no longer have direct access to the means of subsistance, but are FORCED by market compulsion to sell their labour. And it so happens that since Reagan, it’s been a buyer’s market for corporations, and not by chance (c’mon, read a little economic history….).
So saying ‘you’re free’ & ‘it’s a free market’ just ain’t so. There has never been such a thing as free market capitalism in toto, not even in cowboy capitalistic Russia. Free markets always tend toward concentration of wealth and power — monopoly — which is why government supposedly regulates them. John Stuart Mill claimed that unless there at least 12 major players in a particular market, there’s no real competition, and how many competitiors do you think Walmart really has?
Finally, 38: what if everyone had a PhD, would that change the pyramid shaped system we live under — would all those smart people have access to choose great jobs? No, of course not. So it’s not about choice then – we NEED people to work in Walmart, etc. Any one particular person could have a father who raped him and a mother who sold her food stamps for crack … and still somehow miraculously get into Harvard via some collossal exertion of willpower, but are we to make economic policy for an entire nation based on this kind of libertarian myth? Hands up all those who read Ayn Rand in high school and thought it was serious philosophy and solved everything once and for all.
#44, Ron,
Main Entry: cor·po·ra·tion
Pronunciation: “kor-p&-‘rA-sh&n
Function: noun
1 a : a group of merchants or traders united in a trade guild
b : the municipal authorities of a town or city
2 : a body formed and authorized by law to act as a single person although constituted by one or more persons and legally endowed with various rights and duties including the capacity of succession
3 : an association of employers and employees in a basic industry or of members of a profession organized as an organ of political representation in a corporative state
Merriam Webster’s Online Dictionary
I didn’t read anything about “freedom” in this definition. I do read where they are formed and authorized by law and have certain duties.
23, mxpwr03
If one assumes that a person works 50 hours a week,
Where the heck do you get this 50 hours a week from? WalMart barely lets its employees work 32 hours a week, and you think they will pay them overtime too?
The rest of this post shows you took economics in gr 11, and that was it. I never took any microeconomics course that suggested all employees were capable of quitting a job. Labor is the least plastic or mobile component in any company’s costs.
. If a person chooses to start a family at age 20 with a low level of human capital his wage will be inevitably low.
If is a big word you throw out there as an option. Most single mothers are not single by choice. The neo-con / fundy war on sex education and abortion is the single largest cause of unwanted pregnancies. (pls note before you say it, sex is normal and a right, not a privilege )
If a person chooses to start a family at age 20 with a low level of human capital his wage will be inevitably low. Contrasted, if a person chooses to work throughout adolescence, obtain an adequate level of human capital (high school, college) his wage will be considerably higher. Both were free to choose, and should the latter individual be met with taxation for the former’s choice?
Absolutely. Who was paying taxes to pay for the school so your “human capitol” case could go get educated?
You obviously are making very uneducated economic arguments. Is this what Rush Limburger is spewing lately?
#20 – If one assumes that a person works 50 hours a week, at a wage of $7/hour, that would amount to $1,400 a month in pre-tax income; seems to me like that is enough to pay for rent, and other basic necessities.
It seems to you that’s enough. It seems to me you have never known adversity.
The “if you don’t like it, quit” crowd thinks they are extolling the virtue of capitalism and freedom, but what they really mean is, “I got mine, go fuck yourself.”
And there is the problem… Being at the top of the pyramid is not like being God… One gets to be at the top because of the time and labor invested by those below the top. Corporations DO OWE something to more than just inert and unproductive stockholders… They owe something to employees and customers. Wal Mart doesn’t owe a stock clerk enough money for a three bedroom split level in the suburbs and an SUV… But the excess hundred dollar bills the Walton clan wipes their asses with were actually earned far lower on the chain… They owe those people something more than they are giving.
36, and SOME of you others…
SHOW me where I can go hunt for myself.
Show me a place I can grow foods for my family.
Show me a place with enough WOOD that I can build it myself, with a water source near by.
Where I can place a water generator….
AND not OWE, the gov for the ground, or get in trouble for shooting someones CATTLE.
And I will say:
If only for being LATE, thank you, but you are 20 years to LATE.
#20 If we all move to India, we could work 112 hours a week at $2 and hour and be able to afford a crappy trailer home and a 10 speed bike. Life would be awesome!
51,
WHICH could be more then you would get in the USA, at $5-8 per hour.
I’ve been with WalMart for over 4 years and the new changes in scheduling is just one more way they can take control of your life. The first year or so I actually believed the WalMart propaganda that they were a good place to work. They changed your annual pay raises from a percentage of your pay to a flat 40 cents an hour- so now it doesn’t matter if you bust your butt or simply put in your time- you get the same pay raise as everyone else. Last year I got their medical plan- only to find out it doesn’t cover pap smears or mammograms the first year, or anything pre-existing, so you have to wait two years for that coverage and every time you did go to the doctor the insurance sent you paperwork to give your doc or he wouldn’t get paid.
They offer this terrific program where if you move to another location they guarantee you a job in another WalMart- IF there is an opening! They didn’t tell you you’ll have to take a pay cut. I made $10.65 an hour two years ago at a supercenter near a large city but had to move. I’m up to $9.70 doing the same job as dept mgr and that is with two annual pay raises. They often “coach” you, usually a written report which stays in your file, for the simplist mistake and often at the whim of an ego driven assistant mgr. You cannot hope to advance once you have been coached until a year has passed with no additional coaching. Work somewhere else? I’d LOVE to! What really sucks is I love what I do and enjoy the customers but the control on my life and health isn’t worth it anymore. They hound you to death for productivity but give you no help and no OT and constantly add to your daily workload. And yes, you can get coached for not getting everything done. The harder you try to succeed, the more they expect. They no longer offer merit raises or any monetary recognition. You’re lucky to even get a thank you. People looking to work at WalMart go to the store and fill out their survey at the little machines and those surveys go to the home office in Arkansas for “weeding out” then the more promising ones get sent back to your store. Arkansas controls everything from the thermostat in each store to who gets hired. It’s legal slavery.
For those who are turning their nose at “if you don’t like it, get another job” and saying that people don’t have choices. Hogwash. People always have choices. I wanted to get out of retail and so I did. I dedicated myself to finish college and take out student loans to do it (still paying those off). Still doesn’t guarantee you a good job but I eventually got a “regular” M-F/9-5 job not in retail.
People can change their situation if they want to. Move if they need to. Oh, you are 20 with 3 kids and no spouse and can’t move? Well exactly who’s fault is it that you couldn’t keep your pants on. If you can barely support yourself you sure as heck shouldn’t be having kid after kid making $8/hr for crying out loud. Take some responsibility for your life. No one is going to help you except yourself.
As for #53. I feel for you. But nothing any different there then any other retail store I’ve ever seen, union or not (except perhaps the pay cut). However if I was forced to take a pay cut like that and you’re moving anyway, that’s a great time to find a different place to work since it’s not costing you to move cause you’re already doing it. You can make $10-12/hr easy being a receptionist or secretary working the 9-5er in an office somewhere.
Wow, 54, you win. For a second there I thought you were begging the question but ‘hogwash’ nailed it, Q.E.D. , nothing more to say about the matter: people always have choice because people always have choice.
GIGO Fusion. Again. Are you ready to get stuffed again? Good.
Let’s start by what I said, not what you wish I said. I said (and I quote): “If you don’t like Wal-Mart, don’t work or shop there. Go somewhere else. That’s called freedom.” I never said it was in the definition of corporation. You are free to work and shop (and not work or shop) where you please.
But since you are the expert, why don’t you show us where it is codified that a corporation owes YOU a good job?
You will also notice that “2: a body formed and authorized by law to act as a single person although constituted by one or more persons and legally endowed with various rights and duties including the capacity of success” contains this little nugget “formed and authorized by law to act as a single person”. So now a single person also owes you a good job? Since that is way over your head I will ‘splain it you. Corporations are treated under the law much like a single person, they can sue, be sued, etc, they also have the much of the same rights as a single person, and no one owes you a good job, from the guy down the street to the corporation around the block.
So feel free to show us were it is codified that a corporation owes anyone a good job. I am real interested.
To be upfront, I happen to be associated with Asgard Systems, who are publishers of employee scheduling software. We are not the suppliers of Wal-Mart’s employee scheduling software and are unaware of what product they are using.
Even if Wal-Mart (or any employer) used a pencil and paper to produce their employee schedules, they might still implement policies and procedures that could be viewed as promoting their own corporate interests. The promotional literature that we provide regarding our product, does directly address organizational scheduling needs. However, such needs include taking the employees personal life into perspective as well. An example is the priority given to personal conflicting events such as night school, taking care of sick parents, weddings etc. Such issues are promoted at our website ( Employee Scheduling Software ), in our free trial version and our instructional movies. I am very pleased to say that, most employers express the need of having to contend with the humanistic aspects of managing an organization. Their needs dictate our products design. In the end it really is about how management elects to use any tool that counts.
I am starting to work at wal-mart very soon and am thankful to have the job. I was laid off fr4om a job I’ve held for years…put wal-mart down if you want to but I won’t be living in my car!