I found
this article to be interesting. Here is a portion of it:
Quote:
Issaquah, Wash.-based Costco offers comprehensive health insurance to most of its 78,000 US employees, making it eligible for Kerry's plan, said Kerry's top domestic policy adviser, Sarah Bianchi, 31. That may cut 10 percent, or $35 million, off its annual healthcare premiums.
Wal-Mart's health plan for its 1.3 million US workers is probably not broad enough to qualify for the savings that Kerry's proposal would bring, since it doesn't cover enough workers, said Jason Furman, 33, the Democrat's chief economic policy adviser. Fewer than half of Wal-Mart's employees are enrolled in the company health plan, according to figures supplied by the retailer.
Costco wouldn't have to raise salaries with Kerry's proposal to increase the minimum wage to $7 an hour, from $5.15 now. It already pays hot-dog vendors as much as $16 an hour, and the lowest wage it pays is $10 an hour. That's higher than the $9.96 average wage paid at discount stores bearing the Wal-Mart name.
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It's funny that I can say this, but I actually am a former WalMart employee. My first official job was working for Pace, a competitor of Costco (then Price Club). Pace was bought out by WalMart and then became Sam's Club.
On the surface, not much changed, we gradually expanded our merchandise to include more things offered at Price Club. The real changes were between the lines. There was more corporate BS involved. Before each day they wanted the employees to start a cheer before we opened and there was a lot of corporate pride BS floating around. The crap they were flinging sickened me but the worker responses were worse. Almost everyone bought into it.
Another issue was hair length and earrings for men. At first they tried to make men with long hair cut their hair and stop wearing earrings. Luckily the small minority of affected workers fought back and were able to keep their hair and earrings.
My problem was with worker scheduling and out times. The store closed at 9:00 on weekdays, we were scheduled to leave at 9:30. As a cashier, I counted out my drawer, cleaned up the front end and left. Later we got a hotshot young manager who had us start to straighten up the asiles before we left. We'd work until 9:30 usually and go home, sometimes a little longer.
I noticed that when hotshot was there, we'd progressively stay later and later. Eventually it was at the point where we'd stay to between 10:00-10:30. Finally I was fed up with it and clocked out. As I left, hotshot confronted my friends and I and I had an arguement with him that 9:30 was our scheduled time out and since it was way past it I was leaving. Of course his response was you stay till we dismiss you. I simply countered that the employee handbook states that we are not to work past our scheduled out time. Grudgingly, he let us leave.
For the next few days or weeks (it was a while ago so I'm not sure on the specifics), we were promptly dismissed at our scheduled time. Eventually I was called into a meeting with hotshot and the GM. Expecting to be fired, I dragged myself into the office. Instead I learned that I was correct and the manager was violating policy. However, they created a loophole that out times for closing staff would be "cl" meaning closing time. Now they could keep us as long as they wanted to. I won, but I lost.
Eventually I was laid off after x-mas season with the temp staff they hired. I guess I was labeled a rabble-rouser and they took an easy way to get rid of me. This hadn't occurred to me until now, but our after hours work was probably so that they could take advantage of low-paid cashiers to do a good portion of the higher-paid stockers' work. Even when they company pays someone more, they find ways to limit their hours.
Nowdays, I shop at Costco and do my best to avoid WalMart companies at all costs.
Since you read my rant I'd like to include this from the end of the article:
Quote:
What makes the Wal-Mart and Costco rivalry stand out is that their political donations are so partisan and both companies are likely to gain if their party wins in November.
IRS disclosure records show that Sinegal and Costco chairman Jeffrey Brotman each gave $95,000 last December to the fund-raising arm of America Coming Together, a group organizing voters against Bush, and the Media Fund, which is running anti-Bush advertisements.
Wal-Mart's political action committee, the biggest company PAC, gave Republicans 81 percent of its $1.3 million in donations in the past two years, a higher proportion than any of the top 25 corporate PACs, according to PoliticalMoneyLine, a nonpartisan Washington-based group.
Sixty-seven percent of Wal-Mart's stores are in the 30 states that voted for Bush and Cheney in 2000, according to a comparison of store-location figures in the Wal-Mart 2003 annual report and election results. Costco's stores are mostly located on either coast, with 208 of its 321 stores in the higher-wage, more union-friendly 20 states that voted for Democrat Al Gore in 2000.
Sinegal makes no apologies for Costco's policies, saying higher wages reduce employee turnover, which lowers training costs. ''I'm not a social engineer," he said in an interview. ''Paying good wages is simply good business."
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I love Costco.