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Wal-Mart will pay employees to deliver packages on their way home

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Re: Wal-Mart will pay employees to deliver packages on their way home

#171

Post by ruste »

timthelion wrote: post #130
dominotw wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>forcing the government to pay the rest of a living wage. What difference does it make where the money is coming from? If we force Walmart to pay more, low-income ppl who shop will have to pay higher prices as opposed to now where all the taxpayers are footing the bill.

utter nonsense. Walmart makes 131 BILLION dollars a year in pure profit [1]. Obviuosly, forcing walmart to pay their employees more could lead to them making less profit and the poor being better off. EDIT: Basically there is no correlation between walmart's costs and how much the consumer pays. [1] http://www.wikinvest.com/stock/Wal-Mart_(WMT)/Data/Gross_Pro...

Gross profit. Not Net profit. They made a tenth of that after all other costs are considered. [1] 13.6 billion spread over 2.1 million employees works out to about a $6500 per year raise or about $3.10 per hour given 2087 working hours in a year before they're in the red. It'd help a bit, but nothing life changing. You're vastly overestimating their ability to raise wages without raising prices.

[1]http://www.marketwatch.com/investing/stock/wmt/financials

Re: Wal-Mart will pay employees to deliver packages on their way home

#172

Post by smileysteve »

ghostly_s wrote: post #89
v45h wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it only shady because you believe Walmart employees are not paid enough as is? Doctors can choose to moonlight and get paid extra, and I don't think anyone is complaining about that. And overtime is certainly a thing. Coming from Walmart's perspective, I'm assuming it just seemed like a smart business decision rather than something maliciously intended. Like hey look, we can make our customers and employees happie…

> Doctors can choose to moonlight and get paid extra, and I don't think anyone is complaining about that. Doctors have that choice, and yet they don't do that. I wonder why?

Beyond Doctors, a lot of software engineers are highly paid and moonlight as well.

Or startup founders driving for uber.

Re: Wal-Mart will pay employees to deliver packages on their way home

#173

Post by alistairSH »

potatoyogurt wrote: post #105
ghostly_s wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Doctors can choose to moonlight and get paid extra, and I don't think anyone is complaining about that. Doctors have that choice, and yet they don't do that. I wonder why?

>In Medical Economics’ 2013 annual survey, 36% of family medicine/general practitioners and 35% of internists reported earning income from sources other than their primary practice/employer in 2012. That number was about the same for cardiologists (38%), but was higher for hospitalists (40%). Pediatricians and gastroenterologists were lower, at 25% and 27%, respectively. http://medicaleconomics.modernmedicine.com/med…

Unless I missed it, that report doesn't indicate the total hours worked, only rates at which doctors perform work outside their primary clinical job.

There is also a massive difference between a doctor taking a side job because they enjoy it and a WalMart associate taking a delivery job because they have no choice.

Re: Wal-Mart will pay employees to deliver packages on their way home

#174

Post by TillE »

xienze wrote: post #141
r00fus wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You think the average HN employee works shifts at Wal-mart? No, it's people here cheering other's exploitation (in the name of the mythical "freedom").

You're both assuming that this must necessarily be exploitative. It might actually be a good program for Walmart workers.

Any situation where you do not receive the full value of your labor is exploitation, of course.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploitation_of_labour#Surplus...

Re: Wal-Mart will pay employees to deliver packages on their way home

#175

Post by dragonwriter »

twoquestions wrote: post #160
justforFranz wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It blows my mind how libertarian/naive techy types are. But I also suspect there's some right-wing nutjob organization spamming hacker news comments with pro-business community idiocy.

Libertarian isn't necessarily right-wing, even though it generally is in the US. When you get some time, search for and skim though "The Conquest of Bread" to see a hard Leftist complain about taxes. Be warned, the author is kind of a nutbar.

> Libertarian isn't necessarily right-wing, even though it generally is in the US.

American left-libertarians exist, but may not identify as libertarians because right-libertarians have kind of monopolized the label.

Re: Wal-Mart will pay employees to deliver packages on their way home

#176

Post by EpicEng »

ghostly_s wrote: post #89
v45h wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it only shady because you believe Walmart employees are not paid enough as is? Doctors can choose to moonlight and get paid extra, and I don't think anyone is complaining about that. And overtime is certainly a thing. Coming from Walmart's perspective, I'm assuming it just seemed like a smart business decision rather than something maliciously intended. Like hey look, we can make our customers and employees happie…

> Doctors can choose to moonlight and get paid extra, and I don't think anyone is complaining about that. Doctors have that choice, and yet they don't do that. I wonder why?

Well I guess just making things up is one approach to debate, eh?

Re: Wal-Mart will pay employees to deliver packages on their way home

#177

Post by smileysteve »

Chaebixi wrote: post #162
dominotw wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>forcing the government to pay the rest of a living wage. What difference does it make where the money is coming from? If we force Walmart to pay more, low-income ppl who shop will have to pay higher prices as opposed to now where all the taxpayers are footing the bill.

>> ...Walmart uses their resources to take advantage of current (broken) laws to...pay...pennies...and forc[e]...the government to pay the rest of a living wage. > What difference does it make where the money is coming from? Because taxpayers are subsidizing Walmart's business, for one. That's unacceptable, especially if the subsidy is the result of conscious policy on Walmart's part. > If we force Walmart to pay mor…

> Because taxpayers are subsidizing Walmart's business

We can assume then that taxpayers are subsidizing all businesses with employees making under $11 and hour, so why isn't the government changing minimum wage laws from $7.25/hr and $2.35/hr

Re: Wal-Mart will pay employees to deliver packages on their way home

#178

Post by xienze »

TillE wrote: post #174
xienze wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're both assuming that this must necessarily be exploitative. It might actually be a good program for Walmart workers.

Any situation where you do not receive the full value of your labor is exploitation, of course. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploitation_of_labour#Surplus...

Again, you're saying this without even knowing what the pay structure is.

Re: Wal-Mart will pay employees to deliver packages on their way home

#179

Post by aaron-lebo »

leggomylibro wrote: post #113
SilasX wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't think you're jumping the gun here, maybe? Do you even know what the compensation will be? >Instead of paying their employees a living wage, or offering benefits befitting a delivery driver, Obviously you can criticize Walmart's current practices. The issue is whether this policy is any worse than what they had before. >they can offset all of the risk, deprecation costs, etc associated with delivering a pack…

You're right that I don't know all the details, but I know how Walmart tends to behave with regards to their workers, and I know that the system their proposing looks unusually ripe for abuse, to the point where it seems like it must have been intentional. I'm tired of people wrapping shit in a pretty bow and trying to pass it off as a gift. It keeps happening, and people keep going along with it. Maybe this time we'…

What do you propose?

I'm against exploitation of workers, too, but at the end of the day there is only so much you can do with jobs that require relatively unskilled labor. If a 15 year old can do your job as well as you can after a few months of training, it's not a safe job that you can expect anything out of. It's gonna get automated away anyway.

But here Walmart (whatever their other faults), offers a way for workers to make money doing something they already have to (thus it has more utility than their normal role), and they're evil?

If people's regular jobs paid a "living wage", people wouldn't have to Uber, but it's how the world works.

Kind of damned if you do damned if you don't isn't it?

Re: Wal-Mart will pay employees to deliver packages on their way home

#180

Post by rectang »

SilasX wrote: post #156
rectang wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Per the TechCrunch article, workers need to submit proof-of-insurance to participate. The wear-and-tear is going on employee vehicles rather than company vehicles, the additional distance they travel will increase their personal insurance rates, and as with rideshare they will need to pay additional riders on their policies. (If they don't have the riders their policies will be canceled as soon as they make a claim!)…

>Per the TechCrunch article, workers need to submit proof-of-insurance to participate. I assume that's because of "we only want people on this who are insurable drivers in good standing to begin with" and not because of "we expect your personal policy to cover this". >These additional costs make the deal worse for employees and better for Walmart in ways which are hard for the workers to understand. But I guarantee y…

> I assume that's because of "we only want people on this who are insurable drivers in good standing to begin with" and not because of "we expect your personal policy to cover this".

The costs I enumerated accrue to the employee even if Walmart has insurance covering drivers while they are "online" and actively making deliveries.

If that even got by you, what chance does the average worker have?

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