Posted on 01/16/2016 1:48:41 AM PST by Zakeet
Walmart abruptly announced Friday that it was abandoning a promise to build stores in Washington’s poorest neighborhoods, an agreement that had been key to the deal allowing the retailer to begin operating in the nation’s capital.
[Snip]
"I'm blood mad," D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) said at a Friday news conference.
"It's an outrage," said former mayor Vincent C. Gray (D), who in 2013 completed the handshake deal for the stores. "This is devastating and disrespectful to the residents of the East End of the District of Columbia."
[Snip ... buried toward the bottom of a long article]
[Council member Jack Evans] said that, behind closed doors, Walmart officials were more frank about the reasons the company was downsizing. He said the company cited the District's rising minimum wage, now at $11.50 an hour and possibly going to $15 an hour if a proposed ballot measure is successful in November. He also said a proposal for legislation requiring D.C. employers to pay into a fund for family and medical leave for employees, and another effort to require a minimum amount of hours for hourly workers were compounding costs and concerns for the retailer.
"They were saying, 'How are we going to run the three stores we have, let alone build two more?'" Evans said.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Liberalism is clearly a mental disease. when I first started on FR, I though “oh how awful to say such a thing”.....I was very naive. But after reading and seeing how liberals operate. I am convinced they are deranged.
My guess is one of the criteria on store selection for closing would be those that could be prone to rioting and looting and probably already suffering inventory slippage and unionization efforts.
Let the EBTers go buy there groceries at the corner liquor store. They bit the hand that could have fed them cheaply.
Interesting. Never thought of that, but you are 100 percent correct. One thing I do know is I am sick of Walmart bashing (not here) but literally everywhere else. I may just have to take a ride to Walmart later on today just to support them because the libs are pissing me off.......USATODAY and other rags.
Oh wow........I am literally speechless. I am not kidding you, but I am not going to Walmart today after all. I am rather outraged by reading that. Actually pissed off.....that outrage word is overused.
Democratics were against it before they were for it.
Yup. The libs still don’t realize that raising the minimum wage above what a business can afford to pay is an insane business model.
It sucks to have such an opportunity walk away. Many potential jobs not happening. But to wither for a promise doesn’t make sense either.
I’m surprised that the one store they managed to open is still there..
too, too, funny.
mayor bow wow blood mad.
For anyone who has never been to the “zone” (my description of DC)....it’s a place where you shake your head because nothing really fits into reality.
It’s a five by eight stretch of property. The fed part of it barely fits into a one by two mile area. As long as you stay north of Independence Avenue and south of I Street....and west of Union Station...you are in safe territory. If you transit south of the Anacosta River...day or night....you are in a bad part of town.
DC city cops only protect the Georgetown area (the far west of DC). That means that only five to eight of the 120 normal murders a year in DC will occur in Georgetown.
Punk thugs hang out for enjoyment at the L’Enfant Plaza subway terminal (the major terminal of DC). It’s a daily thing to rob or assault people around the platform area. Cops? The only cops down in the tunnels are Metro cops...who are the most incompetent cops of any force in DC.
A couple of years ago, they had a new councilman coming onto the city council. He made it known sixty days out that he wanted a particular type SUV....a particular color....with particular features. The first vehicle they leased....didn’t meet the specs. The second vehicle (which had to be leased from five states over) didn’t have the right interior color combination. So when the third vehicle arrived, and it failed to meet the requirements....then suddenly someone found the city code that said no city councilman could have a SUV....they were all supposed to get cars instead. It’d been on the books for a decade but no one wanted to admit it in public.
If you go and look for grocery stores in the eastern part of DC...there are only a handful. Half the folks living there complain about this weekly. If you want real shopping....you need to drive out of the zone and cross over into Maryland.
When Walmart announced it’d like to settle in DC....the council sat down and devised at least twenty different things that had to be accomplished before they’d allow them that privilege. If they’d put a Super-Walmart at the three edges of Maryland to DC, and one in Arlington....no one would have said a word or made their life difficult. To this day....no one can explain why Walmart choose the most difficult route to getting DC business. Some people believe that most of the city council were hoping that Walmart would come and slip a $100,000 under the table to each of them....thinking they’d go and grease everything to avoid all this pain. Well....Walmart kept jumping over the hoops and trying to play legal....rather than get intimidated into some pay-for-play gimmick which the FBI would have scored big on them.
This is a great opportunity for the Obamas!
They’ll be out of the White House soon and we all know that this is an issue dear to their hearts. They can put THEIR money where their mouths are to open and operate stores in these areas.
Did the CVS store that was burned in Baltimore, Maryland, ever get rebuilt and re-established? Reports are, that they planned to, but no definitive word on how quickly this reconstruction proceeded.
Now CVS has a much larger margin of profit than even Walmart, and they can afford to establish stores at intersections across from Walgreen’s, their major competitor, and BOTH locations will thrive in most neighborhoods.
Walmart is a little more canny in how they locate stores, and they do not enter areas where the first requirement be that only union members can man the stores, or where union organizing is highly likely, as this greatly restricts their flexibility on maintaining a work force that is driven by productivity.
hey, create your own walmart libs!!!! Your unions have the money to do so
“He said the company cited the District’s rising minimum wage, now at $11.50 an hour and possibly going to $15 an hour if a proposed ballot measure is successful in November. He also said a proposal for legislation requiring D.C. employers to pay into a fund for family and medical leave for employees, and another effort to require a minimum amount of hours for hourly workers were compounding costs and concerns for the retailer”
I’ve been to Walmart recently, you could pay the employees $50.00 an hour and many of them still couldn’t and wouldn’t do their jobs.
Look to the current administration for all these regulations and giving these minimum wage employees all these benefits.
The WalMart closing near Cleveland is just south of the east side. How about these communities losing their nearby stores start addressing the cause?
Facts are not offensive unless you're a leftist.
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