Supermarkets slam Wal-Mart--Lower labor costs at heart of strikes by grocery workers

AP via Deseretnews ^ | October 21, 2003 | Gavin McCormick

[A CA Guy]

Don't they balance the low wages by drawing in people with little or no skill? If you are unskilled in life, you stay with low wages and if you have skills and education you demand your value in the market place.

The wages are from the market place and a Wal-Mart seems to thrive on people with little skills who are grateful to have a job anywhere.

If they don't like the pay or work, they can leave and find the pay they want if they can get it.

IMO, most can't get it and Wal-Mart's pay reflects their value.

[Texas_Dawg]

I shop for food at Costco and Food4Less.

Personally, I fly to China and buy mine directly from the Communist leaders.

[CDHart]

It's not the lack of choice that bothers me. After all, we can and do shop via internet. It's the local people who get driven out of business. I guess that's a bit like mourning the passing of the stagecoach, though.

Carolyn

[stands2reason]

I eat at Luby's----very few (if any) preservatives there.

[EagleMamaMT]

The nearest Wal-Mart is 30+ miles from my house, which is fine with me. We don't have a Wal-Mart in this county at all, and we still have some really nice locally-owned stores to patronize. We have a couple of nice local grocery stores, an old fashioned 5- and 10-cent store (which has a Radio Shack inside, as well as a full-service hardware store) and lots of other small businesses.

I sure as heck don't buy any meat at Wal-Mart at all. The meat is cut off site and brought in prewrapped. I bought a T-bone steak from them a couple of years ago (prepackaged) and I still don't know what animal that steak came off of, but it wasn't a steer - it probably answered to the name of "Trigger".

I don't buy chicken from them, either, because the last time I bought chicken there, when I got it home and opened the package up, it was green and rotten (I couldn't see through the packaging, which was colored plastic, to tell it was bad). I only go to Wal-Mart if there there is no other place I can get a particular item. I shop my local stores first.

[ledzep75]

But what really caught our attention were the prices: $3/lb for fresh (farm bred) salmon, $5.29/lb for 5-7 pound rolls of filet mignon (we don't bother with hamburger anymore), $1.59/lb for 5 lb racks of ribs, etc.

The filet mignon sounds good, but as with most Socal Groceries it's probably that USDA Select garbage. I have to travel back to the Midwest once a year to load up on good steaks. Back in the Midwest, California Beef would be considered commercial grade dog food. The worst steak back there is better than the $10/lb USDA Choice that Ralphs and Albertsons ships in as Aged meaning Midwesterners refused to buy it because it was too old to sell.

[meyer]

Amazing how people will shed any sense of dignity and self-respect just to save a few shekels on some laundry detergent.

Amazing how people will label others as "undignified" because they shop at a store that sells the same products for considerably less.

[ledzep75]

Even Wal-Mart has better Quality

Too Expensive!

[EagleMamaMT]

You say that Wal-Mart never puts other stores out of business and that you don't know of any place that they have put stores out of business.

I do. My home town. Go to Wagoner, Oklahoma. There used to be two other grocery stores in town, an IGA grocery and a Homeland (subsidiary of Safeway). Now, the only place in town to buy food is the Wal-Mart Supercenter. Drive through the downtown section and look at all the boarded-up buildings. There used to be a full-service hardware there. Gone. There was a Western Auto and an OTASCO. Gone. The only businesses downtown now are flea markets in a few of the old buildings.

Oh, and BTW, the quality of the food is really lousy in the SuperCenter (for example, rotten eggs and spoiled meat) and yes, they did raise their prices on milk and meat and other staples when they finally killed off the two grocery stores and people had to drive about 20 miles to shop at any other grocery store.

[kmiller1k]

bkmk