Oh, Wal-Mart. Stupid stupid Wal-Mart

[machmoth]

http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/03/25/walmart.insurance.battle/index.html

Summary:
Woman once worked at Wal-Mart, got Wal-Mart health care plan.  Woman later gets in accident, becomes brain damaged, family sues trucking company, gets phat lewt.  Wal-Mart health plan, having paid out $470,000 in expenses, states that if person sues and gets damages, Wal-Mart can get their $470,000 back, and are now demanding it.  Family says "we need that to take care of brain damaged woman".  Wal-Mart says "too bad, can't bend the rules".  Courts agree with Wal-Mart.

This one got to be kind of a hot topic over the Internet, of late.  And really, Wal-Mart is well with in their legal rights to scoop the cash and run.  And this may have been a reasonable idea, if maybe they put some other name on the plan.  If "Joe Bob's Employee Health Plan" dicked someone, that's pretty much par for the course with insurance companies.  But this one says "Wal-Mart" on it.  And nothing says "milking the dime corporate bully bastard" like putting it in the butt of a brain-damaged cripple.  Somewhere in the PR office of heaven, an angel is crying.

[Linna Vot]

lol yeah, a total hr nightmare. that little yellow smiley sure isn't smiling today.

[Bad_Bud]

It's rolling back health benefits.

[Sakes]

Wal-mart is the most soulless of soulless companies.  

They cheat their workers, and they cheat the communities they destroy, and the cheat the taxpayers.

Mal-mart supervisors were instructed to not pay overtime to empolyees by moving hours worked one week if it was over 40 hours into hours work the next week.  

Mal-mart supervisors are instructed to bully employees to working extra hours *off the clock* by threatening to fire them if they don't. The purposefully short-staff then force employees to work extra hours without overtime pay.

Mal-mart purposefully does not pay their employees enough to live on.  If an employee complains, the management is to inform them about government aid.  Mal-marts health benefits are so extremely expensive thats its almost not worth having.   Wal-mart instead instructs its employees on how to get government aid.    This means that Wal-mart's health care plan is your tax dollars.

Mal-mart bullies small communities.  They demand they community waive taxes on them for a set amount of time, usually 4-5 years and if the community refuses, they build just outside of the town limits, and suck the town dry without paying taxes anyway.  After the 5 year tenure is up, they leave the community right before they'd have to pay taxes and move on, leaving behind a town with a completely ruined economy because all small business are now gone.  Their business model is that of locus.

Mal-mart management has a long history of sexist and racist practices.  Qualified employees were told they would not be given management positions because they were women or minorities.

Despite the fact that crime is rampart in Wal-mart parking lots, Mal-mart has done nothing to make the parking lots and areas surrounding their buildings safer.  They did a survey and noted their stores were high crime areas and choose to do nothing.  Instead, mal-wart employs state of the art surveillance inside their stores to watch for shoplifters and to spy on employees, but spends nothing on the safety of their customers and employees.

Mal-mart employs 2 jumbo jets in its anti-union task force.  If employees are suspected of attempting to unionize, specialists are flown in, additional security is installed in the form of cameras and listening devices, and all employees thought to be organizing are immediately fired.


Theres a great documentary called "The High Cost of Low Price" on Mal-mart and its business practices.   If you want an example of a Lawful Evil institution, its Wal-Mart.

http://www.walmartmovie.com/confessions/

I've never shopped at a Walmart in my life and never will.

[Bad_Bud]

Every Wal-Mart I've been to in recent years has had tons of cameras that watch the parking lots.

[Jocularity]

I Bloody well hope they don't make it here to Australia.

[Zodiac]

Do you have ASDA? If you do... Then that's wal-mart

[machmoth]

http://edition.cnn.com/2008/US/law/04/02/walmart.decision/index.html

In short, they're letting them keep the spit of money and adjusting policy.  It also seems to imply they'll help work on how to spend the money, since it seems to have gone at a crazy pace.

I'm looking at the figures.
They won $1,000,000.
There was $417,000 after legal fees.
There was $275,000 left when Wal-Mart went looking for their money.

That money's probably not going to last too much longer anyways, but one has to ask, why is Wal-Mart the worst evil in this case?  Wal-Mart went looking for $470,000, but was going to have to settle for the $275,000.  The lawyers took $583,000 right off the top!  And no one finds this in the least bit obscene.  The lawyers have been big talk about how evil Wal-Mart made so much money, that this little bit was nothing and they should ignore it, but when it seemed the end of the line and the Shanks were going to lose it all, I didn't hear them stepping forward with so much as a friendly dime.

[Bad_Bud]

Welcome to most of society.

[Linna Vot]

there's a reason why at the end of the world there'll be roaches and lawyers. oh, and twinkies.

[Mortician175]

*insert the Imperial Theme song here from star wars*

[theMannequin]

Stupid human tricks.... courtesy of Wal-Mart.

Also of note, take a close look at the past executive who's job it was to excel women in Wal-Mart.

http://www.abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=4619734&page=1

[Ceronicous]

Just posting to remind everyone that Hillary Clinton used to be on the board of W*M. Just sayin'.