[Winona Online Democracy]
Terry Angst asks:
I've been hearing about this terrible company for a long time and am
baffled how they are able to find enough employees to staff the stores.
The answer to that is that there are a whole lot of folks who are desperate
enough for a job, any job. A whole lot of folks who've lost on out on the
expectation many of us grew up with in the middle of the 20th
Century...that in America, if we were willing to work, there would be a 40
hour work week with benefits available to us, and that we'd be able to
sustain a middle class lifestyle with our earnings.
Now, thanks to the kind of political leadership that has brought us
so-called Free Trade and the so-called Global Economy, a huge number of
Americans are left with nothing but low-wage, no-benefit jobs like what
Wal-Mart offers.
And those of us who, as Paul Double puts it, just want a great selection of
consumer choices at good prices with lots of free parking....for us, the
lives of those low wage, non-unionized, multi-job workers are strangely
invisible. They wish us a nice day, we hand them our credit card, they
smile, we smile. We like to imagine that they like their job, and the
company (whether it's Wal-Mart or Wendy's or any of the other boilerplate
franchises Paul is apparently so enamored with) wants us to maintain that
illusion.
For anyone who wants to know what Wal-Mart employment really looks like
from the ground level, I strongly recommend Chapter Three of Barbara
Ehrenreich's bestseller Nickel And Dimed, which describes her experiences
as a Wal-Mart "associate" right here in Minnesota. It's a pretty quick and
often humorous 70 page read, easily available in bookstores and the
library. It might just change the way you look at the service economy.
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"There are years that ask questions and years that answer."
Zora Neale Hurston
sent by:
Scott Lowery
461 Sunnyview Drive, Rollingstone MN 55969
home phone: (507)689-4532
school phone: (507)450-2256
home email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
school email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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