Being the largest employer in 26 states, Walmart knows that their "associates" (the term implies keeping a distance from your employees) are expendable since the company will always have an endless stream of applicants willing to give 110%.

Back when Sam Walton was the head honcho at Wal*Mart he served as the human face of the company. His spawn choose to remain faceless vampires never showing their face to the public as they drink the blood of those Wal*Mart destroy.

Remember when Sam took pride in selling goods manufactured in the U. S.?

Remember when Sam took pride in those workers who became millionaires from the company stock sharing program with employees?

It's hard to believe that once upon a time Wal*Mart was not the evil organization it is today.

I think that it's the conservative christian makeup of a large portion of management that's responsible for this idiotic policy. I once worked for this "evil empire" and they are obsessed with three things---unions, liberals and hippies.
The level of management harassment varies from area to area within the empire. The more southern or rural, the greater the oppression. Some of the abuses that occur in the south don't fly in the north because northerners would not submit. The more desperate the area, the more abusive the practices.

Wal-Mart just overhauled their stores.

They also quit selling a lot of items that didn't make money.

It's just the essentials in this small town. That's a flip from what it started out as. You could get anything that the small businesses in town were selling, and it put small business out of business. Now Wal-Mart maximizes profits when they have eliminated the competition.

Our Wal-Mart got a remake alright. Can't find those little items that are so important to YOU. Wal-Mart carries what THEY want you to buy.

Michigan joined the growing number of states having medicinal marijuana laws only recently, courtesy of a statewide referendum. Now that the administrative process for licensing caregivers and patients is up and running, weird ramifications like WalMart's bizarre decision to abruptly sack Mr. Casias and fight his unemployment compensation claim are cropping up all over the place. It is quite a chaotic situation in terms of both day-to-day law enforcement and the misuse of drug testing in the workplace.

Jim Hightower's article focuses on the crux of this absurdity: as long as the legal fiction of corporate personhood remains equated with genuine, real personhood, at-will employees like Casias can be summarily dumped for good reason, bad reason, or for no reason at all. That's the jurisprudence of employment at will, stretching back centuries into the English common law. It is "fair", you see. The boss's inherent right to arbitrarily fire the workers is offset by the workers' equivalent right to arbitrarily quit.

"It's every man for himself!" the elephant shouted, dancing among the chickens. In a land of equal opportunity, the King and the pauper enjoy identical rights to sleep outside in the rain and cold in a cardboard box beneath the bridge.

Bill from Saginaw

If this was the ONLY inhuman thing that WalMart had ever done, it would be bad enough. But they have been found guilty in courts all over this country of being inhuman to their workers for DECADES now. They were found guilty of locking in overnight workers, making people work OFF the clock or be fired, and a whole slew of other really despicable things that ANY decent human would look at and be sick over. And let's not forget them telling their FULL TIME employees to go on welfare for their health care.

This is one corporation that has hurt this country in ways that most people don't even understand. They move into a city or town, bargain for all kinds of tax breaks, destroy all kinds of other businesses, screw their workers for every benefit possible, and use any excuse to rape the communities they inhabit.

If you haven't seen the Frontline episode on WalMart, you really should. It shows how they ran the Rubbermaid company out of existence in the town it had been in for over 75 years and turned it into the Chinese company that it is now. The company TRIED to fight them, but Walmart not only threatened them, but made good on those threats. The end of the show had the factory being auctioned off to the Chinese. So now, the town is without the 300 or so jobs that RubberMaid had provided for over 75 years, but now even the factory is gone.

And WalMart has done this to much of the retail manufacturing sector of this country, largely single handedly. I haven't been to one in over a decade, and won't go in again. EVER. To hell with Sam's family, they are nothing but leeches (though leeches at least have a medical use), sucking this country blind for their own selfish benefit. Sam gave a damn about the country, it's people, and their welfare. His family cares about nothing but money. They can choke on it, they will never get a penny of mine. May they rot in hell for several eternities. They have earned it in spades.

Funny, isn't it, that the remaining Walton family members are leading the fight against the so-called death tax? They can't take it with them when they die, but they'll take yours now.

If, as SCOTUS has decreed, we must accept that corporations are legal "persons", we must then determine just what kind of "persons" they are. Using the checklists of characteristics in the Hare PCL-R or the DSM IV, you'll find that corporations are qualified psychopaths.

From the Wikipedia article, "Hare Psychopathy Checklist":

<<< Hare describes people he calls psychopaths as "intraspecies predators who use charm, manipulation, intimidation, sex and violence to control others and to satisfy their own selfish needs. Lacking in conscience and empathy, they take what they want and do as they please, violating social norms and expectations without guilt or remorse. What is missing, in other words, are the very qualities that allow a human being to live in social harmony." >>>

Psychopaths represent about 3% of the population (mostly male) and only a small portion of them are sufficiently skilled to reach positions of significant authority. Yet, from time to time, they, like viral infections, can reach morbid concentrations sufficient to dominate even large organizations, including nations. Thus we see the emergence of the Walmarts, the Blackwaters, the Neocons...

Like the plagues, this phenomena seems to be cyclic, dependent upon the ebb and flow of enabling/inhibiting factors. The chief factor seems to be the degree to which a society posesses the enlightened moral coherence to maintain the vigilance required to identify and contain the predators before they achieve dominance. If the tide flows to the predators they commence to pillage until they too are consumed by the chaos they generate.

You can read about numerous historical occurences of this...or watch it live in amerika.

SAVE MONEY. LIVE BETTER!! Money - Better!!! Money - Save!!! Better save money!!, Save money better!!!

Save - live, money - live , save life - Naah, just doesn't sound as good, nor does it make us as much MONEY!!!!!

STOP MAKING EXCUSES TO BUY ANYTHING AT WALMART!

Shop your local Mom and Pop, or a thrift store. Salvage and thrift stores are spreading like wildfire in NW Georgia. Better yet, clean out the closets.

We MUST take back our humanity!

"... nothing even remotely human about the bloodless and brainless thing that is Walmart."

Really?! The author's sampling of humanity must be much narrower and more exclusive than mine. Apparently Mr Hightower hasn't had much contact with the "people's representatives" recently.

Unlike every single person I know, I've shopped Walmart a total of once. And ever single person I know who shops there shrugs and says the standard whaddaya gonna do?

On a different note, Walmart is one of the leading 'dead peasant' insurers - you know, where they take out life insurance policies on their most likely to die employees then cash out when they kick, thereby recouping an average of 5 times the wages originally paid to said dead peasant?

Wonder what Joe's death is worth to America's Corporate Person of the Year?

Anytime I even consider going into Wal-Mart, I remind myself ... Wal-Mart does not believe in economic justice or social justice ... period ... end of consideration. I either do without or I seek a locally owned and operated business to meet whatever the need may be.

Boycott.

Stop feeding the monster.

Sioux Rose

Another point worth mentioning is that the Wallmart "judges" may designate marijuana as an evil addiction, while it is they that traffic in sugar, fake flour (stripped of vital nutrients), and irradiated meats. Their so-called "foods" barely qualify under the designation. They're more like chemical cocktails soaked in preservatives to maintain profit-based "shelf life."

I live in a rural area and there are a few items (like food for my rabbit) that I must purchase at the Wallmart center. When I walk through the doors I see so many mishapen human forms, persons that must be larger than their own cattle. When people have less money to spend, too many buy junk food or faux filler and it shows in their twisted body shapes. What Wallmart has done, in the way of delivering the drug of sugar to these poor souls constitutes its own crime. Let THEM eat marijuana!

Ridicule and belittlement would be an excellent response to this corporate behemoth. And by some unbelievable chance that Wal-Farts should rehire Mr. Casias, the ridicule and belittlement should continue for a full year, just as a reminder to the corporate rats.

I just hung up with Walmart.

After spending ten minutes being referred by automated machine back and forth from one number to another, I reached a real person who "interjected" any and all attempts I made to explain the reason for my call, by insisting back and forth I call one number to another.

I refused to hang up. He, by consultation with his supervisor, and "kindly suggested" what I demanded in the beginning, which was to voice my concerns about Walmart's practices. He then laid in with the
"standard interview" to address concerns about their stores.

I encourage you all to subject yourselves...the interview process is a study in diabolical cunning: you cannot explain your concerns, but only answer a standardized questionnaire that will address your concerns about Walmart "for you."

The questions, of course, have to do with the location and address of the site, with the size and shape of the parking lot, the gender of the customer complaining, the shoe size of the employee...you get the picture.

The interview is meant to frustate the public's attempts to voice concerns, so we are being put to task, not Walmart.

Of course, if you cannot answer all of the questions, or choose not to, you can be discredited. Of course, the initial, hairsplitting list of questions, aggravated by requests to repeat your answers are not done for "clarification" but simply to make you give up. Did I say cunning?

I refused to hang up. He then repeatedly asked me if I wished to continue the interview with every third question. After asking me for the fourth time, I told him I knew what he was scripted to do. He interjected apologetically as I demanded that he dictate a ten sentence statement voicing my concerns, which will take very little time. Did that mean I did not wish to continue with the interview? He hung up with "a thank you for calling, we appreciate your input..."

Little did he know I am an ex-punk: provoke me, please, by all means, aggravate me.

I've poured a glass of cold rage every morning for breakfast for the last 20 years...

Walmart represents impenetrable corporate power.

Represents...not is.

Any thing created in this world can be destroyed. Any "person."

I can't rage that wall alone...

Neither can you.

But we can...

We can Rage that Wall.

The Wal-Mart business model is based on very real slave labor in the third world and China. In short, countries where a union organizer just ends up dead in an ally or just magically disappears; the real terrorism of the 21st century a very handy business innovation carried over from the 20th century.

Now that the after glow of fairness that the New Deal and unionization of the American work force brought to American capitalism from 1880 to 1945 has been killed via off-shoring by our truly right-wing native oligarchy - welcome back to the true face of capitalism 18th century style.

If you are part of the 20% un-employed here in the U.S.A. know this: you are just a statistic–part of the vast army of surplus labor American capitalism has thrown upon the dirt pile of history, much like the poor chap in this article.

Wal-Mart is just a parasite on humanity– nothing more, nothing less.

Don't shop there! People around me who shop there make excuses for Walmart. They say "I guess we just want low prices". It reminds me of the only thing funny I've seen lately on SNL, a few years ago, when mom is explaining to daughter about the children in the sweatshops who suffer to make the trendy sneakers her daughter wants. The little girl's face becomes sad, and you think that mom has made her point, and then the little girl whines, "but I WANT those sneakers".

Best be careful. By 2080 Walmart is likely to be the only Employer in the USA. They will run everything from banks to pizza parlors , from Barbershops to weapons manufacturing!

Everyone will work at Walmart to earn enough goods to buy what walmart sells.

Then WALMART....will demand WALMART lowers the prices of the Goods sold to WALMART so that WALMART can sell at a lower price then WALMART and drive WALMART out of business.

Corps are not people, but the demographically homogeneous group of directors and execs are. They are the ones that got the power from scotus decision.

flip the coin... commercially, we are also corporations.

I am fortunate that to live in an area where there is no need to ever walk into a Walmart, and with no kids to support anymore, etc. I feel badly for those who have no choice. Used to belong to Sam's Club over 10 years ago and it's true that I ended up buying stuff unnecessarily. Won't make that mistake again. Costco is much better and the business model seems to be more people friendly.
How does that Oscar Wilde quote go-We live in a land where we know the price of everything and the value of nothing.

I, too, just got off the phone with the "response service," which neither responded to me nor rendered me any type of service. The first call ended when a recording instructed me to go to my local store and tell my concern to the "open door"! The second call ended with a human being reading me the same instructions.

A local branch did open here about six or seven years ago. Never having been in one, I went to look around, bought a small item, satisfied my morbid curiosity and departed. Shopping there would be a serious immoral breach, IMHO. BTW, our esteemed Sec'y of State sits on the Board (AK, ya know).

Sorry, Jim, but people did this. Walmart is people. Rotten people, for sure, but a corporation is still just a collection of human beings.

A universal law:

If you contribute to misery in the world, you make it a more miserable world for everyone, including yourself.

There is no escaping this, whether you are rich or poor, or ignorant or cognizant of the 'law.' You might be 'riding high' for awhile, but some vortex will eventually swallow you into it, be it emotional or circumstantial. Sometimes cause and effect is direct and sometimes indirect, but the vortex ALWAYS turns in the direction that it is pushed, and gathers momentum, either negative or positive. You may be further from the periphery or closer, but once it gathers enough momentum you will be sucked in.

We often forget we are like cells in a body, a unit of the collective, and negative affects are additive. Thus, cooperation with evil is evil, even if we are ignorant of our complicity.

Thanks to Mr. Hightower for the alert. I called the posted number to discover, after three tries, that it is not the correct one for voicing this type of complaint. THE CORRECT NUMBER IS WALMART CUSTOMER RELATIONS 1 800 925 6268. Be forewarned that you will talk to a polite, well mannered, and equally well scripted person who is trained to deflect consumer concerns such as this. The party line is that Mr. Casias was a potential danger to employees and shoppers because of the possible influence of marijuana. At least you can register your concerns but what good that will do is too most likely make you feel like you tried to do something and to know that since there are prepared statements, other people have called.