Thread: More Evidence: Slave Labor Not Cheap Enough; Walmart 9th

More Evidence: Slave Labor Not Cheap Enough; Walmart Has Ninth Straight Quarterly Decline in Sales

Mac Slavo
August 16th, 2011
SHTFplan.com
46 Comments

As if the lowest consumer sentiment in three decades wasn’t enough, the largest retailer in the world provides yet more evidence that the consumer in the United States is being unabatedly destroyed: http://www.shtfplan.com/headline-news/t ... n_08122011

…company comments about consumer spending showed the split between upper-income consumers who have jobs and are little affected by rising costs for food and other essentials, and lower-income shoppers who are struggling with stubbornly high unemployment and rising costs.

“This is exactly what we continue to see quarter after quarter. There’s just significant bifurcation here,â€

[quote]By Bill Knight
Daily Review Atlas
Posted Aug 02, 2011 @ 05:28 PM

Monmouth, Ill. —
Wal-Mart is a retail behemoth that sometimes seems to expand like some unstoppable alien invader, lumbering through communities and killing more jobs than it creates, forcing local, Mom-and-Pop stores out of business. But it still runs across obstacles, as recently seen in Beijing, Johannesburg – and Washington.
Sure, the U.S. Supreme Court in a 5-4 vote in Dukes v. Wal-Mart in June dismissed a claim that companywide policies gave local managers too much discretion in pay and promotion decisions, leaving employees at thousands of Wal-Mart and Sam's Club stores vulnerable to gender stereotypes. So the world's biggest company, with more than 1 million workers and annual profits of some $13 billion, convinced a slim majority of the business-cozy Roberts Court that thousands of women workers don’t share enough of an interest to constitute a class. Backed by corporations ranging from Bank of America and General Electric to Microsoft and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Wal-Mart is now freer to discriminate against employees.
And, sure, President Obama on July 20 hosted a White House event praising grocers that promised to expand into underserved urban and rural communities, including Wal-Mart, which said it plans 275 such expansions. But that stunning public praise sparked some pushback.
First, in a joint statement, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka and United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) President Joe Hansen criticized Wal-Mart – and Obama.
“We ask the administration to stand with communities that have called on Wal-Mart to strengthen the communities it enters rather than drive standards and wages down,â€

http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/kalw/ ... umer.split

Saks, Wal-Mart show widening U.S. consumer split

(2011-08-16)
(Reuters) -
By Brad Dorfman

CHICAGO (Reuters) - At luxury department store chain Saks Inc , customers were buying more designer suits at full price.

At Wal-Mart Stores Inc , more customers were shopping with food stamps