Walmart has announced an initiative to buy more American-made goods and hire more than 100,000 veterans during the next five years. This is great. Will they pay the veterans a living wage? Or will they hand them instructions on how to apply for food stamps?

Walmart made a major announcement today, committing to “increase domestic sourcing of the products it sells and help veterans find jobs when they come off active duty.” This is great. It is, as Scott Paul of the Alliance for American Manufacturing called it, “a game changer.”

The company is upping its purchases of American-made goods by $5 billion a year. This is a start, but really is minuscule for Walmart’s massive size. AAM puts this into perspective,

Walmart’s pledge would mean sourcing an additional $5 billion per year in American-made goods. To help put that into perspective, here are some interesting stats:

Total amount of money spent at Walmart every hour of every day: $36,000,000
Total amount of profit Walmart makes every minute: $34,880
Total number of employees: 2,000,000
Total number of stores: 4,253
Percentage of Americans that live within 15 minutes of Walmart: 90%
Total sales annually: $405 Billion
Total number of Walmart Brands: 27
Total number of customers per week: 100,000,000
World Rank by economy if Walmart were a country: 19th
Percent of Walmart suppliers located in China: 80%

Hiring Vets At What Wage?

SO Walmart will hire 100,000 vets in the next five years. That’s great. But Walmart is a notoriously low-wage employer. According to Winning Words Project, Walmart pays so little that many of its employees receive government assistance. In other words, WE are subsidizing Walmart’s incredible profitability by paying for part of what their employees need just to be able to get by at a bare minimum existence.

Major corporations like Walmart underpay their workers and use taxpayers to pay their employees, extracting enormous sums from our economy for their personal enrichment. This practice is in direct moral contrast with our country’s stated objectives, damaging all of us, not just those who work for Walmart and other companies like them.

I want to be clear that I’m not blaming Walmart – like any business they pay what WE let them get away with. WE need to change the “playing field” and establish a much higher minimum wage and improve working standards.

Where the Walmart problem comes in is when they are able to use their money to influence government to keep the minimums so low!

Please go visit the Winning Words Project to see the wonderful graphic they have, explaining how taxpayers subsidize Walmart’s low wages, keeping their profits so high. Walmart Pads Their Payroll With Your Tax Dollars: Call On Congress To Stop Them.
_______http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/dave-johnson/47614/walmart-to-hire-vets-but-at-what-wage

I hope they offer the jobs to hard-to-employ disabled vets first, a part time job is better than no job. And make no mistake, WalMart is at best a part time job.

That twist of a post leaves out a lot of info.

Pay and other overheads come out of that profit.

After all taxes, pays, repurchases and all the other costs involved, what is left over as profit?

The twist is this.

Dear service men or women

Thank you for defending our "freedoms" and trade routs to China for your reward we offer you the new "umerikan" dream.

Minimum wage, horrible work environment and little or no benefits.

It could be worse, you could work for our suppliers in China.

as if we didn't already with our industry all relocating there ..... but a good one

I Agree !!!

What I find funny is no one ever posts what Walmart pays or what benefits they offer. Just harassment because they aren't union.
They are offering something to my brothers returning home. More than just he lip service you hear from most. We support the troops until you come home than we don't need you.
Give Walmart some credit for trying to help our heroes!!!

Lets hope some other companies get the hint. Hire the vets and stop buying crap from China.

ain't you glad!
Imagine the the Union-Dues that will be flowing in!
Or is that your Objection that there won't be more?

It shames me that in uber umerika anyone would even work for the walton family with low pay and little or no benefits.

Its how low we have become.

Do you like americans dropping to their knees and worshiping minuum wage?

Walmart wages start at slightly over legal minimum, around eight-fifty an hour, with most employees being part time, under forty hours. Most jobs are menial low skilled, warehouse type work.
Yes you can work your way up to management levels. Most of those jobs are filled by long term employees already however. Walmart saying that they will hire vets is the same thing as McDonalds or
Burger King saying they will hire vets. Yes they will hire vets
and any other person that is willing to work part time for low
wages. Vets need well paying family supporting employment not empty
promises by companies like Walmart.

Well said and it suites walmart that they have VA benefits already. I would bet they discussed that in a board meeting.

Sorry guys.
Not all of us want to pay Union fatasses to have a job.
I like my independence.
Guess what.
I have, in my time, screwed the union plumbers and did plumbing. The clients were very grateful.
I have screwed Union electricians.
I have screwed teamsters.

We are out there and screw the Unions. The average folks love us.

People love paying less so what? I like my paycheck and pension and great benefits and I love my job. It seems to me your more of a drifter than me and that's fine I like stability and a steady paycheck. It works for my family and as a single father raising two great kids I would never have volunteered to change a thing about my employment.

My son also works with me got in the Union and he makes a great buck for a 19 year old kid his friends all want in and so far I got one of them in and more to come next round of hiring.

Not a drifter. An entrepreneur. Love that spail-checker.

Great for you and yours. As long as it lasts, go for it. I know, I would.

However, that type of luck only works for a few. It sucks, local economies are based on the highest wages paid when the majority don't make the big bucks.

BTW. All the best to you and yours.May it all last your lifetimes.

Nothing is guaranteed in any field however with new buildings new business and a fresh signed 4 year contract I am comfortable for my son as well if not he is getting great training with a cutting edge company. It beats the hell out of walmart. Not everyone is academic and this works well for him. He just got a rag top mustang. So glad he got an american car.

I know this will fall on deaf ears for those of you who are Walmart haters.

Whether its a publicity stunt or not they are doing a good service to our troops returning to civilian life. It's not easy for them to find work and that ability to not get any kind of a job leads to some of the suicides happening.
So even if its not a 50,000/yr job it's something to give our soldiers a sense of being and self worth. It gets them in the work force and gives them the ability to gain experience and a work history built up.
So my hats of to Walmart for giving them a chance and a start, something stable that gives them a sense of self worth.

That which is missing from the Wal-Mart pronouncements is that
Wal-Mart does everything based on sweet-heart tax breaks.
And that includes federal subsidies to train new hires, and tax breaks from each jurisdiction that the stores are located.
Once the subsidies run out, WalMart will threaten, and has done so, to move the store 5 miles away, leaving an empty building.
So, to hire the Vets, great, but let's be honest. WalMart is taking advantage of federal subsidies to do so, yet crowing like roosters as if they were the one's who are saving the world.

C'mon, read between the lines and be honest about Wally World.
They ain't now friend of the common man.

might be the time to remind you,that every "Good Thing" even Union Coercion must end!
Enjoy while it lasts!