Cross-posted at the Writing on the Wal.
OMG! Working at Wal-Mart is about to get even worse. They're going to increase, yes increase, the percentage of part-time workers there. From the Lakeland Ledger:
Wal-Mart executives have acknowledged the retailer will shift to a heavier reliance on part-time workers, who now account for roughly 20 percent of the work force, higher than the national average for retailers.
A recent JP Morgan report said Wal-Mart plans to increase the ratio of its 1.2 million-member U.S. hourly work force on part-time schedules to 40 percent from 20 percent.
[emphasis added]
You have to remember that Wal-Mart still defines people who work between 28 and 34 hours a week as full time. Now they'll work even less and will be under heavy pressure to work the worst possible hours. The only people left at Wal-Mart with a 40 hour week will be the managers who, of course, aren't eligible for overtime so they'll be working a lot more to make up the difference.
What moves this story from the depressing to the absurd is the opening of the piece:
Each week, 100 million customers -- more than one-third of the U.S. population -- stream through WalMart's doors.
And to hear Eduardo CastroWright tell it, those customers have been poorly served.
Stores don't have enough workers at the times shoppers need them most, particularly weekends, said Castro-Wright, the company's new chief executive officer of U.S. stores.
So commanding your workers to be there on weekends is going to make them offer customers better service? More likely it's going to send Wal-Mart's 45% turnover rate back to 60% again. Doesn't this guy have any understanding of human motivation? Seriously, I sometimes wonder how people with so much power can be so clueless.
JR