The close of the busy Christmas season brought an abrupt about-face for WAL-MART. Rather than seeking to squeeze more hours out of its employees the store began to find ways cut their hours whenever possible. Almost across the board, associates saw their schedule trimmed down by 2-4 hours every week; mine were cut on the high-end of this range. The store may only be saving itself $15-$30, but this can make a difference to people who are already struggling to make ends meet. Also, who gets their hours cut can be fairly arbitrary: one of the older male cashiers noted how his hours hadn’t changed while the four longest tenured female cashiers had lost hours. As I mentioned in an earlier post, he attributed this not to gender discrimination, but to his being in the good graces of his supervisors and not complaining quite as much as the women did.
Another way of limiting hours is to send people home early. If sales were down for the week, or even the day, managers would get the word from above (both inside the store and from the home office) to trim payroll expenses in an effort to off-set the loss. “We are supposed to send people home as long as it won’t hurt us,” one of the Customer Service Manager’s confided in me candidly. To be fair, many of the associates will want to get the hell out of there, a request which the managers are only too happy to oblige. One of the cashiers put this inner struggle best: “Want to [leave], but can’t afford to.” I would always fight being sent home early no matter how badly I wanted to leave, since I had been lobbying for full-time hours from the beginning. This didn’t make much of a difference and I was routinely sent home anywhere from 30-90 minutes early. One time they even tried to send me home half-way through my four-hour shift, but my favorite CSM relented when I protested it wouldn’t even have been worth the price of gas to come in. “We can’t cut hours that have already been cut” she agreed sympathetically.
Snowstorms presented management with a golden opportunity to trim hours. Claiming their hands were tied, they would note that sales were down 51% for the day from the previous year (a foolish statistic since there are snowstorms that keep customers away every year.) Nevertheless, with their cover in place, an assistant manager would page on the hour that all sales floor associates would be capped at six-hour shifts, no exceptions. On top of this, there could be dozens of call-outs in anticipation of the bad weather. It should come as no surprise then that management would okay the call-out without putting up a fight. Obviously there was a downside to this strategy since often times the skeleton crew that remained would be swamped with all the slack they had to pick up. One morning a CSM was griping about being short-handed and the long lines that were gathering at her only three open registers. So I was surprised to go back to the break room and find a friend just sitting there since she had mistakenly thought her shift started two hours earlier than it did. I dutifully told that same CSM that I had found the solution to her problems, only to discover that she was the one that told her to wait back there. At that point I stopped feeling sorry for the CSM.
But these methods for cutting hours are small fish compared to their ultimate strategy: keep as many workers part-time (or as they call it, peak-time) as possible. As I mentioned, I had trying since my first interview to gain full-time status unsuccessfully. When they were desperate for people they would magnanimously throw me an extra hour or two, as long as it didn’t result in overtime… that had to be specifically authorized by management. I couldn’t help but be amused when a fellow temporary hire cashier resolved to me stupidly, “I have to get my full-time hours back.” “Good luck” quipped a manager from personnel, realizing as I did the remoteness of this possibility. Indeed, one of the veterans told me that the company never moves people to full-time if they are hired as part-time; you are better off quitting and trying to get hired again. I took a tally one day of the schedule posted on the wall, which revealed that 119 of the 385 scheduled hourly workers were part-time, or 30%. By purposefully hiring and keeping more workers part-time, like myself, WAL-MART also saves itself the expense of paying benefits. It is our problem to try to live off this pittance of a sum.
Tuesday, February 14, 2006
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6 comments:
I read every one of your posts. I find it very interesting. Particularly their way of keeping people from reporting accidents and the fact that the management is able to get employees to think that "chicken and potatoes" is a reward worth fighting for...
I have worked for Walmart for 10 years and they are cutting my hours so deep I am having trouble maintaining my FT status. Am sure the reason is they don't want to pay those wonderful benefits(lol)
When I first went to work for them they were great now my opinion is they are terrible. Creating problems between their employees and cutting hours to get rid of employees of older age and health problems. Sad they have gone down so far.
Linda
I worked for Wal-Mart for 5 years. I started out at a distribution center (worked 4 1/2 years there) but had to transfer to a store across the state due to family issues. I never understood the gripes about Wal-Mart until I worked at the store.
I got paid less than 1/2 my pay for doing 3 time the work I did at the DC. The managers were outright rude to associates, even in front of customers. I was a night stocker, and was continously sent home early when I finished with my designated aisle. Several times I had volunteered to help out those that took longer, but was told no dice. It was a major struggle just making ends meet.
I ended up just quitting because I couldn't stand the attitudes of pretty much everyone that worked there. Rarely would you hear a word of encouragement, but they were quick to criticize any small mistake you made.
When I saw yout title, I thought of "Code Silver." This is where everyone is sent out (usually freezing COLD) to retrieve carts. They had nobody doign carts after 9 PM, so we had to go out to get them in the parking lot (sometimes several times a night). I never figured out why they couldn't hire just ONE person to do this all night instead of taking us away from our work. If this took an hour or so, we were scrambling to get finished before quitting time (no OT obv).
It almost makes me wish I had never transfered in the first place and found another solution. The atmosphere in the DC and the store were like night and day.
i cant believe you feel u do 3 time the work at a store than you did at dc. i work at a dc in mich. and every job has a rate which some days seems almost unachievable. but every time i go to a walmart store i see multiple associates standing around talking to each other. doing nothing. thats why they get payed 1/3rd we do at the dc. you must have been a pe driver or a supervisor at the dc (the jobs were u don't do much)
I have worked at WalMart as a Department Manager for 9 years, and now all of a sudden my hours are being cut to 15 hours a week one week 37 hours another week and 24 hours another week. I will not quit, because thaqt is what they want since I make over $16.00 a hour. But I will file for unemployment and play their game.I will also be the first one to sign up for the union when they come to my store
got an interview at a dc tues any advice going in from you vets??
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