If you thought that you knew what kind of company Walmart is

[SteveBailey]

you should read about the horrific way that they have abused this unfortunate former employee, Debbie Shank, that is now brain damaged and totally disabled.

Shame on you WalMart.   I will never, ever again shop at one of your stores, under ANY CIRCUMSTANCES.   Your behavior here is MONSTROUS and absolutely INHUMAN!

See this story for the full gruesome details:

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/us/2008/03/26/kaye.walmart.update.cnn


 

kneejerk, uninformed reaction. Had the OP actually known this was common, acceptyed practice, this would have been a nice troll.

[WWhiskey]

 i was involved in an accident while working for a company that shall remain nameless :rolleyes:involving a third party,  my insurance company whent after the third party as soon as they found out i was going to ! my lawyer and i droped our suit because "had i drawn income from the third party the insurance company would have gotten it all", and rightly so after all i am still alive and able to walk because of them and i also recieved a settlement from them, they wish to recoup there expences as well, and it was a whole lot cheaper for me to let there lawyers and investigators fight,  than to pay my lawyer for all this, then have to pay them back as well.

[Shamus]

The usual practice would be for Walmart to subrogate against the trucking company for its out of pocket medical expenses and the woman to sue for pain and suffering as well as future care costs in separate actions.

I suppose that if she signed away her rights to recover when she entered the medical plan she is out of luck, as the court found.

It does save Walmart the expense of filing against the trucking company.

shamus

[Halo46]

Don't get me started on either corporate or legal ethics... Sad state of affairs.

[alskahawk]

 My wife has worked for wally world for nearly 15 years. She has worked at about 3 different stores. Walmart has a well deserved rep for how they treat employees. Here's a couple of things about Walmart.

 When my wife first started at Walmart in the early 90s she had to sign a morality statement. They eventually got sued.

 Walmart for years had a habit of paying male employees more than women. They got sued. My wife got a $1.50 raise. Some female employees got much more. Some got promoted.

 Forcing employees to work off the clock. They are currently being sued for that one in PA.

Walmart way of handling overtime is to not pay it. They work employees over early in the week then make them take time off later in the week. And if they end up with over time they get wrote up.  If their area of responsibilty isn't right they get wrote up no matter that they were pulled to go to cash registers, work another department.

They like to work employees 38 hours or less so they are classed as part time.
 
Heres a couple of recent happenings from where she works now.

 A female worker with brain problem(operable tumor) had made some mistakes so they fired her. Not surprising. They knew she was having problems due to her illness but fired her anyway. Coincedentally 2 weeks before her scheduled operation.

 My wife just got a pay raise to $14 an hour. Now she is worried that they will fire her because they can get two bodies (at $7 an hour) for what they are paying her. She's not being paranoid, she just knows how it goes.

There are plenty of good things about Walmart such as they employ a lot of lower educated women.

There are a lot more things she's told me over the years, but I'm a guy I just nod my head most of the time.
 

[Sled]

My personal opinion, Wal-mart is the ultimate example of why some employees want to be part of labor unions.

If you have ever heard people say, "why do we need unions in America anymore?", all they have to do is look at the Wal-Mart corporation.



An interesting show about Wal-Mart, and how it is not good for America.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/walmart/

Yes PBS is biased, but most of what they tell you (in this video) is fact, and public record.

[alskahawk]

 Oh I forgot about Walmarts efforts to fight Unions. Thats a whole page in itself!

[mietla]

Oh I forgot about Walmarts efforts to fight Unions. Thats a whole page in itself!

what's wrong with that? Unions don't fleece the employers, they fleece us, the paying customer.

[Sled]

what's wrong with that? Unions don't fleece the employers, they fleece us, the paying customer.

Is that your version of a "vibrax" or "pixie"?

[SteveBailey]

Oh I forgot about Walmarts efforts to fight Unions. Thats a whole page in itself!

Unions: a means to overpay an employee for what their actual value is, then force the union shop to raise prices on their goods and services.

[Gunslinger]

Yup one of walmarts worse reputations is the fact that they will not let the unions come in.  I commend them for that as unions don't care about the parent company just the union jobs (and not the jobs at the company....the actual jobs AT the union)

The cost of paying someone more to work less is passed right on to a consumer.  Yes just like ANY company there some bad stories but there are some good ones as well.

Walmart generally pays over minimum wage.  Most "unskilled" employess start at $8/hour.  While that ain't much that's better than $5.15. 

A family of 4 usually saves close to a grand a year getting cheap goods at walmart.  They create jobs and savings for poor communities. 

[WWhiskey]

unions in and of themselves are not a bad thing, but the customer pays for what the worker does not, I.E. it is much like insurance, that you will be paid a fair amount and we will charge you for that insurance  then we will make "walmart" pay you more, so you will be able to afford to pay us! the problem with "Walmart is that they do no production or manufacturing, so there whole survival is based on low cost too the customer if you put added expence into there bottom line, they cannot compete as they do! and so they cannot employ the people to work at the stores that they own hence unemployment, but at least not at third world rates! i am not saying it is a good thing, it just is what it is!! if you dont like there practices , don't work there, if you can afford to shop elsewhere, do so!! i like to buy some things at walmart but i do not do all my shoping there, becuase sometimes it isn't just about the money saved, but the quality of the product i am buying! and as always it is just my opinion!

[Gunslinger]

unions in and of themselves are not a bad thing, but the customer pays for what the worker does not, I.E. it is much like insurance, that you will be paid a fair amount and we will charge you for that insurance  then we will make "walmart" pay you more, so you will be able to afford to pay us! the problem with "Walmart is that they do no production or manufacturing, so there whole survival is based on low cost too the customer if you put added expence into there bottom line, they cannot compete as they do! and so they cannot employ the people to work at the stores that they own hence unemployment, but at least not at third world rates! i am not saying it is a good thing, it just is what it is!! if you dont like there practices , don't work there, if you can afford to shop elsewhere, do so!! i like to buy some things at walmart but i do not do all my shoping there, becuase sometimes it isn't just about the money saved, but the quality of the product i am buying! and as always it is just my opinion!

good post.  for many things the wife and I shop at target.  Cleaner stores, better products.  But, if I need a bag of bird seed or a cheap something walmart is right up the road.

[SteveBailey]

unions in and of themselves are not a bad thing,  [/glow]

I disagree, of course.  Unons artificially inflate wages and the increased costs are passed on to the consumer.  The union workers are consumers themselves.  Unions are bad... period.  Unions wrecked the US auto industry.

[SD67]

It's a shame that the unions in the USA had such a bad start.
They have forever been tainted by their original mob involvement both in the public eye and in the way they operate. I know it's never going to happen because they have too much to lose, but it would do the American Union Movement a great deal of good to wipe the slat clean, and start anew, loosing most of the current management in the process. A union is not there to serve it's own interests and it's purpose is not to operate as a profit making business.It is there to protect the rights of it's members only.