Re: Wal-Mart awards $2 billion to U.S. hourly employees

Rita wrote:
On Mon, 23 Mar 2009 08:11:37 -0700, Islander <nospam@xxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

Gary wrote:
On Sun, 22 Mar 2009 09:06:32 -0700, Islander <nospam@xxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

Rita wrote:
On Sat, 21 Mar 2009 09:27:39 -0700, Islander <nospam@xxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

Rita wrote:
On Fri, 20 Mar 2009 13:34:12 -0700 (PDT), AndyS <andysharpe@xxxxxxxx>
wrote:

Rita wrote:

I certainly don't begrudge the Walmart store employees their little
bonuses. I think the average Walmart wage is no more than $10 an hour.
And average work week 34 hours. The comes out to around $17K per year
for full-time employees.
Andy comments:

If your numbers are correct, that isn't a particularly high pay
rate. On the
other hand, at Walmarts I have shopped, I haven't seen a bee hive of
activity from the employees, either. There's a lot of wandering
around,
waiting for break time....

If they didn't work at Walmart, what sort of jobs do you think
they
would have ?

Andy in Eureka, Texas
I can't speak for whether or not Walmart employees earn their
pay but it seems to be that just showing up and doing something
at their rate of pay should be enough. I just didn't enjoy
shopping at the couple of Walmart stores I've sampled but I did
see employees straightening the merchandise, etc.

Is Walmart the employer of last resort? Probably for some and
no doubt better than cleaning houses or doing lawn work, etc.
I think they employ seniors as "greeters".

My one venture into working for a retail store was in high school
when I signed up to weigh and package jelly beans for the Easter
season at a Woolworth's. I lasted two days -- the boredom was so
great.


Don't knock cleaning houses or yard work! Housecleaning draws $20 per hour here and employers treat their employees well in order to keep them. Yard work comes in at $20 to $25 per hour. I suspect that most of this is paid off the books.
I found a business card on my door last week offering housecleaning
for $10 an hour. I expect this varies by area and socioeconomic
status of most residents. In San Diego we no doubt have a far greater
percent of the population seeking housecleaning jobs than you do on
your island.

When I lived in New York City and commuted on the Long
Island Railroad to teach a couple of classes at a campus of the
State University of New York most of the early morning commuters
going into Long Island from NYC were women going to housecleaning
jobs in suburbia there. Here city buses in the early morning are
filled with Hispanic women going to these kinds of jobs.
Yes. I would expect the salary for housekeeping and yard work to be lower in San Diego than here.

Yesterday I hired a tree man at $35 per hour and was glad to get him at that price.
Last November lightening struck one of our trees at the back of the
lot. It was a 100 ft pine about 2 1/2 feet in diameter. A guy
came out with three helpers and took about three hours to do cut it
down and haul it out. It cost $450. I wasn't thrilled with the
price, but I figure it wasn't exorbitant, either.
That would be about right. It's a shame that it could not be used for lumber. Here, we would have milled a tree that size.

I'm on the board of a local non-profit that owns a historic building. We needed to put new siding on the south side and I found a neighbor who had taken down a tree about that size. I got a local excavating company working in the area to load it onto a trailer and we hauled it to a nearby mill where we sawed it into 1x12 boards. The whole process cost us $650 to get 1,000 board feet of lumber that was subsequently used as board and batten siding, just like the original that was put on in the '30s.


Back in the 1960's Dutch Elm disease became rampant in the city
where I lived and we had 5 very large, lovely elm trees on our
property that had to be removed by city ordinance. It cost $150 to
remove each of these huge trees and I believe the wood could not be
salvaged because of threat of further contagion. It was sickening to
lose these trees and not pleasant to have to pay so much for their
removal either.

That is so sad! Elm was a desirable wood and I think that destruction of otherwise healthy trees was misinformed. Kiln drying destroys any possibility for spreading disease.

There is a lot of work being done now to salvage what is becoming a scarce resource. The hurricane that ravaged Florida a few years ago produced a new industry that salvaged rare wood from trees that were destroyed. There are also several companies now that salvage wood that is submerged in rivers and lakes, sometimes for a century or more. Old-growth wood that is perfectly preserved. And, I just read an article about efforts to salvage the wood in massive old grain elevators in the mid-west. There are similar efforts on the west coast to salvage redwood from old structures.

This old wood is far superior to the second or third growth trees that are harvested today.

One of the retired gents on the island has built a massive shop with all the latest wood-working equipment in an attempt to create a cottage industry of craftsmen building specialty products out of local lumber, both salvaged and newly cut when property is cleared for new home construction. I doubt that it will ever be profitable, but he is having a ball!

Another neighbor operates a mill and donates the proceeds to local charities. I bid on and won 350 bd ft of lumber at a charity auction and will be taking delivery next week. Way cool!
.

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