Truckers Sue Wal-Mart for Racial Discrimination

Yes, a company has the right to set it’s own standards, as long as they are equally applied. Many insurance companies will not insure a commercial truck if it is driven by a driver with less than 2 years Class A CDL experience. A good driving record is essential for safety and for insurance rates. A commercial drivers’ license is required to operate trucks the size of Wal-Marts. Where is the discrimination here? If you are required to have a commercial drivers license, 2 years experience and a safe driving record and you don’t have any or all of those things, no company in their right mind would hire you. At least, their insurance company will prohibit it. Learn the difference between discrimination and failure to meet clearly stated criteria!

It says that the company applied hiring criteria at least in
terms of rejecting Mr. Nelson. It doesn’t say actually whether
the same criteria are being equally applied---the implication
seems to be that it’s not-hence the lawsuit. But it is vague.

Mr. Armstrong’s contention of discrimination that 15% of
nation’s truck drivers are black and only 2 to 3 % of Wal-Mart’s truck drivers desrves to be looked into and I would think it wouldn’t be too hard for either his or Wal-Mart’s lawyers to get the figures on.

Where does it say anything about the drivers not having a
commercial driver’s license? I haven’t read the entire article as I don’t want to sign up with the times.

I’ve looked at Wal-Mart’s truck driver positions before ... for a while, thought about going for it.  See, here’s the thing…

They take immense pride in having the best drivers in the US working for them.  You cannot have any significant blemishes on your driving record, and you must have both sufficient and relevant experience. 

It’s a lot different hauling a long-haul freight trailer through middle America than just driving a short day-trailer around your home town.

I have no objections to Wal-Mart setting the standard for drivers ... for the record, I’ve got a couple of lead-foot citations in my past that probably would have disqualified me.  Wal-Mart would rather their merchandise is at the store on time than that their drivers are behaving recklessly on the US highways (where there are enough reckless drivers already).

That’s three cents, but I think these lawsuits are just becoming silly.

“Is there any large class of Americans that Wal-Mart hasn’t offended besides conservative evangelicals and Wal-Mart stockholders?”

What the H#LL is that suposed to mean?  Seriously, come on you morons.  My guess is that wal-mart has a higher percentage of different races shopping there then the ma and pap store.  This whole site is turning into a joke.

Since everyone likes to say Wal-Mart is America’s worst company due to the number of lawsuits, etc. here are some absolute numbers for you that should also be considered, since most people on here don’t understand averages and so forth.

Wal-Mart’s rank in number of employees per class for all American companies:

EMPLOYEES

African-Americans-#1
Senior Citizens-#1
Handicapped Citizens-#1
Hispanic-Americans-#1
Women-#1
Single mothers-#1
College students-#1
High school students-#1

I could go on and on but the point is, Wal-Mart has a diverse workforce, and employs more people in the above categories than any other company. The important thing to remember is that these people are generally on the lower rungs of the economic ladder and working for Wal-Mart gives them a chance to move up. God Bless Wal-Mart! And God Curse Trial Lawyers and Race Pimps!

Would be nice to see the breakdown percentage wise in all these categories. What percent of Wal-Mart employees are black, Hispanic, women etc. Even better to break it down
in terms of store managers and upper management. They can’t be leading nationwide in all these categories except in
mass numbers being the largest single employer.

As an outside truck driver that has delivered to many of the Walmart facilities around the country and a company owner that has serviced the account I would like to run some numbers by you. mY partner and I figured the average number of trucks per day at an average of 60.00 per truck and came up with just over 54,000,000.00 per facility per year just in what they charge truckers for unloading. They give each driver a generic reciept from a book or a blank ticket from an adding machine with the amount on it for a reciept, but I bet they don’t report that as revenue. They use it to offset their labor cost and work comp premiums. I would love to see them have to explain where that money goes on paper.

Larry, just tell me this:  Can you see that wal-mart has come into the spotlight recently primarily because they refuse to unionize?  I just want to know if you know who and what power is really behind these ridicules attacks.

And why is it they’re so dead against unions? Maybe you can
tell me that? I would say it’s because they know what they
give their employees is substandard. What do you think? Are the unions targeting them or just particular unions? Actually I think it’s the two mentioned most often. But I could be wrong. Their abandonment of the american manufacturing worker is plain to see. Why have they done that? I mean it’s
obvious but to me at least a legitimate criticism. The AFL-CIO
actually (my opinion) has been giving them a free ride. Their membership falls when these jobs are outsourced. And on the issue of pay and benefits you don’t see any movement
from them at all. It doesn’t seem to be on the horizon. What’s
on the horizon is inflation (my opinion again) which is being
kickstarted by the rise in oil prices. I would expect that what-
ever costs of living adjustments they give out to their rank and file will be done grudgingly.

Hey larry, here’s a thought.  They are running a business.  why should they spend their time and money “running numbers for larry in elmira, ny”?

also, larry. 
“And why is it they’re so dead against unions? Maybe you can tell me that?”

Why would you want a to pay a middle man?  Would you like it if at the store when you got the register you had to pay someone to get the cashier to agree to ring you up?  Unions are a parasite that were necessary 50 yrs ago, but now everyone is seeing their uselessness in todays society.  Their number have been dropping for 30 yrs and will only continue to do so.

“Mr. Armstrong’s contention of discrimination that 15% of
nation’s truck drivers are black and only 2 to 3 % of Wal-Mart’s truck drivers desrves to be looked into and I would think it wouldn’t be too hard for either his or Wal-Mart’s lawyers to get the figures on. “

The areas where wal-mart locates distribution centers tend to be in the middle of nowhere.  Why don’t we look at the demographics of the areas surrounding their distribution centers and see how that compares to their truck drivers.  If it is still out of whack, I would maybe say they need to do a better job.

Q---Most of the answers above are obvious. Depending on
what side you fall on notwithstanding these particular unions have set themselves up to Wal-Mart as opponents and as far
as I can tell there hasn’t been a lot of response. Your first
comment wasn’t all that clear to me so I’m going to ignore that (it seems a little like a cheap shot but more like a weak
jab). We’ll go on to the second. Union or on union Wal-Mart
is not going to pay them anything. So as far as them paying a middleman no. With a union their employees (at least the
ones that decide to join) will pay dues. One would expect in
such a scenario (after a very ugly kicking and screaming match) that wage and benefit increases would make this more than worthwhile. We’ve been through this before but I
think that there are other alternative scenarios that would be
more than acceptable without a union. Even so your contention that unions are on the decline meaning to you just because of that-- that they should be-- and using perjorative
terms like parasite instead of really citing concrete examples
of what it is you personally don’t like about them is not going
to move me an inch.

by parasite, I mean they collect dues out of peoples paychecks.  What do they provide in return.  Well, recent history has shown us...Nothing.  The UFCW had their members strike in SoCal last yr, only to agree to the same contract they started the strike over.  During which time many of their members suffered car repossessions, evictions, etc.
And yes, I believe union membership should be on the decline.  Just as the marketplace and consumers determine where they will shop for things - where they are getting a good value, workers will decide whether a union is providing a value to them.  They apparently haven’t done such a good job adding value the last 20 or so yrs or their membership would be increasing or at least holding steady.And just to point out that it’s not the loss of manufacturing jobs, look at the Dept. of Labor’s numbers for non-mfturing jobs.  Unions are in decline there as well.

Cite one concrete example of a union providing value in the last 5 yrs.

Q---do you live in the United States or any other part of
the free world? I mean you glow over the Wal-Mart average wage that you contend is over $9 an hour instead of 8 and a half like it’s some kind of fantastic sum. Is this a middle class
wage to you? In the meantime unions are castigated over all
these dues they rip off their membership with. I make over
$20 an hour--so does my wife---are union dues come to about for both of us ---- $70 a month. We both
have 5 weeks of paid vacation a year. We earn one sick day
per month. We have health insurance. A choice between several plans even. Choices in a thrift plan which the current
president uses as his model to reform social security (a bad
idea). We don’t have to pay a mortgage anymore. We own
our home. Our cars. This is stuff that most people aren’t going to have making $8 and a half or even $9 something an
hour unless maybe they live somewhere else. The union roughly gets $850 from us per year.. With everything altogether are gross earnings on our income tax is coming out around a
100k. This is an established union with many contract battles
in the past. All this does not happen overnight. What might seem just fine to someone right now might not seem so good 30 years from now. Someone like you seems to care
only about the here and now. And it might even be fine to you to have the marketplace decide (when your 50 or 60 and your knees start to go or your eyesight or you find out you have diabetes or your back hurts or whatever--cause this happens to lots of people) that now you’re useless to it. It’s
almost as if you expect things to go on the same forever in
your own personal life and the lives of others. But what will
you do some day if you find you have no place at all?

Thanks Larry.
I have a few questions about your employment.  I would like to make an honest comparision.  Not to insult fellow Wal-mart workers but you get paid what you are worth.  Putting product on shelves or ringing up customers isn’t very skilled.  So maybe to you $9 a hour its fair value but for what I do makes it fair value to me.  Yes I also bring up Disney and there pay and as shown my pay is actually higher then there and is similair work duties.
I would like to compare my job vs. yours if you would allow me. 
What work do you do and how long have you been there?
Sorry if that is too much personal information but would like to try to compare apples to apples.  Thanks also for your viewpoint and facts you present.

Like most people I would like actually to be paid more.
I don’t have the idea though that what I’m doing is really of
any greater value than what a Wal-Mart worker does. A lot
has to do with circumstances and I could easily be making that $8 or 9 an hour (although probably not for the above because I don’t like pep rallies). I have worked at places that didn’t pay well before (although it’s been a long time).
I have no college or vocational training apart from what I
got in the service working on the hull of a ship. I don’t shop
at your store but I don’t look down on you either. You’re basically the same as I am John. Postal clerk. Work tuesdays
through saturdays. 3am to 1130am. It’s over 19 years now.

Holy cow, what a racket!  $50k a year to sell stamps and dole out unwanted Susan B Anthonys?  Next time I need some stamps I might have to pick up an application.  No wonder they’re always having to raise the cost of stamps every two years.

Just pointing out if you’ve been paying attention Cory what union representation (which isn’t obligatory) can do in terms
of wage scales (over a period of time). That also in fact what the union takes out in
dues isn’t all that exorbitant as some would have you believe.
Of course it all depends on what union and where you’re working. And you shouldn’t worry about the post office they’re not going bankrupt and they at least where I am have
spent and continually spend more for automation machinery
and its upkeep than they do in employee salaries. To go back
to the contracts for the last dozen or so years we’ve probably
average a 1% increase per year. What costs them more than
that in salaries is are cola’s (Cost of living adjustment) which
are rated against inflation somewhere around 65% of it if I’m
not mistaken. I’ll take the above statement as not just being sarcastic. In any case I mentioned it here before---
keep in contact with your local postmaster (say once a month) about the entrance
exam if you’re interested. You can also talk to your carrier---
but you need to keep in mind if you do that he can’t talk at any one time for long as he’s probably being tracked if you live in a populous area. There are different jobs. If you’re a
clerk working in a plant like I do figure on graveyards and figure on working weekends at least for a while. Postal Service likes ex-military. An honorable discharge gets you 5
extra points on the exam. Wartime-- and either of these adventures in Iraq and probably even Bosnia will get you more. Disabled vets used to go automatically-- no matter what
their score on the exam to the top of the hiring list. I’m not
sure it’s the same now. We used to be chock full of Viet Nam
veterans--most of whom are retired now. It’s been that long.

And John I know I ticked you off about that comment on Disney before which I shouldn’t have made. I was also in
the Carpenters and Joiners union for a couple years in the late 70’s and our situation there wasn’t very good either.

larry, I’m curious as to your opinion on the CA initiative to require unions to get written permission for spending dues on political campaigns.  You for or against it?

Larry,
I am trying to understand.  You work as postal clerk and now make $20/hour after being there for 19 years.
Sorry trying to pick out info from the posts.  No Larry I just try not to repeat myself but sometimes I do.  You never tick me off or upset me.. You always are nice and polite and enjoy the debates(conversations) we have here.

It’s not exact around that. Gross is a little over 45. There’s several thousand dollars from other sources.

As far as money to political candidates---first I need to say
that I find our democratic system very unattractive in the
sense that I don’t like how it all boils down to a choice between the democrats and republicans. I don’t think the
people of this nation are served very well by this. Maybe the
best way for now would be to give the two major candidates
the most air and media time. Free. In any case there should be set limits on the amount of money they can raise if you’re going to allow that because it’s out of control and more out of control. Even to run congress these days to have any chance you need to be able millions of dollars. The length of
the campaign also needs to be shortened and I would like to
see the extravaganzas that we call conventions disappear.
If you were to go with the majority of the media time to the
2 major parties (for the time being) free some time should still be alloted to smaller parties and some criteria should be
implemented to insure that. The reform party and the Libertarian party are the next biggest and the Green Party is
growing. They all have interesting ideas. They all would open the thought process involved. We might not find ourselves bogged down on a lot of nonsense about what kerry and Bush were doing during Viet Nam. Canada I believe has 5
different parties with members in their parliament. Britain might even have more. In any case if you limited either major party to $50 million (hypothetical--maybe too much)
and so much free air time I think that would be plenty.

It’s true that there are many union members that don’t like
where their money is going. The above scenario might do
something to curb this. One thing I think that I don’t want to
see---it’s bad enough when you have only 2 choices neither of which is very appealing---to see one or the other of your
these choices have too great of an advantage over the other.
I have a fear in this case that you’re setting yourself up for a
dictatorship.

so are you for or against it?

I think one thing that gets lost is we quote the average wage around $9.5 or such for the average Wal-mart associate.  Wal-mart like many firms has constant turnover.  People move on to other places or find better jobs or other lines of work.  I think at my store its around 33% turnover.  So that constant turnover suppresses the “average wage”.  I have been there for 1.5 years and last review I got exceed in my performance evaulationswhich if you do your job isn’t hard to do you get each year at 55 cents raise.  So after 2 years my wage will be $9.20 / hr.  So if add .55 cents to the next 18 years and Wal-mart does not top out pay scales so then after 20 years I would at $19.10 .  So you might say or others will argue I fall almost $1 short of you and the union wage.  I looked up a comparison of Cost of Living and based upon my town in Florida vs. your town of Elmira, NY I have a 15% lower cost of living.  So actually your $20 here would compare to $17 wages here.  So in theory after 20 years of employment I would getting paid more without union representative.  Now I know retirements benefits and others are a factor but at least on pay Wal-mart competes or actually exceeds.

Larry, I might be mistaken but I seem to recall a time when the postal service was in a bit of a bind financially.  You guys have the luxary of the government to bail you out if needed.  Wal-Mart doesn’t, so they’re required to make smart budgetary decisions.  The post office has had to raise the price of postage considerably in the last 15 years and eliminate a bunch of jobs via automation.  Nobody could do anything about those price increases since the Post Office is basically a monopoly.  If Wal-Mart had to raise prices, that’s something people can do something about by choosing not to shop there anymore.  Maybe someday Wal-Mart will have robots stocking shelves, but right now real people are preffered and affordable.  If pay gets too high, Japan might be able to build a robot that is cheaper to deck out in a blue vest than a human people greeter making $20 an hour because of his union contract.

BTW, congrats on the good review John. 

I just had an idea for our new robotic people greeter… did your store have that creepy ass 4 foot tall dancing Santa Claus last Christmas?  I’m pretty sure those things didn’t sell so we could probably just shave him up and dress him in a blue vest… probably want to turn off the hip gyrations too. 

Then I suggest they fire whoever at the home office bought those things.

The postal wage is the same pretty much around the country which makes it not very good in large cities. Where
I live it’s good. NYS is high on taxes. Gasoline is around
$2.40 here.

We’ve never been bailed out by the govt. that I can recall.
A single letter at 37 cents pro-rated against the cost of same elsewhere (at least according to the propaganda here) is the
best deal around. Nationwide the number of jobs has dropped--mostly due to automation and condensing jobs into other jobs. They tend to cover things through attrition. There’s a no layoff rule for employees with more than 6 years.

As for union contributions again----I’m for (in 2 party system)
not giving one party a big advantage over the other. What I’m really for is a viable 4 or 5 parties in any election. To do
that we need to revamp how we do elections. And we need to
whittle down the hundreds of millions of dollars that either party feels it needs to raise. Set a limit on their money and
audit them with real penalties. How about just private personal donations (at say $10,000) and matching funds off
of the income tax? I understand what you’re saying because
it’s not ethical---by the same token it’s not ethical the a Pharmaceutical company make a huge donation and then a year later one of their lawyers is helping to write up a medicare bill. Or a lobbyist representing a foreign govt. or a
firm or even both at once making another huge contribution
to anyone for whatever reason.

Larry… I think you missed my point about unions.  Your fluffed up union pay more than likely accelerated the need for automation and job condensing.  Unions are only beneficial to those lucky enough to be deemed useful after the expense of human labor goes through the roof.  The post office is also lucky enough to be in a business that can be highly automated fairly nicely.  Whether things are covered through attrition or not, the net effect is that your inflated pay rate costs other people jobs.  If you look at the fact that union enrollment numbers are steadily decreasing, you can pretty much directly attribute that to the fact that union labor is overpricing itself out of jobs.  I’d rather not allow unions to drag the rest of us down with them.  I’d rather see wages decrease to be competitive to that of foreign labor or automation in order to keep production in the US.  If wages decrease, prices of goods decrease.  Considering we’ve been going through inflation for hundreds of years, I fail to see what harm a period of deflation could do.

We’ll have more jobs if people are paid less? That way there’ll be more money to go around? Exactly how are you
being dragged down? The Wal-Mart wage whether it’s $8.53
an hour or $9.68 is already critically close to minimum wage
and drops it workers on either side of the federal poverty
guidelines depending more or less on how many dependents
they have or don’t have. That by the way is not progress.
There are people who chortle at the decline of unions--along
with that-- there are others like myself who would point out
--has come a decline in real wage earnings. Apart from that
you should know that the postal service (whether it makes a
profit or not) was designed from its conception (going back to
Ben Franklin) only to pay for itself. In fact the federal govt. in
the past has taken profits away from the Postal Service to pay for this and to pay for that.

In any case it seems at least we’ve left ‘the unions are only
parasites that do nothing but steal wages from their member-
ship’ behind for the time being. It’s interesting that you bring
up automation as some kind of boon. Whatever it has done has been offset by at least one major drawback. And that’s
a real lowering of standards. For instance it used to be that
if you sent a letter say from Vermont to Nevada--it was expected to get there in two days time. And by the way back
then we had a reputation for floundering. Now it takes 4-5-6
days and the public (again according to the propaganda passed down through management) loves us. The question
then becomes why does something that inarguably speeds
the process up in the long run actually slow it down? One reason is because when they test equipment out they do it
with perfect mail. Also with everything in place on that special day to make certain that nothing can go wrong. The
fact is the postal service continues to buy machinery (the best of its
kind in the world) that continues to have problems reading
addresses for a variety of reason and it’s been going on for
15 years. There are other things but I’ll leave it at that for now.

As far as wages. Should we standardize them? Set a minimum or a maximum? Or just a maximum? What fields will we entail like this? When I got out of the service I headed
straight as an arrow for this because I had a good idea what
was going to pay and what wasn’t. My other option was prison guard (like my dad---and believe me I would have gone into that otherwise). Now if I had wanted to stay in New
York I would have looked into the merchant marine.

On deflating wages deflating prices. You’re playing a zero sum game here and assume also that prices are going to
deflate at least at the same rate. Manufacturing is one of the
keys to a strong economy. The Chinese are not stupid. They
have a repressive society and it’s a real scramble for their
people but they know what they’re doing. A big reason is to
build a military and to be able to supply it in-house.

i was an black- american at walmart. and 2white people got promotin over me . and i was there the longest never missed a day out of 2yrs and 4months .i quit becaues it was discrimanation. i loved my job i had too take a 3dollar cut in pay .i was making 10.58 now i have a job thats only paying 8.00 an hr.so i took a cut because of what they did too me and it was one manger.

Well Patricia,
You say in your post:
“i was an black- american at walmart and 2white people got promotion over me and i was there the longest never missed a day out of 2yrs and 4months , i quit because it was discrimination”
You refer to yourself as “I was a black -american at walmart”, does this mean to imply that outside of Wal-Mart you are something else? Asian perhaps?

You used a conjunction three times in your first sentence, and, and and.

Your diction is deplorable, your sentence structure is non-existant and I have a suspicion that your reading comprehension (ability to understand what you are reading) skills are not much better.

I think that might have more to do with not being promoted than the color of your skin.

Ebonics-the fast lane to failure.

i applyed for a truck driver job for wal-mart ,discriminates on hispanaic.i have nothing on my record for the last 10 yrs they would not even call.