As the number of skilled tradespeople dwindles in the U.S., Walmart is building up its own workforce to keep conveyor belts moving and refrigerated grocery cases cold.
  • verdi@feddit.org
    9·
    21 hours ago

    US: CoMuNiZm DoEsN’t WoRk. A planned economy can never succeed, we need self regulating markets.

    Wallmart with a bigger planned economy than the USSR: Hold my beer.

    • Reference4054@lemmy.zip
      134·
      1 day ago

      FWIW the person mentioned in the article that went through the training doubled her wages. It could raise good opportunities for people.

        • partial_accumen@lemmy.world
          1·
          11 hours ago

          And what would she have earned if she wasn’t a captive of Walmart?

          “Captive of Walmart”? Walmart, for all its faults, isn’t a prison. If there’s another employer offering to pay more for her new skills, she could take that job earning more.

        • youare_acooldude@sh.itjust.works
          112·
          20 hours ago

          I don’t know why you’d assume that any other business would be any different.

          Walmart isn’t intrinsically worse than any of the other businesses; they’re just the best at what they do and all the losers who can’t compete get mad.

          • a_non_monotonic_function@lemmy.world
            3·
            13 hours ago

            Walmart suppresses wages so bad that they train people on arrival how to get in Medicaid and food programs.

            Their existence is predicated on paying people so poorly that the company’s existence is predicated on the availability of a public handout just to keep going.

            So, yea, they are intrinsically (and measurably) worse than many employers.

            • youare_acooldude@sh.itjust.works
              16·
              19 hours ago

              Yeah, this is what I mean.

              That’s not unique to walmart. All businesses, local or conglomerate, pride themselves on paying their employees peanuts.

              This is the fault of the workers more than anything else. They can’t work together to demand better compensation, so they get taken advantage of accordingly.

  • AxExRx@lemmy.world
    4·
    19 hours ago

    Pretty sure they’ve, and other large chain stores have been doing this for a while for certain trades. Like electricians and refrigeration/ HVAC.

    I know an electrician who did his J-manship under them. So he worked with the master electrician and they were the in-house team for like 4 districts, maintaining and upgrading 25 or so stores. When the electrician retired, he took over the contract, trained up another journeyman, before deciding he wanted to move to my town and start up his own company.

    Our local stop and shop has the same for refrigerators- theres a team that gets dispatched whenever theres problems. They even have mechanics jerseys with a stop and shop patch on them. Although, because I live on an island, they do maintain emergency contracts with 2 local guys just in case their team can’t make it over.