Interesting article comparing the wage and benefit policies of Wal-Mart vs. Costco, showing that you can run a large, big-box retail market and still not treat your employees like coolies.
But there’s another company that is breaking the Wal-Mart mold: Costco Wholesale Corp., now the fifth-largest retailer in the U.S. While Wal-Mart pays an average of $9.68 an hour, the average hourly wage of employees of the Issaquah, Wash.-based warehouse club operator is $16. After three years a typical full-time Costco worker makes about $42,000, and the company foots 92% of its workers? health insurance tab.
How does Costco pull it off? How can a discount retail chain pay middle-class wages and still bring in over $880 million in net revenues? And, a cynic may ask, with Wal-Mart wages becoming the norm, why does it bother?
A number of factors explain Costco?s success at building a retail chain both profitable and fair to its workers. But the basic formula is one the labor movement has been advocating for decades: a loyal, well-compensated workforce means a more efficient and productive one.
Granted, the source (the Labor Research Assocation) is not exactly neutral on the subject, but the numbers behind the rhetoric seem solid, and it does make me feel even better about choosing Costco vs Sam’s Club to drop some hundreds of dollars on a monthly basis.
(via Kottke)
I refuse to give Walmart a dollar of my money. Not only do they exploit their workers, here in Quebec they closed down a store in Joliette whose workers had the temerity to unionize.
I grew up in a blue collar environment. I remember how it was for my father as a policeman before they unionized. After doing a very difficult job for almost 40 years my dad got to retire with dignity, with a pension and benefits that were adequate. Reading about what some American airlines are proposing–looting their pension plans to keep afloat–I wonder what the future holds for American workers.
As I’ve mentioned before, we do not go to Wal-Mart, ever since Margie learned that their craptastic health insurance offerings did not even cover childhood immunizations.
I appreciate a good deal as much as the next fellow. I don’t feel justified, though, in screwing the folks that sell it to me.