Yesterday, Wal-Mart announced that they are capping employee’s wages. I find it interesting to watch this story unfold across the blogosphere and traditional news outlets. I posted some links to early reaction to the news earlier today, but now here’s some more nuggets that I am finding as the news has spread.
First, back to The Writing on the Wal. Always a good site about news and information about the negative and positive things Wal-Mart does, they’re also following how this story is unfolding. They’ve made a post with some of the employee reaction, taken from Wake Up Walmart.
Blogging Stocks has a few pieces written about the Wal-Mart announcement. The first post, Deep thoughts on Wal-Mart’s pay raise announcement, takes a look at some of the positive things that have surfaced from this story. On the other hand, Sarah Gilbert writes, in The Wal-mart wage has new mix and max:
Interestingly, the Wal-Mart spokesperson responsible for this news spun the caps as a positive (paraphrase thanks to the AP): “the wage caps give current associates an incentive to move up to higher positions if they want to make more money.” Umm… sure. Now employees must get more responsibility if they want more money, I suppose. In the abstract, it’s a good thing, but having managed lots of people I’ve learned that not everyone is cut out for responsibility; the new caps will limit the lifetime earnings potential of thousands upon thousands of employees.
Is this an unjust negative spin or just the reality of the situation? I’m sure it is more reality than anything else, as I don’t believe Wal-Mart’s decision is purely altruistic in nature.
Lastly, for the real reaction you have to listen to the employees themselves. Although you or I may not be able to sit down and have a round table discussion with dozens of Wal-Mart employees at a time, don’t forget about the forums where they, very candidly, discuss what is going on. Some of my favorites for Wal-Mart employees are the forum at Walmart-Blows (take a look at the thread New Flight coming down this week Will hear more Monday which contains a leak of the initial information, then speculation, and finally the reaction as it is announced). Also check out the Wal-Mart employee forum at Retail-Worker, the employee forum at WallyWorldSucks and the walmart_employe [sic] Livejournal community.
(I’d love to see more reaction to this. Please use the comments to post links to blogs or news articles about this. Thanks!)