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Showing Original Post only (View all)Walmart's 'Worst Nightmare' Competition Has Cashiers And Produce Clerks With $1 Million Pensions [View all]
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/08/09/1229983/-Walmart-s-Worst-Nightmare-Competition-Has-Cashiers-And-Produce-Clerks-With-1-Million-Pensions?detail=emailby james321
WinCo -- a low-cost grocery store chain from Idaho -- is being described as Walmart's 'worst nightmare' in a recent Time Article:
<snip>
So about that eye-catching Walmart quote. Those are the words of Burt Flickinger III, a widely respected supermarket retailing industry expert who works for the Strategic Resource Group. Flickinger was quoted in a recent Idaho Statesman story about WinCo, a chain of roughly 100 supermarkets in the western U.S., based in Boise.
WinCo arguably may be the best retailer in the Western U.S., Flickinger says while touring a WinCo store. WinCo is really unstoppable at this point, he goes on. Theyre Walmarts worst nightmare.
Flickinger isnt the only industry insider discussing WinCo and Walmart in the same breath. While many supermarkets strive to keep within a few percentage points of Walmart Stores prices, WinCo Foods often undersells the massive discount chain, the industry publication Supermarket News explained last spring.
<snip>
Prices are kept low through a variety of strategies, the main one being that it often cuts out distributors and other middle men and buys many goods directly from farms and factories. WinCo also trims costs by not accepting credit cards and by asking customers to bag their own groceries. Similarly to warehouse membership stores like Sams Club and Costco, and also to successful discount grocers with small stores like Trader Joes and Aldi, WinCo stores are organized and minimalist, without many frills, and without the tremendous variety of merchandise thats become standard at most supermarkets. Everything is neat and clean, but basic, Hauptman told Supermarket News. Though the stores are very large, with a lot of categories, they lack depth or breadth of variety.
The second part of Walmart's nightmare is that WinCo does all this, and treats its employees really, really well. In addition to decent health care benefits, some employees -- including cashiers and produce clerks -- have pensions worth over $1 Million. (What white collar workers in America today have $1 Million pensions? A declining percentage, but, here, we're talking grocery store employees!)
In sharp contrast to Walmart, which regularly comes under fire for practices like understaffing stores to keep costs down and hiring tons of temporary workers as a means to avoid paying full-time worker benefits, WinCo has a reputation for doing right by employees. It provides health benefits to all staffers who work at least 24 hours per week. The company also has a pension, with employees getting an amount equal to 20% of their annual salary put in a plan thats paid for by WinCo; a company spokesperson told the Idaho Statesman that more than 400 nonexecutive workers (cashiers, produce clerks, and such) currently have pensions worth over $1 million apiece.
<snip>
Be afraid, Walmart, be afraid. Karma, you know, is, well...
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Walmart's 'Worst Nightmare' Competition Has Cashiers And Produce Clerks With $1 Million Pensions [View all]
marble falls
Aug 2013
OP
In case people miss it in the story, WinCo is an employee-owned company. n/t
PoliticAverse
Aug 2013
#1
Think about what "invest in success" means. It means that you gamble on their success.
rhett o rick
Aug 2013
#38
between this chain, and costco, the evil empire SHOULD be getting a clue, but I doubt it.
niyad
Aug 2013
#3
I suspect they won't notice until the profits start disappearing as a result of their decisions. n/t
PoliticAverse
Aug 2013
#4
perhaps not even then. they have so much money, would take a long time to filter through.
niyad
Aug 2013
#5
They certainly seem to have a sustainable business model, but they are a supermarket.
MADem
Aug 2013
#6
They're starting to build here in Texas and I will shop there. I swore off Wal-Mart years ago.
marble falls
Aug 2013
#9
It isn't only the cost of processing credit card transactions. Retailers are also paying for the
sueh
Aug 2013
#21
It's employee owned but it's run by a management team. Rank and file employees do not have the same
totodeinhere
Aug 2013
#25
My dad was a Teamster organizer and my granfather was a wobbly so I got to see unions from both ....
marble falls
Aug 2013
#39
So you would support a company with a union over a company that paid its workers more ? n/t
PoliticAverse
Aug 2013
#32
I do my best to only support union shops. And I find it amazing that at a supposedly progressive
totodeinhere
Aug 2013
#33
Apparently some here have lost sight of the purpose of a union - it's to help the employees.
PoliticAverse
Aug 2013
#34