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Makes no sense... since Costco is importing fruits and vegetables from California and selling them cheap, how does that compete with farmer's markets, which are supposed to be selling only local Hawai'i grown?* If anything, Costco is actually competing with local supermarkets, who are also importing and selling the same kind of imported goods.
That is just 2 markets out of many that DO allow non-local foods to be sold.
The 2 biggest markets - Hilo Farmer's Market and Makuu - don't abide by this.
It is a fact. Many of these "vendors" buy the products from Costco and resell at the farmers markets.
Costco in Kona just doesn't sell the local produce, KTA, Safeway, etc. do.
* Every cheap imported (even from the mainland) fruit/veggie that Costco sells in Hawaii impacts the amount of sales of locally grown foods.
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Originally Posted by OpenD
Costco's ratio of employees to customers is well documented to be higher than Walmarts, while the persistent complaints about Walmart severely understaffing their stores come from both customers and employees. Remember, Walmart is generally hated by its employees, while Costco is highly regarded by theirs. The differences go far deeper than mere wages...
I don't care what a mainland study claims. In Hawaii - in Kona - there are way too few employees.
Have you actually been in the store?
Plus, I don't shop at mainland stores cause I live in Hawaii!
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Originally Posted by OpenD
Again, that would be true if it it were an even trade off for the jobs they displace, but the research all shows they displace 3 small business jobs for every 2 they offer... not at all a good deal for the community and for long term economic reinvestment. And with such a high turnover rate, it's not a lasting benefit for many.
The "research" simply isn't true for what has happened in Hilo. The economic increase located around the Hilo Walmart is proof. Those mom-and-pop stores were generally open 9-5 and the new stores are open double those hours, if not 24x7, creating the need for multiple, additional shifts of employees and managers - FAR more employees than were ever needed by the little stores that underpaid their 19 hour a week part-time employees. I bet the managers at all of these stores really like their big, corporate pay and perks too and that some of them are those poor, displaced shop owners who make more now than they ever did.
Maybe, just maybe, the studies and research you keep touting as some sort of gospel are an average! They may be true in some locations on the mainland, but it isn't true for what happened in Hilo.
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Originally Posted by OpenD
And with such a high turnover rate, it's not a lasting benefit for many.
Now you are worried about Walmart's turnover? If Walmart has high turnover, isn't that a sign that people are leaving for what is hopefully an even better paying job elsewhere? With all of the new to the workforce people that Walmart hires, maybe those people gained skills and bettered themselves? Isn't that a good thing?
Location: not sure, but there's a hell of a lot of water around here!
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I ran into Viper, the one and only time I went to Walmart in Honolulu. Think he was looking for toilet paper.. Or maybe it was sand paper. What ever it was, he needed it badly.
That is just 2 markets out of many that DO allow non-local foods to be sold.
The 2 biggest markets - Hilo Farmer's Market and Makuu - don't abide by this.
It is a fact. Many of these "vendors" buy the products from Costco and resell at the farmers markets.
Costco in Kona just doesn't sell the local produce, KTA, Safeway, etc. do.
That's called "moving the goalpost"... you said Costco was hurting the farmers markets in Kona, I showed that couldn't be true for the two largest farmers markets in Kona. Now you say that's not what you meant.
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* Every cheap imported (even from the mainland) fruit/veggie that Costco sells in Hawaii impacts the amount of sales of locally grown foods.
Yes, but since KTA and Safeway and all the rest of the supermarkets also sell imported produce, why single out Costco?. That's illogical. And for many people the main point of buying from farmers markets is to buy fresh and buy local, and paying more for that freshness is not unexpected. Fresh local eggs at the farmers market cost double what I can buy the imported ones for at KTA. So what? I want the quality and the freshness. Fresh local lettuce is more at the farmers market than the lettuce from California costs. Same deal.
Buying at Hilo farmers market or Maku'u in Puna is a different ball game entirely. Those are farmers markets in name only, more like flea markets, and a lot of what gets sold is actually small lots from local produce distributors... what they couldn't sell to the hotels and restaurants... stuff that is past the peak or not A quality to start with. Some is local grown, but not as much as a lot of people think. So if somebody buys stuff at Costco and marks it up and sells it at Maku'u and some customer is clueless about prices and buys it at the marked up price, whether it's lettuce or cookies or jeans, how is that Costco's fault? Answer: it's not.
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I don't care what a mainland study claims. In Hawaii - in Kona - there are way too few employees.
Have you actually been in the store?
Plus, I don't shop at mainland stores cause I live in Hawaii!
As I said before about Walmart, they did not change their playbook just for the Hawai'i stores. Policies and staffing ratios are the same. And as I also said, Walmart is noticeably worse, so much so that the employees regularly complain about it. .
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The "research" simply isn't true for what has happened in Hilo. The economic increase located around the Hilo Walmart is proof. Those mom-and-pop stores were generally open 9-5 and the new stores are open double those hours, if not 24x7, creating the need for multiple, additional shifts of employees and managers - FAR more employees than were ever needed by the little stores that underpaid their 19 hour a week part-time employees.
Your thinking is too linear on this, so let's try a little thought experiment... Say you're in the Hilo Walmart shopping for a Bible and you need assistance... the book section is between Photo and Electronics departments... but when you look around there's nobody to assist you in books, nobody to assist you in Photo, and nobody to assist you in Electronics. That's when you think back to the good old days before Walmart, when there would always be a couple of people to assist you at the bookstore, 3 or 4 at the Photo shop, and about the same at the Electronics shop. Say 9 people in total worked at those businesses, people who could actually answer your questions, at specialty shops that understood the importance of good service.
And now, for those three departments, and maybe a couple more, Walmart has 1 person scheduled per shift, and that person can't answer anything. Oh, they can help you read the descriptions on the boxes, maybe even check the back room for what you want but don't see, but that's about it. And if the checkout lanes get backed up, they may be called up front to help with the registers. But since the store is now open late, they need to schedule two people to cover that slot for the whole business day, and then a couple more are needed so that there's coverage 7 days a week, and given that staffing guidelines call for two of those FTE positions be filled with 4 part timers , now they have a total of 6 people on the payroll... replacing the 9 who used to have jobs in small businesses... only these are lower paid employees, and they can't really help you much, and besides, you can never find them when you need them. .
Tuhhh dahhh! That's the Walmart Effect!
I don't know why you keep flogging the fairy tale that family-owned businesses paid less than their big box competitors do, because multiple surveys and studies say the reverse is true. And employees stayed longer, and had more personal investment in the store doing well.
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I bet the managers at all of these stores really like their big, corporate pay and perks too and that some of them are those poor, displaced shop owners who make more now than they ever did.
Big corporate pay and perks? Working for big box retailers? Bwahahahahahahaha. Never worked retail, i take it.
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Maybe, just maybe, the studies and research you keep touting as some sort of gospel are an average! They may be true in some locations on the mainland, but it isn't true for what happened in Hilo.
I don't understand your magical thinking on this. None of these companies invented a whole new way of doing business just for the Hilo location. And Walmart is probably the most studied retailer in the country.
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Now you are worried about Walmart's turnover? If Walmart has high turnover, isn't that a sign that people are leaving for what is hopefully an even better paying job elsewhere?
That would be nice, but that doesn't seem to be the case. Instead a lot of people leave because they just can't take the BS any more. Working conditions are abusive... wanna be one of those folks staffing the insane "Doorbusters" event at 6 pm on Thanksgiving? They get jerked around and cheated on their hours by "managers" with little or no managerial training... it's Costco that does that kind of training, not Walmart.
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With all of the new to the workforce people that Walmart hires, maybe those people gained skills and bettered themselves? Isn't that a good thing?
Sure, if that were actually so. But one of the persistent complaints current and former employees make is that it's very hard to advance because Walmart doesn't want to spend money on training (unlike Costco), and that even for a critical position like full-time cashier the training is minimal. For shelf stockers and floor personnel the training to act as fill in cashier is even more minimal, although they regularly get called to the front to fill in when lines are long, even though they are paid less than regular cashiers.
It's just a miserable place to work, even for people who are desperate, so the annual turnover is about 70%, highest in the industry.
Your thinking is too linear on this, so let's try a little thought experiment... Say you're in the Hilo Walmart shopping for a Bible and you need assistance... the book section is between Photo and Electronics departments... but when you look around there's nobody to assist you in books, nobody to assist you in Photo, and nobody to assist you in Electronics. That's when you think back to the good old days before Walmart, when there would always be a couple of people to assist you at the bookstore, 3 or 4 at the Photo shop, and about the same at the Electronics shop. Say 9 people in total worked at those businesses, people who could actually answer your questions, at specialty shops that understood the importance of good service.
And now, for those three departments, and maybe a couple more, Walmart has 1 person scheduled per shift, and that person can't answer anything. Oh, they can help you read the descriptions on the boxes, maybe even check the back room for what you want but don't see, but that's about it. And if the checkout lanes get backed up, they may be called up front to help with the registers. But since the store is now open late, they need to schedule two people to cover that slot for the whole business day, and then a couple more are needed so that there's coverage 7 days a week, and given that staffing guidelines call for two of those FTE positions be filled with 4 part timers , now they have a total of 6 people on the payroll... replacing the 9 who used to have jobs in small businesses... only these are lower paid employees, and they can't really help you much, and besides, you can never find them when you need them. .
Tuhhh dahhh! That's the Walmart Effect!
If folks need a lot of assistance while shopping, they probably shouldn't be shopping at Wal-Mart or any other "big box" retailer. With the advent of improved "self-checkout" technology and smartphones, staffing levels can probably be reduced even further. Walmart boosts Scan & Go self-checkout with mobile coupons - Mobile Commerce Daily
I wonder why employees at small mom-and-pop stores in and around Hilo/Pahoa, leave those wonderful jobs to go work at Walmart, Target, Home Depot... Maybe cause they couldn't get more than minimum wage and 19 hours a week at those mom-and-pop stores? Hmmmmmm....
And as Jonah has noted, with the advent of newer technologies, those people probably would have lost their job at the mom-and-pop store anyway.
I wonder why employees at small mom-and-pop stores in and around Hilo/Pahoa, leave those wonderful jobs to go work at Walmart, Target, Home Depot... Maybe cause they couldn't get more than minimum wage and 19 hours a week at those mom-and-pop stores? Hmmmmmm....
And as Jonah has noted, with the advent of newer technologies, those people probably would have lost their job at the mom-and-pop store anyway.
I think what is bizarre is how your compare a ma & pa type operation to something like walmarts? Profit alone is billions apart? Maybe im misreading your posts? But you keep justifying low pay because the ma & pas cant pay higher wages. The point is if a ma & pa store had the same profits and was using government money to subsidies there low pay and profits. We would be talking about them in the same breath as walmart.
Its just the effects of Gentrification on hilo/pahoa.
I think what is bizarre is how your compare a ma & pa type operation to something like walmarts?
OpenD was the one who claimed those little stores in Hilo employed more people and pay better wages than Walmart. I couldn't let the non-true statements he made, just go by.
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Originally Posted by hawaiian by heart
Profit alone is billions apart? Maybe im misreading your posts? But you keep justifying low pay because the ma & pas cant pay higher wages. The point is if a ma & pa store had the same profits and was using government money to subsidies there low pay and profits. We would be talking about them in the same breath as walmart.
Yes, you are mis-reading. Walmart makes billions because they have thousands of stores, worldwide. Add up the profits from thousands of small stores and you have the same profits. It is still the about same amount of total money floating around. Plus, Walmart makes a big chunk of money in other countries, bringing those profits back to the US.
"Today, Walmart operates over 11,000 retail units under 71 banners in 27 countries. We employ 2.2 million associates around the world — 1.3 million in the U.S. alone." Walmart Locations Around the World
And the point is, in Hilo, those mom-and-pop stores DO use subsidies like food stamps, etc. to help them with their business plan - not a single bit different than Walmart is being accused of doing, except that Walmart, in Hilo, pays employees more per hour than those little stores do (or did).
All of those other big stores that have now opened all around Walmart in Hilo, as well as all of the other small shops that have done the same, have bettered Hilo's economy - not decimated it as obsolete and misleading mainland studies might have one to believe. Just because you google a mainland study done by a liberal group with an agenda doesn't mean it is true, especially in Hawaii. It certainly isn't in this case.
So we should ABSOLUTELY be talking about those small stores in Hilo, who limit workers to 19 hours a week and pay less per hour than what Walmart does. Why do they get a free pass on wages and hours?
ps - despite a weird reference on another post that they sell books - the Hilo Walmart has no book department. They sell the odd book or two here and there in some departments, but there is no book department that could have possibly caused a small book store or two to close up shop in Hilo. Just more false information.
Is it not fact that the waltons who own walmart are worth 100+ billion? Is it a fact they own 50% plus of walmart stock? Is it a fact that walmart cost the american tax payer billions in taxes for low wages? We talk about welfare to the poor as a waste because most are able bodied. I can't see anyone more able bodied to be socially responsible to communities or its employees then Wallmart. You said it Walmart operates over 11,000 retail units under 71 banners in 27 countries. They employ 2.2 million associates around the world — 1.3 million in the U.S. alone." Walmart Locations Around the World.
Didnt Wal-Mart CEO Doug McMillon Get a $25.6M Pay Package? Didnt Walmart CEO Michael Duke's $35 million salary converts to $16826.92 an hour? Half of Walmart workers made less than $22,400 in 2012. So i ask you which ma & pa type operation owner is worth 100+ billion? Pays there CEO or manager 35 million? Or the owners personal pay is 16k an hr?
OpenD is correct ma & pa local stores do pay more.
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