WAL-MART RAISES WILL STILL LEAVE MANY UNABLE TO PAY EXPENSES

[Omaha Steve]

Source: AP

BY JOSH BOAK

WASHINGTON (AP) -- For roughly 500,000 Wal-Mart workers set to receive pay raises, something is better than nothing.

But it still won't be enough for many of them to afford housing and transportation and feed and raise children without government aid, according to economists and researchers.

The nation's largest private employer - with 1.3 million jobs - unveiled a salary bump for many of its lowest-paid workers on Thursday, promising a 1.1 percent increase in the average full-time wage over the next year, to $13 an hour. Part-time workers would get a 5.2 percent raise, to an average $10 an hour, by February 2016.

Both fall below the $15 an hour "living wage" many union-backed Wal-Mart employees have been pushing for. Driven by rising income inequality and a decades-long decline in middle-class jobs, workers are also campaigning for steep wage hikes at other major non-unionized employers, including McDonalds and other fast food chains.

FULL story at link.



Wal-Mart President and Chief Executive Officer Doug McMillon speaks during an interview with The Associated Press on Tuesday, Feb. 17, 2015, in Bentonville, Ark. Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is spending $1 billion to change how it pays and trains hourly staff in a move it hopes will help reshape the image that it only offers dead-end jobs. (AP Photo/Gareth Patterson)

Read more: http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_WAL_MART_LIVING_WAGE?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2015-02-19-17-28-35

[greyl]

1. LOOK AT THIS:

http://www.unit-conversion.info/texttools/capitalize-words/

All caps for no good reason are annoying to many, and usually avoidable.

[Omaha Steve]

2. It is the title verbatim from the AP

IF the hosts say it is ok to change the type set, I'm fine with it.

It is also considered shouting in many circles.

OS

[greyl]

7. I understand, OS. However,

Last edited Sun Feb 22, 2015, 04:20 AM - Edit history (1)

"verbatim" doesn't typically include capitalization that obscures meaning or otherwise adds no meaning. Acronyms become less easy to distinguish if other surrounding text is capitalized.

2, the exact text from the article without CSS styling is "Wal-Mart raises will still leave many unable to pay expenses". Screen readers for the sight impaired should interpret the headline at the original site correctly, because they ignore the CSS style telling other user's browsers to render the title in all caps. But when their "styled" titles are pasted onto DU or other sites, the actual HTML text is all caps, so screen readers have a more difficult time interpreting correctly.

3. It's bloody annoying to many, and a quick and easy thing to address, especially for stories where time is not of the essence.

4. The same article is available without the all cap headlines from non AP Excite sources.

[Omaha Steve]

8. I sent the question to the hosts

Just waiting for a reply.

AP Excite doesn't actually do all caps.

I wonder if it is a hold over from the old teletype days? All caps makes it easy to scan for a title.

[greyl]

9. Sort of a holdover, maybe, but

in a group of titles (DU LBN headlines) all caps for no meaningful reason doesn't help anything.

MESSAGES SENT WITHIN THE U.S. NAVY NO LONGER HAVE TO BE WRITTEN OUT IN ALL CAPITAL LETTERS.

Since the 19th century, all official Navy communications have been written that way, a legacy of primitive technology combined with the service's love of tradition.

But in the modern age, young sailors more accustomed to texting on their phones consider TYPING IN ALL CAPS akin to shouting. Typographers, meanwhile, have long maintained that all-caps text is hard on the eyes.

So the Navy, amid a modernization of its communications system, decided it would make its official messages more readable—and potentially less rude..

http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887324049504578541813637044462

[csziggy]

10. If changing the type face means you have less time to post news

I vote that you continue to post more news article links.

A message all in caps is annoying, a subject header/title all in caps is not so much.

Thank you, Omaha Steve, for the time you put into bringing important news to DU's attention.

[greyl]

14. If it's worth doing, it's worth doing well.

Edit to add: I mean, the subject of the OP is a company that happily sacrifices quality for sake of costing them less.

A prolific DU LBN OPer actually has more responsibility(than an occasional OPer), I feel. Pretty good chance they'd have 10 seconds to spare in the name of user-friendliness.

[csziggy]

15. Some would rather criticize than do it at all...

[greyl]

16. We all bring our own

"something special" to DU, yes.

[alp227]

17. Lol. nothing in the rules say you can't change type set.

On the http://bigstory.ap.org site, headlines used to be in all caps yet when copied & pasted to DU text entry didn't return in all caps. The AP website must've used all-caps headlines with some CSS code or something unlike excite.

[greyl]

6. Easy, right? nt

[project_bluebook]

3. Its not perfect but a step in the right direction

Presume needs to be kept on the richest family in the USA so they will continue to improve workers pay and conditions.

[Wellstone ruled]

5. Let's not get ahead of our selves here.

This raise thing does not cover all Wal-Mart employees,my understanding is only forty percent will benefit. Is this another BullCrap bloviating PR stunt from these people?

[Adrahil]

12. AS I understand it.....

the 40% number has to do with teh fact that 60% of workers already have wages above these levels. My Nephew works at Wally-World (he's going to school), and pulls in $14/hr right now. Not great, but not terrible.

[cstanleytech]

18. I wish I could say the same for my brothers fiancee as she works in their bakery deli area and

only gets a few cents over 8 bucks an hour not to mention the last 2 months they gutted her on hours and for the last few weeks her hours have been between 10 - 25 hours per week with most of the weeks being under 20 hours.

[Adrahil]

19. Seems like she should be one of those getting a raise then,

But don;pt get me wrong. Wal-mart is STILL a wretched hive of scum and villainy. They ain't doing this outta the goodness of their heart.

[octoberlib]

11. Robert Reich just posted this on FB

Robert Reich
5 mins ·
The right is already putting out a false story about why Walmart raised its wages. Here's the Wall Street Journal's account:
"Wal-Mart Stores Inc. plans to boost pay for its U.S. employees to at least $10 an hour by next year, well above the minimum wage, signaling a tightening labor market and rising competition for lower-paid workers."
Baloney. Low-wage Americans are not in a tight labor market. They're still suffering brutally high rates of unemployment. Walmart raised wages because it was under increasing pressure from its current workers,and from a huge and growing national campaign focused on raising Walmart workers' pay. But Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal and other conservative outlets don't want that story told, for fear it might mobilize even more Americans to demand higher wages. Spread the truth. https://www.facebook.com/RBReich?fref=nf

[cstanleytech]

13. Even a 15 dollar a raise is worthless imo because it leaves out the problem of the

company will just cut their workers hours.
Whats really needed imo is redoing the entire corporate taxes and linking any cuts to how many of the companies workers 500% above the federal poverty level or less and the more employees like that a company has the fewer tax breaks the company qualifies for and 3rd party contract workers should count as employees so that companies dont try any BS of contracting their workers out.