Dollar Stores: Top Link in the Sweatshop Chain (a must-read article)

Abel Lopez was a busy man. The El Paso resident’s job with Family Dollar, Inc. averaged 60-80 hours a week. A former graphic designer and ad man from neighboring Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, Lopez spent his days unloading trucks, processing freight, scouring toilets, running cash registers, cleaning, shelving, changing prices, doing inventory, and covering for other employees. As a bonus, he was even held up by armed robbers.

Like others at Family Dollar who wind up spending most of their time doing grunt work, Lopez bore the title of manager. He contends that the company routinely classifies regular workers as managers in order to categorize them as exempt employees and in doing so ensure they are not subject to the overtime provisions of the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). (See box.)

Family Dollar is one of a growing group of chain-store corporations that cater to America's poor by selling cheap goods, many imported from sweatshops in low-wage countries including China and Mexico.

Critics of the two largest dollar store chains, Family Dollar and Dollar General, contend that the companies extract super-profits from the uncompensated labor of overworked store “managers” and other employees.

http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=15629

Yes, I do shop at the dollar stores, but I try to buy non-Chinese made goods there, you can often get name-brand foods made in the USA. I will NOT buy any products from China that go into on on to my body, when my local dollar store started offering shave cream from China, I started buying that at the regular grocery store instead.

my body or in mouth..

The GOP proably embraces their kind of labor policies, too.

i've been to those kinds of stores. i always wonder if the paint on items has lead in them and if there are other poisons mixed liberally in the dyes and fillers of the various items they have on sale there.

worked at Dollar General. They put him on salary and worked him to death, literally. He had a bad heart.

A lot of those so called managers make very few management decisions.

You got it.

Only someone without a lot of work experience would consider these "management" opportunities a good deal.

In Silicon Valley, it's a "standard business practice." Believe it. (I'm a first-hand witness of such abuses in many of the companies there.)

The company knows that they need a certain number of "managers" per store to get the right amount of unpaid labor to keep the store running while keeping labor costs down below their required threshold. If labor costs get too high, they promote someone else into "management" without offering a raise (title only, oh what an honor) and start piling on the hours.

It should be a crime. But if you are poor, and you absolutely need that job to survive, can you afford a lawyer to sue that company?

Can you afford a good enough attorney to go up against the company's army of attorneys?

Can you afford to be out of work when they fire you?

And how often do these cases end up in arbitration where the arbitrators routinely side with the companies, just because that's what they do?

How often does the National Labor Relations Board bother to get involved? And if they do, what guarantee do you have that you won't get some republican appointee who usually finds some excuse to side with companies? They don't have a great record of helping employees and/or unions anymore. Not for almost 30 years.

There are a lot of reasons why the odds of getting any attention or help are very incredibly slim. It's like winning the lottery. What are your chances of winning the lottery? Wouldn't it be nice if that happened though? :(

We used to have a country that thought it was worthwhile to protect workers, and make things fare for people who work for a living, no matter where you worked or how poor you are.

Two, personally. Both are simple folks and hard workers who were proud to receive the title. Both had insane hours and responsibilities dumped on their shoulders without fair compensation. These stores are disgusting. Yet sadly they're spreading like a cancer.

However, it's not just these store engaging in such practices. This is an ever increasing practice in America.

They sell the same China-junk(can't say China-cr*** because it is a banned word:eyes:)

Well Shit! :P

There are negative connotations associated with the slang term for Japanese FYI

i buy only american made stuff from these stores

Unnecessary plastic crap that people think they need only because it is so cheap.
Until we need to dispose of it.

managers? The is widespread in many different industries. I have a friend who works in an accounting firm, who is not a degreed accountant but who is a para-accountant. She was assigned the job of "overseeing" when taxes were completed (basically everyone had to give the tax returns to her to log in before they went to the client). And since she was "overseeing" something, she was considered a manager, therefore no overtime pay.

Another friend works as a manager of a restaurant. The hours are brutal, with no overtime, and his base wage is not all that great. In fact, if you were to calculate an hourly rate based on hours/overtime, he is not making minimum wage.

I have worked as a secretary or a bookkeeper at companies where I have been totally an employee with no ability to make any decisions, and I have been classified as a manager (manager of ordering paper).

It is high time that this practice stops. In fact, I believe that all managers should not be denied overtime. That would stop the practice of anointing employees as managers to skirt the law.

Even when they're caught the penalties are a joke - and the employee can only recover a small portion of the stolen wages

It's a massive scam

are exempt from overtime. If, under no circumstances, no managers are exempt, there will be no game to play. Penalties would include back overtime pay for any employee, and if it were up to me, we would take the employee's records of time worked. Screw with an employee, get taken to the cleaners by the employee, and you might think twice about doing it again.

department to eliminate overtime. So now they work 50+ hours a week for what they got paid for 40 hours.


More Republican tricks.

but this has to be corrected. It may not happen right now, between Repugs in charge of the House and employees scared shitless to fight for this right now, but it is so wrong that it has to change.

I feel for these people. I have been there. I still would be right now where I am if I made the management decision to stay longer than 40 hours. But I don't. Don't get in my way at quitting time.

I've read through the provisions, and they specify that decisions like what brand of paper clips to order do not make you a manager. You need to have real supervisory authority over other employees and a say over what is done and how it is done.

A dozen years ago, there used to be regular lawsuits concerning violations of the law, but I guess that now people are just too grateful to have any job at all to question them. Or perhaps the change in 2004 mentioned below that enables team leaders to be categorized as exempt is the source of these abuses.


http://www.hrhero.com/topics/exempt.html

You don't have to pay overtime to employees who are exempt from the FLSA's overtime provisions. The most common exemptions are the white-collar exemptions for administrative, executive, and professional employees, computer professionals, and outside sales employees. There is a also a lesser known exemption for certain retail or service organizations. Many overtime mistakes occur when the employer misclassifies a non-exempt employee as exempt.


http://humanresources.about.com/od/glossarye/g/exempt.htm

Exempt employees are most often found in managerial, supervisory, professional, administrative, and functional leadership roles such as marketing or product development.

Much attention has been directed at the appropriate classification of exempt employees since revised overtime rules were signed into effect in August, 2004. While many exempt employees, reclassified as non-exempt employees, gained the ability to earn overtime, others, such as team leaders, lost their overtime pay eligibility as newly exempt employees.


http://employment-law.freeadvice.com/employment-law/exempt-employee.htm

A big misconception is that paying a "salary" alone makes an employee "exempt." Not true. In addition to payment on a salary basis, there is a “duties test.” For example, an “executive exempt” person’s “primary duties” must consist of the management of the enterprise (or a recognized department or subdivision) and also the customary and regular direction of the work of two or more employees, and the right to hire and fire. If those additional tests are not met, the employee is not “executive exempt.” Both the “administrative” and “professional” exemption each has their own additional “duties” tests.


http://www.ctdol.state.ct.us/wgwkstnd/wage-hour/exempt.htm

Examples of non-exempt duties:
driving vehicles
operating machinery
bookkeeping
repairing equipment
delivering merchandise
sweeping floors
typing, filing
telemarketing
cashier work
preparing food

Examples of exempt duties:
hiring, firing employees
scheduling employees
determining credit policies
formulating personnel policies
assessing employee performance
determining staffing levels
making company investment decisions

it isn't just the job climate right now. Fights on this go nowhere. There is no one who will rule on the side of the employee. And then the employee will be "downsized" because they caused problems. And again, there is no help for them.

The only real answer is that there should be no exemptions from overtime pay. None. Why should managers have to work 80 hour weeks without compensation for their time? Sure, you can say that they are compensated in the salary, but I doubt that many managers knew the hours prior to accepting a set salary. If you have to pay overtime, the salary should be set lower and the overtime will cover that loss.

They have more cheap crap than WalMart.

And they are all over low-income communities.

of things I could compare prices to, Suave for men body wash which I had JUST bought at Target for $2 was #2.25 there, Huggies baby butt wipes 3 pack refill package was identical at $5.50 to Target and Heinz low sugar catsup 18 oz was 50 cents more.


Perception, it isn't what those (who these stores target) people understand and how it is being manipulated.

I remember convienant stores and gas stations doing this in the 70's - everyone was management except for 1 or 2 part-time stock persons. Regular retail has been doing this for years. I've seen ads here for crews of 6 management to 2 part-time crew ratio for a long time.


There's always those who will work 60 - 70 hard hours a week for a living wage. Problem is they usually drop before they ever reach top management level.

I actually calculated that I made less than the cashiers if you split my pay into an hourly wage (60+ hours a week).

I discovered it's better to be the part-timer.

for their uqly, lame ass graphics if nothing else.

How suprising.....

but seriously... other retailers are just as bad (worse).

the 'administrative staff' became "department managers" overnight to eliminte 10 hours a week overtime.


Fucking scumbags they are.

I count several among my friends. :(

:hi:

I don't go to dollar stores very often, but sometimes you need a big gift bag or set of aluminum baking trays for a potluck. And then I see seniors with carts full of $1 cookies, canned spaghetti, beans. I look at the labels on that stuff. Salt and sugar, very little else.

Oh, and get this: my Dollar Tree has a big sign: "We Accept Food Stamps."

Breaks my heart.

unless we beat them in Wisconsin

I live in a town of 1400 people. We have two franchises: Dollar General and a Subway sandwich store.

I have to drive twenty miles just to buy groceries at Wallyworld. The other choice is a small Kroger.

Dollar General has done the same thing Wallyworld has done: establish stores in the little towns and drive out the competition, and destroy the economy.