It’s no wonder they’re excited about the jobs. Even though Massachusetts’ unemployment rate was at 6.6 percent in May, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Fall River’s unemployment rate that month was 12.5 percent, according to the Massachusetts Office of Labor and Workforce Development. The Fall River store is one of four Sam’s Clubs and Wal-Mart stores in Rhode Island and southeastern Massachusetts in hiring mode. All together, the four stores are hiring for more than 450 jobs. Sam’s is owned and operated by Wal-Mart Stores Inc...Wal-Mart is hiring for 85 newly created jobs at each of its two relocated stores in Massachusetts, one in Fall River and the other in Swansea...
The Fall River Sam’s Club and Wal-Mart stores are bright spots on the employment landscape in what’s been a long, “tough time” for the city, said Jay Pateakos, vice president of business development for the Fall River Area Chamber of Commerce & Industry.
“We appreciate the kinds of jobs the big-box stores are bringing. People need to be employed,” said Pateakos, pointing to Fall River’s double-digit unemployment rate, traditionally one of the highest in the state, the decline of manufacturing and some of the city’s devastating job losses, such as Quaker Fabric...
Moreover:
Currently, Sam’s Club and Wal-Mart employ 11,000 people in Massachusetts and 2,400 in Rhode Island, said Scott.
The average wage is $13.86 an hour for regular full-time employees, with benefits, he added
But how many new hires are full-time versus part-time is not clear. Overwhelmingly, these stores hire employees part time. According to America magazine, the national Jesuit weekly:
Ms. Aubrey, 55, has been working for Walmart off and on for years. She earns $10.10 an hour and can barely afford her rent. “I am clearing less than $250 a week; I have been on food stamps since they cut my hours,” she complains. “They give you a measly 40 cent raise each year, then they increase health care costs or something else and take it all back.” According to Ms. Aubrey, only the department managers at her store are able to get full-time hours and “some of the old-time employees.”
She says, “The rest of us are part-timers. There’s a lot of single moms in my store and many of them, because of the part-time hours, get government assistance. There’s not only a lot of them on food stamps, there is a lot of them that qualify for Medicaid.”
Then there's this from The American Conservative blog:
Mark Krikorian and Stephen Camarota of the Center for Immigration Studies recently said something that got me thinking about the curious phenomenon of the capitalist welfare state. They pointed out that although low-skilled immigrants receive a disproportionate amount of government benefits, the recipients are, for the most part, employed. In effect, employers are getting the taxpayer to subsidize wages: instead of Megalo-Mart paying workers enough to put a roof over their heads, it pays less and lets the public make up the difference. The company gets the labor and profit it wants while externalizing part of the cost of wages.
And there's a big slice of that 50 percent of households receiving government benefits: working ones. So much for the GOP's anti-idleness ideologues telling the chronically unemployed to get up and find jobs, because the Party has it where these prospective workers will still be on the dole. IDIOTS.
So much for all those gainful, full-time jobs coming to Fall River. Goes to show what kind of journalism the Providence Business News purveys.
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