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Comment by ianai | Hacker News Reader

Yes, exactly. I could imagine an after-shift delivery taking up to an hour to complete. (I'm factoring-in "find the place" time and retracing their steps after delivery) They will probably only be paid a per Diem for the delivery - and it won't be near their hourly wage nor gas/wear & tear costs.

It's a nice thought on the outside...but ultimately, deliveries are best done by actually specialized outfits.

I can also imagine a manager changing everyones' schedules around the deliveries. That could seriously impact people.

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> and it won't be near their hourly wage nor gas/wear & tear costs.

Well then, I suppose the people involved will just have to do the math and see if it makes sense to them. The horror.

Im in the 'wait and see' camp.. but you can say a program is voluntary, while in truth it's required to keep your job.

Just label all the people who refuse as not being team players. Dock them on their performance reviews for it. "Johnny over there wouldn't take a short detour on his way home, so we had to send someone out to deliver a package. If he's not willing to help out, maybe he should go work some place else."

There.. a required voluntary program. This is the natural language/playbook for every manager out there.

Many of the workers involved have hours that change on the whim of their supervisors. Employees who aren't team players don't get hours.

Do you have any evidence at all that this will be the case here?

I was speaking generally... but I think its going to be pretty difficult to avoid in an organization like Walmart, with its low-margin and strong emphasis on efficiency and controlling costs, to look at a sheet that says an employee is 2 minutes from a delivery point, but instead we had to send a truck 30 minutes out to deliver a package... it's going to be hard for that manager not to take that as a willingness to help.

Once you have a sheet with times and delivery points for each employee.. it becomes a measure of the employees willingness to assist. If other employees are willing to drive 10 minutes, and you're not willing to drive 2 minutes, it raises the question of why.

And that question is definitely going to be asked if the alternative (30 minutes for regular delivery) results in an additional cost to the company.

But as I said, we'll have to wait and see.

When the alternative is starving, taking a worse deal is just what you have to do. And Walmart controls the workers hours, so that's a huge mess.

This can become abusive in a hurry. Suppose the net after gas is that delivering packages pays $5/hr. Walmart knows how many deliveries their workers take, how many they need, and what hours get scheduled. More packages need going out? Cut hours for folks not delivering, schedule the folks delivering for more days with short shifts or split shifts.

Sadly for a lot of people, the short term win of being able to use the extra couple dollars to feed the family causes them to act 'irrationally' and ignore the longer term consequences.

> Sadly for a lot of people, the short term win of being able to use the extra couple dollars to feed the family causes them to act 'irrationally' and ignore the longer term consequences

Sort of like driving for Lyft or Uber?

The wear on vehicles alone adds up quickly into large maintenance bills... yet many people still drive for them on an amateur level, making long term profits questionable (buying new tires after 1-2 years instead of 3-4, for example).

And when it doesn't, the manager will see their bonuses going away and the workers will be labeled non-team-players, their performance reviews will be harsher and some slackers will have to go to make room for dedicated people.

Labor unions, when they work, are a beautiful thing.

It's sad reading people cheering their own exploitation. But I'd expect nothing less from HN.

You think the average HN employee works shifts at Wal-mart? No, it's people here cheering other's exploitation (in the name of the mythical "freedom").

You're both assuming that this must necessarily be exploitative. It might actually be a good program for Walmart workers.

And your assumption that employee is even allowed a cost/benefit option is based on... ?

All of this hypothetical except for the fact that Wal-Mart is known for a) ruthless schedule management like keeping workers locked in warehouses b) a known price-cutter both on vendors and employees to the point their employees often qualify for state aid for under-employed / under-paid (i.e., welfare benefits).

Given that, it'd be surprising if an non-exploitative option will be available for the workers who will be doing these deliveries.

But of course, we'll see.

> And your assumption that employee is even allowed a cost/benefit option is based on... ?

I'm not assuming anything, I'm giving Walmart the benefit of the doubt. As you said, "we'll see", no need to shit on them providing their employees with an additional revenue stream before the program is even implemented.

Giving Wal-Mart the benefit of the doubt flies in the face of historical facts/data. Feel free to argue otherwise.

Let's keep it civil.

Are you operating on old assumptions? The average hourly wage is $13.38 for full-time workers and $10.58 per hour for part-timers [1]. Not bad for unskilled labor.

1: http://money.cnn.com/2016/01/20/news/companies/walmart-pay-r...

Any situation where you do not receive the full value of your labor is exploitation, of course.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploitation_of_labour#Surplus...

Is this sarcasm? "Of course" makes it sound like it is, because it's certainly not obvious, but you know, Poe's law, and you linked to it.

If it's not, I'm curious why this theory holds so much sway for some people, given its glaring flaws. Maybe I'm just misunderstanding what it's saying, but just because an engineer can add $1M in marginal revenue to Google's bottom line absolutely does not mean they deserve $1M in salary, because they can only do that using the construct that was created by the other engineers at Google in order to make that much money for Google. If they couldn't make that $1M on their own without the rest of Google's help - the existing brand, infrastructure, and ideas when they join - they're not being "exploited", especially if they're also shareholders. And the longer you spend there, the larger a shareholder you become (unless you choose to sell your share to someone else, which many do).

And to say that the value of a product can be based on how much labor it took to make is completely insane - mud piles can take tons of labor to make, but they're usually also completely useless. The amount of effort expended did not imbue those mud piles with any sort of value to anyone.

This isn't to say that I think the current ownership structures of companies is ideal and can't be improved upon, I don't think that. But I find what you linked to be filled with such flawed reasoning that I'm curious what people see in it. Or maybe it requires operating under different axioms.

Again, you're saying this without even knowing what the pay structure is.

Walmart has not earned that benefit of the doubt. Given that it is Walmart, the default is to assume that it will be exploitative until proven otherwise.

I've only heard good things about Costco. I wouldn't give Costco the benefit of the doubt. Every company (except nonprofits) exists to accrue profit. There's no other factor. They do not have any interest in mind than profit. I definitely assume the worst from Walmart.

Which also doesn't help if it ends up being coercive like "well this is optional, but we'll prefer people who do it" effectively meaning people who don't do it will just get passed over for promotions / raises etc.

> They will probably only be paid a per Diem for the delivery

This is a big assumption we'll have to find out. It's important to state that delivery competitors UberEats, Roadie, etc are also per diem. (and come with fewer benefits than a walmart employee would already have)

> I could imagine an after-shift delivery taking up to an hour to complete.

The article says the app finds possible deliveries that are on the employee's route home, so no extra out of the way driving is to be done... only a 30 second stop to get out and carry the package up to the front door. Seems very efficient to me.

> I can also imagine a manager changing everyones' schedules around the deliveries. That could seriously impact people.

Again, from the article, the program is 100% volunteer.

> but ultimately, deliveries are best done by actually specialized outfits

Which are incapable of same day deliveries usually (there's a few exceptions, but they usually cost a figurative arm and leg). Typically local courier services are used (such as with Amazon's same day deliveries, but note that Amazon subsidizes that service and the customer doesn't pay the actual cost typically), but they are making a special trip to pickup the package and a special trip to deliver the package, which means it costs more to WalMart, which means WalMart passes that cost onto the customer.

Seems like this program can be a big win-win for everyone involved. We'll have to wait and see how the trial run goes.

> The article says the app finds possible deliveries that are on the employee's route home, so no extra out of the way driving is to be done... only a 30 second stop to get out and carry the package up to the front door. Seems very efficient to me.

Dude, you're engaging in fantasy. Walmart is going to want to use this for more people than just those who live on busy commuter roads that happen to be used by a Walmart employee. "On the employee's route home" is probably going to mean a detour below some limit that Walmart decides. Also, it only takes 30 seconds to deliver a package if it's small and you know exactly what house it's meant for, both of which are unlikely to be true in the real world. It regularly takes more than 30 seconds just to hunt for an unfamiliar house number.

Any evidence to support your claims?

> Any evidence to support your claims?

Evidence that it would typically take more than 30 seconds to drop off a package to an unfamiliar house, even on a route you know? Or that Walmart is motivated to ship to people who aren't directly on its employee's commutes, and it likely will use this to do so if it goes forward with this idea?

My evidence is common sense. If you'd like a time-motion study, or a recording from Walmart's boardroom conversations, you're out of luck. Anyway, the stronger claims are those I was disputing, which don't pass the smell test.

> is probably going to mean a detour below some limit that Walmart decides

Did you miss the part where this is a voluntary program? If the employee doesn't like the route, they don't have to take it.

> Dude, you're engaging in fantasy

I suppose it's fantasy simply because you hate Walmart (I presume). If this was, say, Amazon... I wager most would take a different opinion. "Look at how ingenuitive Amazon is! They'll deliver packages even faster and cheaper, and pay employees more while they're at it!"

You have no idea what the compensation is, but immediately assume it's big bad Walmart beating up on poor employees. Many just immediately assume this is some new devilish ploy to exploit workers... that's absurd, especially given how few facts we have about this program so far.

The facts, so far, state this is a 100% volunteer program... will only suggest package deliveries along the employees current (and specified by the employee) route home... and the employee will be compensated for that delivery above their normal wage... and Walmart will pass the savings to the customer, and offer faster delivery.

How is this not a win based on what we know so far? It's pure conjecture and bias that leads to the default assumption this is some absurdly evil, exploitative scheme...

> Did you miss the part where this is a voluntary program? If the employee doesn't like the route, they don't have to take it.

There are all kinds of comments in other threads talking about how "voluntary" it may end up being in practice.

> I suppose it's fantasy simply because you hate Walmart (I presume)....

You presume quite a bit, and your presumptions border on fantasy.

> The facts, so far, state this is a 100% volunteer program...

> and the employee will be compensated for that delivery above their normal wage...

Correction: the company PR so far, this is all based on a Walmart blog post. Anyway, let's play quote the OP:

>>> Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is testing a program...

>>> Wal-Mart didn’t specify how the employees will be compensated.

You're right that it's all-volunteer now, but it's reasonable to question how much that will remain true in the future, especially since it's still being developed. It could even turn out to be de-jure voluntary but de-facto mandatory. Walmart could also shower money on its employees for this work, but history suggests otherwise.

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