[dt_toronto_geek]

I refuse to shop at Walmart, not just because everything is from China but because of their predatory business practices. Then again, I'm not your average consumer. I'll pay more for 'made in Canada' (or the USA). It's ok by me.

Me too, and I'll preach my practices to anyone who will listen.

 

[Glen]

One example of a product that we have no choice but to bring in from overseas are compact fluorescent light bulbs. There is not one single vendor in Canada that we can source from.

Of course you can't source them here our factories are uncompetitve aganist Chinese ones that can poison their emplyees with impunity.


“68 out of the 72 workers at the Nanhai Feiyang lighting factory in Foshan city where were so badly poisoned that they required hospitalization. At another CFL factory in Jinzhou, 121 out of 123 employees were found to have excessive mercury levels with one employee's
mercury level 150 times the accepted standard. "

or

"The same journal identified a compact fluorescent lightbulb factory in Anyang, eastern China, where 35% of workers suffered mercury poisoning, and industrial discharge containing the toxin went straight into the water supply."


Maybe your company can organize a kidney drive for those poor people.

 

[RichA]

2008 Obama: "Iran is tiny and harmless."

Me too, and I'll preach my practices to anyone who will listen.

Things change, don't they?

 

[dt_toronto_geek]

Things change, don't they?

Wha?

 

[typezed]

I did a walkaround of the Walmart at Eglinton and Markham last week. It's near to me, and I hadn't realized it was open until then. They put it up fast. Walmart's approach to everything is so miserly that this brand new store felt fifteen years old already.

 

[kkgg7]

Dont be so quick to dismiss things made in China. Quality has improved by leaps and bounds over the years. Canadian Tire is doing way more business over seas than ever before right now, but the sourcing process is so rigid, that quality of product sourced from places like China has to be equal to or better than leading national brands in order to be approved. Canadian Tire has seen its defect rate shrink to under 4% over the last few years, so the statistics show that quality is definitely much better today than ever before.

I can only speak for Canadian Tire, because I work on global sourcing for the company, but I am assuming that Walmart has similar standards for anything coming from overseas.

As for the whole going overseas and taking advantage of workers, Canadian Tire also has a process where every vendor has regular inspections by corporate staff to ensure that they meet our standards for working conditions. Any vendor that fails to meet our standards gets dropped and we dont do business with them anymore. Cost is not the only thing we look at when selecting vendors, and some even charge us more for certain things than we would pay to have it made closer to home. Its a big factor, but never a deal breaker.

Just to end this, anyone who thinks they are doing better by buying a product not made in China is only fooling themselves. You are really no better off. Even vendors here in Canada who we deal with buy their parts from China, so there is no way to completely avoid it.

People trash-talk Chinese products in exactly the same way they talked about Japanese products in the 70s or 80s, low quality, cheap, unreliable, before their products dramatically improved and forced GM etc to go bankrupt. Korean cars had the same bad reputation in America (synonymous to low quality) but is already gaining market share and customer confidence. China is on the same track.

It is time Canadians should rethink about how they see others, and stop being stuck with their ridiculous superiority complex. Years ago, can you imagine that companies like Samsung can be such industry leaders and Nortel can just collapse instantly? That RIM will have a hard even surviving? China itself has improved a lot during the past decade in terms of quality and technology and the trend is irreversible. Believe it or not, Chinese companies can already produce a lot of high tech products that Canadians ones are unable to. Are "made in Canada" necessarily better? I am sure many want to believe so, but it hardly is true in many circumstances.

Easy dismissal of others may feel satisfying in the short run, but such arrogance can easily lead to complete failure. You always have to know your competitor's strength and where it is headed, not simply how it is now as if the Earth stops moving.

Additionally, those who are so firmly against cheap Chinese products, go through the stuff in your household, take a look at the plates, foils, folks, glasses, your ceiling lamps, desks, tooth brushes, children's toys, pajamas, everything and let's see how many are made in China vs US/Canada. If you are really so patriotic as you talk, simply stop buying "made in china" - not when it is possible, but all the time, and then I applaud you.

And may I kindly remind you, if the country as we know as China suddenly stops producing everything, you will NOT see the market flooded with Canada/American/Italian products. Not a chance. Poorer countries than China such as Vietnam, Bangladesh and India where labour is even cheaper will waste no time filling in the gap. Products made in the rich world have ZERO chance will meet that demand, simply because low skilled labour is not priced that high in the world in general. So unless you completely shut your door and stop trading with the world, the situation will be exactly the same.

Not buying from China, I am sure out of some narrow-minded/self-righteous/moral highground way of thinking, many think they are noble enough to do that. In reality, it is a losing battle and any such effect is just silly.

 

[kkgg7]

This is the typical kkgg7 argument is that everybody should settle for lower wages and poorer working conditions instead of striving for higher wages as if only CEO's and the totally useless management class should make any money. If it wasn't for unions kkgg7, Canadians maybe stuck working 12 hour days 6 days week pissing and shitting in buckets next to their machines like they do in China. China's way of helping workers is to install nets outside the factories to catch workers trying to commit suicide.

Your "as long as someone works, he deserves a decent wage and benefit" idea only works in paradise. I would want that world too, but the will not happen in 500 years.
I am not saying everyone should settle for lower wages, but instead your wage should reflect your skills and value to the society as a whole. You are almost funny when displaying the utter despise toward "useless management". So why don't you fire your boss and start running a company to see whether if it is as easy as you imagine it too be? I am not a rich guy and I never just pretend all millions accumulated their wealth by doing nothing. Many started from the very bottom and it is not easy to make it finally. You need something called "intelligence", "skill", "talent" and years of "hardwork". CEOs don't just inherit their positions from their dads, do they?

Canadians will not all be stuck with working 12 hours in your wild uneducated guess if there were no strong union. But some will if their skills are in low demand and there is little they have to compete in the labour market. Don't talks as if unions are some sort of angle protecting human rights. It is childish. If you are capable enough, your employer will recognize your value in no time and you won't need to hide behind the union using strikes as frequent tactic. It is those incompetent who constantly whine about why others are rich and need to hide behind a union even to stay employed, even though his contribution to the company may be lower than his salary.

So, gabe, do you think a company should pay someone $50,000 a year when this person contributes a total of $40,000? You would call that fair because this worker worked so he is entitled to make a good life? If everyone does it, how can this company survive? How the this economy survive?

 

[Tuscani01]

Of course you can't source them here our factories are uncompetitve aganist Chinese ones that can poison their emplyees with impunity.


“68 out of the 72 workers at the Nanhai Feiyang lighting factory in Foshan city where were so badly poisoned that they required hospitalization. At another CFL factory in Jinzhou, 121 out of 123 employees were found to have excessive mercury levels with one employee's
mercury level 150 times the accepted standard. "

or

"The same journal identified a compact fluorescent lightbulb factory in Anyang, eastern China, where 35% of workers suffered mercury poisoning, and industrial discharge containing the toxin went straight into the water supply."


Maybe your company can organize a kidney drive for those poor people.

Find me a Canadian company to source CFL's from, and I would be more than happy to do so. The fact is that there are none. It has nothing to do with China being more competitive. You people all see the world in such simplistic ways, but things are not always so black and white. If we would find a manufacturer here in Canada that could sell us a steady supply of CFL's, they would have already had our business. The Canadian government has made it difficult to allow for the production of CFL's in this country, so going overseas is the only choice for retailers that sell thousands of these bulbs.

CFL's are not the only item that we have no choice but to source from overseas. The world doesn't work the way you think it does. If it did, we wouldn't be overseas at all.

 

[Tuscani01]

Canadians will not all be stuck with working 12 hours in your wild uneducated guess if there were no strong union. But some will if their skills are in low demand and there is little they have to compete in the labour market. Don't talks as if unions are some sort of angle protecting human rights. It is childish. If you are capable enough, your employer will recognize your value in no time and you won't need to hide behind the union using strict as frequent tactic. It is those incompetent who constantly whine about why others are rich and need to hide behind a union even to stay employed, even though his contribution to the company may be lower than his salary.

That is not true. There are many Canadians who work long days. Many of these people are the ones who are making over 100,000k. To say that these people don't deserve the money they are making is pretty stupid, considering these peoples lives are their work. I would love to make as much as them, but to have all of the responsibility put on my shoulders that they have, as well as work the crazy hours they work is just not my cup of tea. They can keep their jobs and their pay. Im fine with making half that right now and having a life.

 

[gabe]

CEOs don't just inherit their positions from their dads, do they?

This guy did

Canadians will not all be stuck with working 12 hours in your wild uneducated guess if there were no strong union. But some will if their skills are in low demand and there is little they have to compete in the labour market. Don't talks as if unions are some sort of angle protecting human rights. It is childish. If you are capable enough, your employer will recognize your value in no time and you won't need to hide behind the union using strict as frequent tactic. It is those incompetent who constantly whine about why others are rich and need to hide behind a union even to stay employed, even though his contribution to the company may be lower than his salary.

So, gabe, do you think a company should pay someone $50,000 a year when this person contributes a total of $40,000? You would call that fair because this worker worked so he is entitled to make a good life? Even everyone does it, how can this company survive? How the this economy survive?

You seem to think that corporations are all benevolent and put their employees before profit. That we live in some kind of perfect world where corporations fight to insure that employees receive fair wages and benefits. What planet are you on?

 

[RichA]

Wha?

What, is that Ford stuff you signature line now? Otherwise, why would you simply repeat it? Grow up.

 

[KA1]

I thought that this thread was about Wal-Mart in downtown that is, Bay & College area.

Could someone, please, wake me up and tell me as to what this thread is all about?

 

[kkgg7]

I thought that this thread was about Wal-Mart in downtown that is, Bay & College area.

Could someone, please, wake me up and tell me as to what this thread is all about?

It is only because every time the word "Walmart" comes up, someone is bound to say something self-righteous gibberish like "I refuse to shop at Walmart for (some noble reasons)". If they really hate cheap labour, be a man and throw out all your household stuff made in China, Vietnam, Honduras, India, Bangladesh, where workers have to work 12hours + for less than $2 an hour and no benefits.

As far as I know, cost of labour in China increased by 22% last year, if that's not progress, I don't know what is. Did Canadian labour cost increase by even 2%? Some people just refuse to see the improvement and expect every poor country to act exactly the same as the US and Canada, starting from TODAY, immediately, otherwise, it is just outright evil and should not be tolerated.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/25f1c500-ff14-11e0-9b2f-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1mvwrObOf

Just boycotting Walmart is an easy feel-good thing to do, yet achieves absolutely nothing in whatever they seem to pretend to be doing.

 

[Glen]

Find me a Canadian company to source CFL's from, and I would be more than happy to do so. The fact is that there are none. It has nothing to do with China being more competitive. You people all see the world in such simplistic ways, but things are not always so black and white. If we would find a manufacturer here in Canada that could sell us a steady supply of CFL's, they would have already had our business. The Canadian government has made it difficult to allow for the production of CFL's in this country, so going overseas is the only choice for retailers that sell thousands of these bulbs.

CFL's are not the only item that we have no choice but to source from overseas. The world doesn't work the way you think it does. If it did, we wouldn't be overseas at all.

I appreciate that your job is to source the most competitive product for your client. From that perspective it is impossible to ignore China's advantages. What I have been arguing is that that advantage largley synthetic. It is not only low wages gives china its advantage (there are lower). It is more common to be a result of currency manipulation, subsides ( direct and indirect), and differing regulatory enviroment, including enforcement. CFL'S, being labour intensive, gives China an advantage over Western production. That is not the case in many other areas yet China is still able to undercut most other countries. Apple juice, fastners, silicon, rare earth minerals, chemical production, etc., are not labour intensive yet China can grossly undercut the prices from elsewhere. If you knew how you would appreciate what I am saying.

 

[RichA]

Let he who is without sin cast the first iPhone

It is only because every time the word "Walmart" comes up, someone is bound to say something self-righteous gibberish like "I refuse to shop at Walmart for (some noble reasons)". If they really hate cheap labour, be a man and throw out all your household stuff made in China, Vietnam, Honduras, India, Bangladesh, where workers have to work 12hours + for less than $2 an hour and no benefits.

As far as I know, cost of labour in China increased by 22% last year, if that's not progress, I don't know what is. Did Canadian labour cost increase by even 2%? Some people just refuse to see the improvement and expect every poor country to act exactly the same as the US and Canada, starting from TODAY, immediately, otherwise, it is just outright evil and should not be tolerated.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/25f1c500-ff14-11e0-9b2f-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1mvwrObOf

Just boycotting Walmart is an easy feel-good thing to do, yet achieves absolutely nothing in whatever they seem to pretend to be doing.

Drives down the stock price, and that is all that matters today (see arguments about customer service and quality versus "shareholder value") but that would take a concerted boycott effort. For better or worse, America (and Canada I guess) has sold its economic soul to China.