Walmart, the world’s largest private employer with over two million retail workers, deserves credit for doing what no other major company has done before. It has promised to hire 100,000 recent veterans over the next five years. In an announcement on Tuesday, Walmart US President Bill Simon urged fellow retailers to follow his lead: “We could be the ones who step up for our heroes just as they stood for us.”
Walmart can’t be that fabulous, right? It’s not. The piling on began immediately, with critics of a company often accused of unfair practices calling its offer a pathetic public relations stunt. But Walmart, like most major corporations, is a complicated entity with good works and aggressive profit grabs happening under the same roof.
Comments
In light of your column, I suggest now that you contact Walmart and suggest to them that they IMMEDIATELY end the program.
I'm not sure you read the column...
I do not see the point of this column. Walmart is certainly seeking some good publicity, but so what? Working there is nobody's dream job, but it does provide honest work, which is what we all need.
Walmart is getting press for what, as you said, every employer is interested in doing. You are giving them more press. Employers depend on the taxpayer to train workers. Walmart depends on the taxpayer not only to train its workers but also to feed them.
KAYYEM, ex-Obama & Patrick official and Obama apologists
Can hardly wait to see her columns when the Governor and Senate races start - might as well have John Walsh write them.
Does this action also make them eligible for millions in tax credits for hiring veterans?
yes it does. but details murky.
This country loves it's veterans as long as their being depicted in movies or providing proxy reality for our video games.
We don't deserve these men and women. Many Americans spend more time worrying about their own private arsenals and fearing the American military in some putative end of days scneario than welcoming them home and thanking them.
Now the best we can do is maybe offer them a job at Walmart...What? People who had the stones to fight for us when we were jingoing our way through 2003 and blindly supporting a war with no goal?
Most of the people in this country are selfish, many are stupid. I am ashamed.
bfs: it's 'its' not 'it's"; and it's 'they're' not 'their'.
Otherwise, good points.
Why don't we just shut down the Walmart Progran through Executive Order, so that Miss Kayyem's article will make sense! Does she really get paid to write this garbage?
Enough of the political comments as a justification to dismiss the valid points being made in the article. What other columnist has been out in front of issues facing our veterans?