... later ...

"Wait, you don't want to do an after work delivery again? Dude, this is why we hired you."

The opt-in nature of this from existing employees is what makes this suspect. The question is will Walmart use their current employment relationship with these people to try and coerce them into opting in. Hiring outside help from people that Walmart has no previous relationship with doesn't raise such questions.

Walmart also doesn't have a great public image, so people are more likely to go over their actions with a fine-toothed comb.

Would you be happier if they just forced their employees to do it? Most job descriptions include a phrase like "and any other duties as required" and as long as they paid the employees and followed the relevant regulations it would be perfectly legal to do this.

Agreed.

At any job I've worked at, doing the bare minimum for awhile will probably get you fired; if you want to stand out or get a promotion, you're expected to do more than you're asked.

We don't give toddlers handguns because our pre-frontal cortex allows us the foresight to see that it's a bad idea -- we don't need to actually wait and see if one toddler shoots another.

Like, if Walmart was offering employees extra money to dispose of toxic waste or collect debts from delinquent customers or something, I'd see a huge potential for abuse and wouldn't consider it to be at all a good idea. Those things need special training and the potential for problems is high.

But this is package delivery. It's a relatively unskilled, low-end job. Its abuse potential seems to be to be on the same level as the abuse potential of, say, lifting boxes, or stocking shelves, or mopping floors. "Walmart pays people to stock shelves" wouldn't get anyone up in arms, so why would this?

Do they want to go a different direction than than directly home -- say to go to their daughter's birthday party? Again, if it's elective, there's no problem but if it becomes coerced then Wall-Mart is directly exploiting that need to keep that job.

In fact, I don't see how this is much of a win for the workers. I only see how Wall-Mart is leveraging its indentured workforce, including passing the risk on to them, to expand its profit base. This is late-stage capitalism, pure and simple.

What is late stage capitalism, and why is this representative of it?

Wall-Mart has a lot of power; its workers almost none. In fact most of its workers are kept part-time so that they don't have benefits and more than half of the full-time hourly make less than $25,000/year[1]. Remember that almost 60% of Americans don't have $500 in savings. These people are often terrified of losing their job.

The notion of using workers to make deliveries is representative of late stage capitalism in that at first it sounds like Wall-Mart is letting its employees "hustle" for a bit more money, but instead it's really putting itself in the situation where it can leverage its employee's circumstances. Note that, even in this proof-of-concept stage, the risks and insurance costs are already passed to the workers[3].

Please note that I don't think Wall-Mart as a company is particularly evil or would ever try to not pay its workers for this service -- on the contrary, they will certainly, always compensate. My concern is that that compensation will not cover the costs when all variables are factored in and that while it might start as voluntary, if it's indeed profitable, that would start to be pushed toward a work culture pressure of, "Do you want to keep your job? Deliver this at a net loss to you."

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2013-10-23/more-than... [2] http://money.cnn.com/2017/01/12/pf/americans-lack-of-savings [3] https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/01/walmart-begins-testing-usi...

Where is that stated in the article? I couldn't find it.

If they were able to cut wages in the future, surely they'd do it regardless.

I could imagine working at Trader Joe's. Downside, running a supermarket is a very tedious and unrewarding job. Upside, you don't have to take your work home with you, I like their products and business model, and the firm treats its employees really well, in terms of both pay and conditions. People I've met socially who work there love their jobs, and it's a big reason I choose to shop there. On the other hand, I would have to be truly desperate to ever consider taking a job at Walmart.

So yeah, everything you say is true in theory, but would you honestly want to work for Walmart in practice?

> Would you honestly want to work for a Walmart Store in practice?

I state that because the corporate level options are extremely lucrative. Walmart Tech holds many events, seminars, and speakers for associates to attend during work hours. Although, there is the annoying Walmart Chant...

But I see no reason to single out this particular detail out of this gigantic evil company. Of all the things to hate about Walmart, paying their workers to deliver packages would be pretty close to the bottom.

Hey, you haven't been doing any home deliveries lately, is everything ok? Oh, well we have to reduce your shifts next week.

Important Caveat though, you can only do it once in a lifetime.