Walmart's Free-Labor Suckers

This is exactly what our corporate masters have in mind for all of us: unpaid labor in hopes of a few crumbs from the lord's table. It's already happening.

Susie Madrak at Crooks and Liars:

Jesus, it's just too early in the day for this kind of insanity. Yes, you would "share" your car with Walmart's packages and they would give you a small discount to cover the cost of gas, but they wouldn't "share" your insurance costs if you get into an accident on the way, and you certainly wouldn't get paid for your time. In other words, you get to work FOR FREE! Feel the oligarchy!

(Reuters) - Wal-Mart Stores Inc is considering a radical plan to have store customers deliver packages to online buyers, a new twist on speedier delivery services that the company hopes will enable it to better compete with Amazon.com Inc.

Tapping customers to deliver goods would put the world's largest retailer squarely in middle of a new phenomenon sometimes known as "crowd-sourcing," or the "sharing economy."

Wal-Mart is making a big push to ship online orders directly from stores, hoping to cut transportation costs and gain an edge over Amazon and other online retailers, which have no physical store locations. Wal-Mart does this at 25 stores currently, but plans to double that to 50 this year and could expand the program to hundreds of stores in the future.

Wal-Mart currently uses carriers like FedEx Corp for delivery from stores - or, in the case of a same-day delivery service called Walmart To Go that is being tested in five metro areas, its own delivery trucks.

"I see a path to where this is crowd-sourced," Joel Anderson, chief executive of Walmart.com in the United States, said in a recent interview with Reuters.

[...] Wal-Mart has millions of customers visiting its stores each week. Some of these shoppers could tell the retailer where they live and sign up to drop off packages for online customers who live on their route back home, Anderson explained.

Wal-Mart would offer a discount on the customers' shopping bill, effectively covering the cost of their gas in return for the delivery of packages, he added.

Wow. I really didn't think Walmart could stoop any lower, but I see I underestimated them.

This is a company that has already "crowd sourced" their low wages by having the rest of us subsidize their food stamps. They also "crowd sourced" employee health insurance by holding workshops telling employees how to apply for Medicaid.

This, from a company that's owned by the wealthiest family in America.