I suppose this fits here…
It’s a snark-filled condemnation of all of those “heartwarming” stories where people are momentarily saved from the gears of capitalism by the charity of others, specifically how the media like to focus on the charity and not the gears.
After they’ve considered the costs of maintaining an empty office building and the needs of shoulder-surfing micromanagers, maybe the third time’s the charm…
Right on cue…
Report is linked.
Background on the scandal:
… The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau on Monday accused Walmart and payments platform Branch Messenger of costing delivery drivers over $10 million in fees through these accounts since 2021. Walmart, in turn, accused the agency of filing a rushed lawsuit full of errors.
The government’s lawsuit says Walmart told drivers, who deliver its shipments to customers’ homes, that they would lose their jobs if they didn’t use Branch accounts to receive the pay. “Thousands” of drivers had their wages deposited into a Branch account before ever agreeing to terms and conditions, according to the lawsuit.
Drivers who didn’t want to — or couldn’t figure out how to — access their Branch accounts, the lawsuit says, would lose their Walmart delivery work and often the wages that had been deposited to those Branch accounts, too.
Despite Walmart telling drivers that they could access their earnings instantly, the lawsuit also describes a complex process drivers had to follow to transfer their wages to their usual bank accounts.
The “instant” transfer option required a fee that over the years amounted to more than $10 million paid to Branch, the lawsuit says. Other options would take several days, and both options had daily and monthly limits on how much a driver could transfer. …
Third-party payroll kickback is my guess. The small business I worked for uses an outside payroll service and they keep trying to get us to sign up for something similar and the hook is their promise of early access to our funds.
Every business is contracting out their HR, payroll, AP, and AR to a second party. 
A labor force in Alabama comprised of incarcerated individuals on “work release” … denied parole basically ad infinitum.
This well-made documentary unpacks so much about inequity, zero accountabiliity, and the capitalist machine.
I wonder how back on the chain of shell companies you’d have to go to find out Branch Messenger was owned by Walmart?
This reminded me of a line from “I am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang.” I paraphrase:
“Look at him there. Every time he swings the hammer it lands right where he wants it. He works so good they’ll never let him go.”
AL.com has been reporting on Alabama’s broken-with-intent parole system for a while now.
Denied: Alabama's broken parole system
The entire Department of Corrections, ie. the state prison system, is beyond nightmarish. The county lockups are as well, with county sheriffs running them without any real oversight or accountability. Alabama is a carceral state of terrifying proportions, truly “abandon all hope, ye who enter here,” and those in power, both officially and behind the scenes, are rubbing their hands with glee at the prospect of being able to expand its reach as federal oversight and advocacy groups are constrained or eliminated once the new regime begins.
The author of the autobiography that the 1932 film was based on was first sentenced to a Georgia chain gang back in 1921. One would hope that society had progessed since then. 
We really ought to get around to updating that part of the constitution that explicitly allows for enslavement of convicts:
