Walmart has a totally great, in no way open to abuse, new way to compete with Amazon: it’ll just have its in-store workers deliver packages on their way home from work.

“Walmart is uniquely qualified, uniquely positioned, to be able to offer this,” he said, adding that 90 percent of Americans live within 10 miles of a Walmart store. “There is really strong overlap between where are associates are already heading after work and where those packages need to go.”

Management claims this is a great new thing for workers:

The company is billing the program as a way for employees to earn extra money, although there were few details on how they would be paid. Jariwala declined to clarify whether employees would be paid based on distance, time, number of deliveries or a combination of those things. [...]

The program is voluntary for Walmart employees, Jariwala said, adding that they can sign up for up to 10 deliveries per day using a company app. They can also set size and weight limits on packages. If there are not enough employees to deliver packages, Jariwala said carriers like UPS and FedEx would fill in.

“This is completely an opt-in program,” he said. “This is not something associates are required to do. They are, first and foremost, always going to finish their shift.”

And no manager ever retaliated against a worker for not participating in a supposedly voluntary program. And we can completely believe that Walmart will make the additional pay for deliveries fair to workers. Walmart has earned our trust like that with its stellar treatment of workers in its stores, right?

Yeah, right. Right now this is a pilot program in three stores, but wait until it becomes a widespread practice—smart money says the abuse stories will start rolling in pretty quickly.