Evil Doesn’t Describe Wal-Mart

[Omaha Steve]

http://blog.aflcio.org/2006/08/28/evil-doesn%e2%80%99t-describe-wal-mart/

Corporate Greed, In the States

Aug 28

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Evil Doesn’t Describe Wal-Mart

Wal-Mart isn’t evil.

Surprised to find those words here? Well those aren’t our words, they’re Washington State Labor Council (WSLC) President Rick Bender’s. They are part of a very thoughtful column posted last week on the state labor federation’s website. And we wholeheartedly agree with Bender’s take on Wal-Mart and its impact on workers, communities and taxpayers and its influence on corporate practices and the economy.

Bender writes that a friend recently asked why unions “hate Wal-Mart so much?” He said that he wished Wal-Mart workers made more money, but that he shopped there now and again and that sometimes it made him feel like he was doing something wrong or “evil.”

Says Bender:

Wal-Mart isn’t evil. People who work there aren’t bad people; they’re just struggling to get by like the rest of us. People who shop there aren’t bad people either; in many cases they are lower-income folks on tight budgets who are just hoping to find bargains.

But we, as a society, have to recognize that Wal-Mart and any other corporation that shares its business model are destructive. Their business model kills middle-class jobs, promotes a race to the bottom on wages and benefits, and costs taxpayers millions of dollars every year. And we, as a society, have the right—and the responsibility—to say, “enough is enough.”

In analogy, Bender says if a giant oil company tried to boost its profits and best its competition by polluting more and spewing more toxins in the air, people would rise up against it.

Well, organized labor and many others believe that what Wal-Mart is doing is economic pollution, and it’s time to hold this giant corporation accountable for the damage it’s doing to our communities.

Wal-Mart’s business model is to sell products cheaper by keeping its labor costs low. Despite all of its “happy associates” public relations campaigns, it’s clear that Wal-Mart keeps labor costs low by paying workers less, providing fewer benefits, and aggressively opposing unionization.

Wal-Mart’s model of low wages, lousy benefits and staunch anti-union practices—but huge corporate profits—have changed the entire retail and grocery industry, Bender writes.

He notes that for decades on the West Coast, the grocery industry has been nearly completely unionized and the clerks, produce workers, bakers and butchers who worked in the supermarkets had a good foothold on the middle class.

Most could afford to own a home, keep their families healthy, save enough to help send kids to college, and eventually, to retire. All of the stores provided good union wages and benefits, so they competed on a level playing field, based on the quality of their products and services. They still managed to sell stuff at prices consumers could afford, and they still made plenty of profit at the same time.

Then along came Wal-Mart and its low-road labor strategy, and all that has changed.

(A personal aside—my grandfather was a grocery worker in Southern California and was able to raise a family, buy a house and retire. He couldn’t do that today at Wal-Mart.)

Bender writes that today in Washington State, retail and grocery chains have joined Wal-Mart in the race to the bottom and that thousands of unionized workers “have lost their jobs or are giving up their wages and health benefits so their employers can try to compete with Wal-Mart.”

In Washington State alone, Bender says some 3,200 Wal-Mart workers had to turn to taxpayer-funded health care plans:

…their company—the richest one on Planet Earth—chooses not to offer affordable health benefits.

Click here to download the AFL-CIO report The Wal-Mart Tax—Shifting Health Care Costs to Taxpayers.

Bender says the campaigns by unions, community and religious groups are paying off and building awareness and:

Americans are starting to figure all this out. People are starting to see the link between companies like Wal-Mart and their tax bills, their rising health care costs, and the economic destruction of their communities….

The goal is to build a movement of millions of Americans who are ready to take our country back from multi-billion dollar corporations like Wal-Mart, so that America’s working families can once again have affordable health care and economic security.

Click here to “Get the Facts on Wal-Mart” and click here to find out what Wal-Mart workers have to say about their jobs.


by Mike Hall

tags: Wal-Mart, Washington State Labor Council, health care

[displacedtexan]

1. I just read a thoughtful anti-Wal-Mart post...

Charles Hugh Smith was asked to apply for an exec position with Wal-Mart:

Any corporation which relies on taxpayer-funded programs to provide medical care for its employees while it makes billions in profits does not win any "good corporate citizen" awards in my book. Let's call it what it is: a corporate leech on the body of the Republic/corporate welfare recipient. If "always low prices" saddles we the taxpayers which billions in additional expenses which competitors such as Costco somehow manage to pay themselves, then are those "low prices" truly low or merely subsidized?

For a look into the inner workings of Wal-Mart, let's turn to our first-person account:

Approximately a year ago I was contacted about being the CFO for Wal-Mart's real estate company. Just the annual capital budget ran approximately $6 billion. It also had a large staff--approximately 150 people. Anyway after several telephone interviews Wal-Mart asked me to fly out and meet them.

I ended up taking a flight out of a west coast airport that got me into Northern Arkansas airport at something like 10:00. Let me tell you it is dark in Northern Arkansas at 10:00 P.M. and I got lost driving to Bentonville. Now this is kind of funny since I have lived on four continents and travel the world with a map and hardly ever get lost. I currently fly all over the country to some of its major cities and never get lost, but it was so dark and the road signs if they existed at all were so small I could not see them. Anyway, to make a long story short I get to my room at approximately 1:00 am.


There's a whole lot more at the link.

[warrens]

2. When Wal-Mart started out

Its low wages were a boon to women in small towns who basically had no employment possibilities. And their paycheck, assuming the hubbie was working in some light industry job, meant they could live well. I talked to one cashier a long time back who said her paycheck paid the mortgage, and her husband's considerably larger one was basically gravy. They were, by small town standards, well off. They bought a vacation cabin, had new cars, and were very comfortable.

So pay was never a concern at WM. They had plenty of motivated employees who were happy to have the jobs and lived pretty decent lives.

It's when they hit the suburbs that all this stuff started. They didn't feel they should have to pay more, even though their workers had higher costs of living. The competitive nature within the company (it's pretty much up or out for managers; it's something like Glengarry Glen Ross...first prize is a Cadillac, second prize is a set of steak knives, and third prize is you're fired) means that managers in more affluent markets were hit with higher costs while selling for the same prices, which meant they didn't look so good come bonus time. After that came the wave of making people punch out for bathroom breaks and stay after an hour after punching out to clean their areas and all the rest of that crap.

It won't get better in the larger markets. You can't live on what they pay in downtown Chicago.

[El Fuego]

3. Good article, thanks for the link. (nt)