This ariticle from the Seattle-PI by Liza Featherstone represents some the worst of modern Liberal thought. The message of the article is this: Wal-Mart feeds off of poor women then employees these same poor women and treats them poorly. Therefore, if you poor people were smarter you would stop working and shoping at Wal-Mart.
That's not a mistake the big-box behemoth is likely to make again. Wal-Mart knows its customers, and it knows how badly they need the discounts. Like Wal-Mart's workers, its customers are overwhelmingly female and struggling to make ends meet. Betty Dukes, the lead plaintiff in Dukes v. Wal-Mart, the landmark sex-discrimination case against the company, points out that Wal-Mart takes out ads in her local paper the same day the community's poorest citizens collect their welfare checks.
"They are promoting themselves to low-income people," she says. "That's who they lure. They don't lure the rich. ... They understand the economy of America. They know the haves and have-nots. They don't put Wal-Mart in Piedmonts. They don't put Wal-Mart in those high-end parts of the community. They plant themselves right in the middle of Poorville."
Those bastards! How dare they try to market to the poor! Or put shops up in the poor parts of town! The article continues with statistic that prove that Wal-Mart customers are poorer than the average man. Then comes the big whopper:
Al Zack, who until his retirement in 2004 was the United Food and Commercial Workers' vice president for strategic programs, observes that appealing to the poor was "Sam Walton's real genius. He figured out how to make money off of poverty. He located his first stores in poor rural areas and discovered a real market...
So why is it bad to "make money off of poverty?" Poor want to spend their money too, and they want to get as much as possible for that money. Wal-Mart provides the poor and the thrifty with a way to get more for their dollar. World trade has allow manufactures to make quality food, clothing, and consumer goods cheaper than ever. Wal-Mart's corporate structure allows those goods to be delivered cheaply to the customer, and at one-location. Wal-Mart customers do not get the same quality of service as customers and higher-end stores but this is something they choose to sacrifice to get more for their dollar.
...The only problem with the business model is that it really needs to create more overty to grow." That problem is cleverly solved by creating more bad jobs worldwide.
Oh, that's why it's bad to make money off of poverty. Wal-Mart creates poverty like a coal plant creates pollution. Plant a Wal-Mart in the ground and people will get poorer. The article has no evidence to prove that Wal-Mart makes people poorer, but we all know it's true. Featherstone intends to imply two things here:
- Wal-Mart makes the whole world poorer by buying goods from exploited workers overseas which causes workers in America to lose their jobs
- Wal-Mart gives local workers low-paying jobs which make them poorer.
Featherstone's article provides no evidence for #1. The idea that Wal-Mart creates global poverty on such a scale that it give the stores more markets to work in is more than a little crazy. For more on free trade, I recommend reading the work of
Ludwig von Mises.
As for #2, for Wal-Mart to create poverty, the jobs created by Wal-Mart must a) take away as many or more other jobs in the community that would otherwise exist and b) pay the employees at a lower wage. Presumbably, as in the traditional liberal economic view, the extra money that the company saves by spending less on employees is sucked away into the bank account of the wealthy.
Wal-Mart's stingy compensation policies -- workers make, on average, just over $8 an hour, and if they want health insurance, they must pay more than a third of the premium -- contribute to an economy in which, increasingly, workers can afford to shop only at Wal-Mart.
So, how much would these people be making if they wern't working at Wal-Mart? Where would they be working. The article provides absolutely no evidence that there's a better job out there, or that these people would be better off without Wal-Mart. For people with comparable skill sets, is $8 an hour and 2/3 for your health care paid for a good deal? Maybe or maybe not. Featherstone knows it isn't. How does she know? I guess because she make more than that.
To make this model work, Wal-Mart must keep labor costs down. It does this by making corporate crime an integral part of its business strategy. Wal-Mart routinely violates laws protecting workers' organizing rights (workers have even been fired for union activity).
It is a repeat offender on overtime laws; in more than 30 states, workers have brought wage-and-hour class-action suits against the retailer. In some cases, workers say, managers encouraged them to clock out and keep working; in others, managers locked the doors and would not let employees go home at the end of their shifts.
I'm not sure how "routinely" Wal-Mart violates labor laws. But even assuming that every day they fire six-billion employees for thinking the word "union", there's no evidence that creating a union would reduce the supposed poverty that Wal-Mart creates. If this union forced Wal-Mart to pay twice as much, who says they wouldn't hire half as many people?
As for the other repeat offender incidents, I'm sure all these things happen. But these are antecdotes about bad individual experiences in a massive chain of stores. Whose to say that on average Wal-Mart isn't better at upholding labors that most retailers? I can't say, this article doesn't say. Furthmore, the fact that a class-action lawsuit was filed proves nothing except that someone filed a class-action lawsuit.
And it's often women who suffer most from Wal-Mart's labor practices. Dukes v. Wal-Mart, the largest civil rights class-action suit in history, charges the company with systematically discriminating against women in pay and promotions.
Now the article takes it's final turn. It's the women that are punished the most. The article provides no evidence that women are discriminated against. It tells us that it's true and we're supposed to believe it. Hey, it's an opinion piece, and you don't need facts to have an opinion.
The article continues on with a antecdotes about women liking to shop and thinking that working at Wal-Mart would be a good idea. I find this bit funny
One longtime department manager in Ohio cheerfully recalls her successful job interview at Wal-Mart. Because of her weight, she told her interviewers, she'd be better able to help the customer. She understands the frustrations of the large shopper, she told them: " 'You know, you go into Lane Bryant and some skinny girl is trying to sell you clothes.' They laughed at that and said, 'You get a second interview!' "
Wal-Mart aparently doesn't discriminate against fat people. After not proving Wal-Mart did anything wrong, Featherstone continues:
Will consumers return that solidarity and punish Wal-Mart for discriminating
against women? Do customers care about workers as much as workers care about
them?
Why would consumers punish Wal-Mart for the discrimination you haven't proved exists? Of course not, she decides.
While this tactic could be fruitful in some community battles, it's unlikely to catch on nationwide. A customer saves 20 percent to 25 percent by buying groceries at Wal-Mart rather than from a competitor, according to retail analysts, and poor women need those savings more than anyone.
That's why many women welcome the new Wal-Marts in their communities.
That's right. Poor people like Wal-Mart because shoping there makes them richer!
Sara Jennings, a disabled Winona reader living on a total of $8,000, heartily concurred. After paying her rent, phone, electric and cable bills, Jennings can barely afford to treat herself to McDonald's. Of a recent trip to the LaCrosse, Wis., Wal-Mart, she raved: "Oh boy, what a great treat. Lower prices and a good quality of clothes to choose from. It was like heaven for me." She, too, strongly defended the workers' $15,000 yearly income: "Boy, now that is a lot of money. I could live with that." She closed with a plea to the readers: "I'm sure you all make a lot more than I. And I'm sure I speak for a lot of seniors and very-low-income people. We need this Wal-Mart. There's nothing downtown."
Wow. That Wal-Mart sure is evil. I'm amazed that Featherstone puts this in the article because it's so devistating to her argument. After failing to prove that Wal-Mart creates poverty she explains how much better Wal-Mart makes this very poor woman's life. After reading this, I want more Wal-Mart. Imediately after this paragraph, Featherstone talks about why it's so hard to stop Wal-Mart from selling cheap goods to Ms. Jennings.
It is crucial that Wal-Mart's liberal and progressive critics make use of
the growing public indignation at the company over sex discrimination, low pay
and other worker rights issues, but it is equally crucial to do this in ways
that remind people that their power does not stop at their shopping dollars.
It's admirable to drive across town and pay more for toilet paper to avoid
shopping at Wal-Mart, but such a gesture is, unfortunately, not enough. As long
as people identify themselves as consumers and nothing more, Wal-Mart
wins.
The invention of the "consumer" identity has been an important part of a
long process of eroding workers' power, and it's one reason working people now have so little power against business. According to social historian Stuart Ewen, in the early years of mass production, the late 19th and early 20th centuries, modernizing capitalism sought to turn people who thought of themselves primarily as workers into consumers. Business elites wanted people to dream not of satisfying work and egalitarian societies -- as many did at that time -- but of the beautiful things they could buy with their paychecks.
Business was quite successful in this project, which influenced much early advertising and continued throughout the 20th century. In addition to replacing the worker, the consumer has also effectively displaced the citizen. That's why, when most Americans hear about Wal-Mart's worker rights abuses, their first reaction is to feel guilty about shopping at the store. A tiny minority will respond by shopping elsewhere, and only a handful will take any further action. A worker might call her union and organize a picket. A citizen might write to her congressman or local newspaper, or galvanize her church and knitting circle to visit local management. A consumer makes an isolated, politically slight decision: to shop or not to shop. Most of the time, Wal-Mart has her exactly where it wants her, because the intelligent choice for anyone thinking as a consumer is not to make a political statement but to seek the best bargain and the greatest convenience.
I have trouble summarizing this section because it makes my brain hurt. In short: We aren't people in groups any more, we're just consumer. Wal-Mart has cleverly created a scheme where we won't act against Wal-Mart (by not shopping there) becuase we will have to pay more elsewhere. This is where the liberal argument comes into effect. We are all to stupid to take a collective action and stop shopping at Wal-Mart and saving money. We need the government to stop us from saving money for us.
To effectively battle corporate criminals like Wal-Mart, the public must be engaged as citizens, not merely as shoppers. What kind of politics could encourage that? It's not clear that our present political parties are up to the job. Unlike so many horrible things, Wal-Mart cannot be blamed on George W. Bush.
I'm still going to find a way to blame George W. Bush for
Catwoman. The government did not act swiftly to precent the release of this movie.
The Arkansas-based company prospered under the state's native son Bill Clinton when he was governor and president. Sam Walton and his wife, Helen, were close to the Clintons, and for several years Hillary Clinton, whose law firm represented Wal-Mart, served on the company's board of directors. Bill Clinton's welfare reform has provided Wal-Mart with a ready work force of women who have no choice but to ccept its poverty wages and discriminatory policies.
Featherstone should know that Welfare reform was Gingrich's idea. I guess blaming Gingrich for bad things is so 1996. All joking aside, the statement that after welfare reform Women "have no choice" is untrue from many perspectives. The most notable being that Wal-Mart is not the only employer or low-income workers in america. The second is that people have or can learn job skills which allow them to make more money. Of course, when you are locked into the Wal-Mart 24 hours a day by an evil employer, you can't do anything else. And one again, Featherstone has failed to prove that discrimination is worse problem at Wal-Mart than at other retailers or that is above some accepted standard except the fantasy standard that there is absolutely zero discrimation. Additionally, she doesn't bother to ask if the women working at Wal-Mart have a lower standard of living after working at Wal-Mart than they did when they were on welfare, assuming they were on welfare.
As an aside, isn't insulting how the author assumes that Wal-Mart is staffed with people who would be on welfare if they had the chance? That these people would not choose to find a better life without the assistance of the government?
Cutting the next section short:
Still, a handful of Democratic politicians stood up to the retailer.
California Assemblywoman Sally Lieber...(snip)
...Lieber was angry, too, that Wal-Mart's welfare dependence made it nearly impossible for responsible employers to compete with the retail giant. It was as if taxpayers were unknowingly funding a massive plunge to the bottom in wages and benefits -- quite possibly their own. She held a news conference in July 2003, to expose Wal-Mart's welfare scam. The Wal-Mart documents -- instructions on how to apply for food stamps, Medi-Cal (the state's health care assistance program) and other forms of welfare -- were blown up on poster board and displayed. The morning of the news conference, a Wal-Mart worker who wouldn't give her name for fear of being fired snuck into Lieber's office. "I just wanted to say, right on!" she told the assemblywoman.
Wal-Mart spokespeople have denied that the company encourages employees to collect public assistance, but the documents speak for themselves. They bear the Wal-Mart logo, and one is labeled "Wal-Mart: Instructions for Associates." Both documents instruct employees in procedures for applying to "Social Service Agencies."
Most Wal-Mart workers I've interviewed had co-workers who worked full time for the company and received public assistance, and some had been in that situation themselves. Public assistance is very clearly part of the retailer's cost-cutting strategy. (It's ironic that a company so dependent on the public dole supports so many right-wing politicians who'd like to dismantle the welfare state.)
I think this is supposed to be her big bombshell, that secretly Wal-Mart is keeping it's employees on welfare so they don't have to pay them anything while they are being sexually harrased and chained to the sales floor. I find it odd that Featherstone doesn't specifically say what "Social Service Agencies" the documents refer to. We should just assume it means
Food Stamps and not the
Office of Deaf Access. Featherstone provides no proof that there's a significant incidence of people at Wal-Mart being on public assistance beyond "workers I've interviewed" and still can't make the argument that these people would be in jobs that would keep them off of welfare. (I feel like a broken record).
Citizens should pressure other politicians to speak out against Wal-Mart's abuses and craft policy solutions. But the complicity of both parties in Wal-Mart's power over workers points to the need for a politics that squarely challenges corporate greed and takes the side of ordinary people. That kind of politics seems, at present, strongest at the local level.
Earlier this year, labor and community groups in Chicago prevented Wal-Mart from opening a store on the city's South Side, in part by pushing through an ordinance that would have forced the retailer to pay Chicago workers a living wage. In Hartford, Conn., labor and community advocates just won passage of an ordinance protecting their free-speech rights on the grounds of the new Wal-Mart Supercenter, which is
being built on city property. Similar battles are raging nationwide, but Wal-Mart's opponents don't usually act with as much coordination as Wal-Mart does, and they lack the retail behemoth's deep pockets.
Somewhere on Chicago's South Side, a Sara Jennings has to pay for groceries and toliet paper and can't afford her treat at McDonalds, but a bunch of liberals driving hybrid cars feel better about themselves. Oh, and the Hartford, Conn Wal-Mart is far more noisy than it ought to be.
Such efforts are essential not just because Wal-Mart is a grave threat to unionized workers' jobs (which it is), but also because it threatens all American ideals that are at odds with profit -- ideals such as justice, equality and fairness. Wal-Mart would not have so much power if we had stronger labor laws and if we required employers to pay a living wage. The company knows that, and it hires lobbyists in Washington to vigorously fight any effort at such reforms; indeed, Wal-Mart has recently beefed up this political infrastructure substantially, and it's likely that its presence in Washington will only grow more conspicuous.
I'm pretty sure Wal-Mart is not a grave theat the jobs of
Unionized Aerospace Engineers unless Wal-Mart highers third world children to design jumbo jets. Additionally, Wal-Mart is not a thread to "Justice," just s threat to a supposed "Social Justice". Social Justice is not justice, it's actually "Fairness", which means everybody gets the same thing, even if everybody gets less. Featherstone has already told us that Wal-Mart is about getting more for you money. Wal-Mart is not a threat to equality either. One last time, Featherstone hasn't even tried to prove the sexual discrimination charges. And Wal-Mart is now
planning to cut executive salaries if they don't achieve some sort of forced equity.
The situation won't change until a movement comes together and builds the kind of social and political power for workers and citizens that can balance that of Wal-Mart. This is not impossible: In Germany, unions are powerful enough to force Wal-Mart to play by their rules.
Message to Liza Feathersone:
The German economy sucks, and it's the labor unions that are responsbile.
American citizens will have to ask themselves what kind of world they want to live in. That's what prompted Gretchen Adams, a former Wal-Mart manager, to join the effort to unionize Wal-Mart. She's deeply troubled by the company's effect on the economy as a whole and the example it sets for other employers. "What about our working-class people?" she asks. "I don't want to live in a Third World country." Working people, she says, should be able to afford "a new car, a house. You shouldn't have to leave the car on the lawn because you can't afford that $45 part."
One final parting shot. When you see a car on blocks on someone's lawn, it's Wal-Mart.
