Monday, June 11th, 2007...6:49 am
But, They Have That Fun Smiley Face Mascot, They Can’t Be All Bad
A week or so ago, Daniel Scarpinato’s Political Notebook column featured comments from Pete Zimmerman, a Democratic consultant who is working on behalf of an initiative drive being pushed by Wal-Mart. Of the criticism he’s taking from Democratic activists, he said:
It really boils down to a war that’s being waged on Wal-Mart by several unions that would like to unionize the largest retailer in the world. They want the membership.
Thanks, Zimmerman, you’ve just recited the Republican mantra that is always given anytime organized labor wants to do anything. Darn those unions; they want membership.
Of course they want members. Name an organization that doesn’t. Hey, guess what, Wal-Mart wants customers. Hah! Back atcha.
For the sake of his client, Zimmerman better understand that the troubles that folks on the left have with Wal-Mart amount to a bit more than how many people are carrying UFCW cards. Labor’s beef with Wal-Mart stems from all sorts of shakiy labor practices, like their “career tracking” of female employees and their history of forcing employees to work off the clock. The argument that this is all about membership falls apart when one realizes that the ordinance that is being fought here prevents some new Wal-Marts from being built, thus less employees that could be unionized.
In the end, it really doesn’t matter what snazzy consultant is being hired here. The recent council vote that ticked us off was lost largely because there was little activity from our side. Wal-Mart did an excellent job of doing what we do best: organizing neighborhoods in favor of their side. Where was our push back?
Here is a second chance for the neighborhood associations, PCIC and UFCW to make their cases to the people and organize against this stuff. This will be a public vote, and we won’t be able to blame Steve Leal or Nina Trasoff for this one. Let’s do this right this time.
IRONY WATCH: Reports have come back to me that Wal-Mart initially paid their petitioners $12 an hour. Now, they are being paid $2 a signature, which is still considerable. How many of their employees, oh, I’m sorry, “associates” get that much? Those almost sound like union wages.
15 Comments
June 11th, 2007 at 7:36 am
Wal-Mart’s low wages, crappy products and urban blight are only part of the price we pay for having that “smiley face” in our neighborhoods.
Read the following excerpt from a study by UC Berkely. It lays out why we all pay a “Wal-Mart” tax because of their refusal to provide affordable health-care for their workers:
THE WAL-MART TAX: A REVIEW OF STUDIES EXAMINING EMPLOYERS’ HEALTH CARE COST-SHIFTING March 31, 2005 As job-based health coverage declines and employers shift ever-growing health costs onto employees, workers increasingly must turn to taxpayer-funded programs like Medicaid to get health care for themselves and their families. Meanwhile, Medicaid is wrestling with explosive cost growth, increasing 56 percent since 2000. Medicaid is the second largest expense for most states, accounting for around 16 percent of state budgets, on average. States’ spending on the program is expected to grow almost 12 percent this year, four times faster than the increase in states’ general fund spending. Overall health care costs, particularly for prescription drugs and hospital care, are growing, so it is not surprising that Medicaid costs would rise too. What sets Medicaid apart, however, is that increased enrollment in the program also plays a decisive role in driving cost increases. A number of factors account for growing caseloads, but one reason is that employers—including some that are highly profitable—are shifting onto taxpayers the costs of insuring their workers. Recent studies in 13 states have examined the extent to which employers’ workers utilize public health programs to secure health coverage for themselves and their families. As the following summary of those analyses reflects, in each one of these states, Wal-Mart ranks at or near the very top of the list of employers that are shifting to the public the cost of providing health care for their workers. In so doing, Wal-Mart is directly contributing to the nation’s Medicaid crisis. That Wal-Mart should play such a prominent role in the Medicaid crisis is unjustifiable by any measure. Wal-Mart rakes in profits at the rate of $20,000 per minute; last year, its profits were $10 billion, the largest amount in its history. The 2004 compensation package for Wal-Mart’s CEO Lee Scott was almost $23 million. Five members of the Walton family who are major company stockholders have a combined net worth exceeding $90 billion, making them half of the 10 wealthiest Americans. And over the last two decades, Wal-Mart has benefited from at least $1 billion in economic development assistance from state and local governments, including several states featured in this report. Plainly Wal-Mart can—and should—do better by its workers and the consumers it professes to serve.
June 11th, 2007 at 9:38 am
Wal-mart is cheaper and more convienient than anyone else. Period. What is the cost benefit analysis of what they do? 50-100 employees don’t make a lot of money and thousands have cheaper prices on basics. Who are the people who shop at Wal-mart? The working poor. So let’s screw them and replace Wal-mart with an inefficient store that charges too much money. Wal-mart is providing Americans with exactly what they want: more stuff for less money. That is about as American as you can get. Don’t believe me? Go to a Wal-mart on any given moment and see how packed it is. Don’t want to work there? Wages too low? Don’t work there then. I honestly don’t see the problem. No one forces anyone on this page to work at Wal-mart or to shop there. I think I remember liberals using the same argument for sexual content on TV: if you don’t like something don’t participate.
June 11th, 2007 at 10:42 am
Billy:
I actually agree with your point. I don’t shop at Wal-Mart, in part because of the points you raise.
I could cite a number of consumer sins committed by Wal-Mart, including its failure to adhere to state pricing laws, but that’s not the point.
The actual point I was raising with the Berkely study was that Wal-Mart was forcing all of us to subsidize their low prices by forcing their employees onto the AHCCCS health-care rolls. Taxpayers are paying billions of dollars to provide this subsidy.
If you want to shop at Wal-Mart , I agree that’s your absolute right. If someone want sto view sexually explicit television on cable or some other medium, well that’s your right too. Just don’t look me to subsidze someone’s shopping or viewing habits.
June 11th, 2007 at 11:57 am
Also, don’t overlook that some percentage of those working poor make less money at the jobs they have because of their employers need to compete with WalMart.
June 12th, 2007 at 5:16 am
My beef with Wal-Mart is the fact that they are the “Comany Store” in a way, everybody I know who works at Wal-Mart also has to shop at Wal-Mart because it is what they can afford. Don’t you find that a little scary,
June 12th, 2007 at 8:45 pm
Is this a single issue (WalMart) thread or can one use comparitives to make a point. That point being , those who bemoan the costs passed on to the taxpayers via a lack of Walmart not providing healthcare for their employees, seldom seem to want to discuss even greater costs to the taxpayers for the healthcare of the illegal aliens flooding our state. And those WalMart employees are American citizens. I know that, as no American union with any patriotic blood in their veins, would want to unionize “illegal aliens” now would they?
Suck it up, folks. WalMart is capitalism at it’s finest. Compete or perish!
June 13th, 2007 at 1:26 pm
I don’t shop at Walmart. I have never shopped at Walmart. There are three reasons: I don’t like their employee practices and I don’t like where they buy their products and I don’t like their ability (and action) of selling their competition (small stores) short and driving them out of business.
Their products come from China where they are made by slave labor. I will not be a party to supporting a manufacturing system that relies on slave labor so they can sell their products at low prices. Walmart can and does engage in practices where they take losses on certain products to eliminate competition from small stores and, when those stores are driven out of business, they can raise the prices back up.
I believe that the backbone of a strong economy is a large number of small stores who employ lots of local citizens and provide a variety of products - generally not made in China with slave labor!
Just my 2 cents!
June 14th, 2007 at 10:32 am
Ted,
You’re a naive dreamer. The unions are using the power of the state to block the opening of Wal-Marts purely as leverage to force Wal-Mart to unionize.
That’s the difference between the union’s quest for membership and Wal-Mart’s quest for customers: the unions are using the police powers of the state to get what they want through force, while Wal-Mart’s goal is to convince people to shop at Wal-Mart because the people WANT to shop at Wal-Mart.
This debate is like the French elitists who put restrictions on how many movie screens can show American films. They claim to want to “preserve French culture” but their means to do so is using the power of the state to prevent the French people from seeing the movies that they want to see. [If they did not want to see them, they simply would not buy tickets — no state intervention would be needed.]
June 14th, 2007 at 1:47 pm
Ron H: I haven’t checked posts here for a few days, and it’s too bad, because your knuckle-dragging comments about Wal-Mart fail the truth test.
One of Wal-Mart’s little pecaddillos involved the practice at some stores of locking cleaning staff INSIDE THE STORE and making them work unpaid overtime. Since they were undocumented, and didn’t speak English, they were easy prey.
A point made by some anti-immigrant types is that large corporations are trying to undo the immigration bill in the Senate because they like the cheap labor they’re getting from undocumented workers. I’m not sure if I agree, but clearly that Wal-Mart doesn’t worry too much about immigration status if you’re willing to endure crummy conditions at low pay - which is the plight of most undocumented workers.
June 14th, 2007 at 7:08 pm
Companies such as Wal Mart like immigrant labor just the way it is, thank you. Illegal, cheap and exploitable. Why would they want things to change?
June 15th, 2007 at 4:22 pm
Sorry Sam,
Your character and integrity are mirrored in the ”
knuckle-dragging ” comment. Can’t make a sound argument without resorting to name calling? Well, of course not, your a “Liberal”. How’s that for name calling?
You may want to check on just who locked who in any WalMart store. I think you will find, IF your cared to check, that WalMart contracts out it’s janatorial services. Like so many big businesses today, they are accused of hiring illegal aliens when in reality it is the small sub-contractors they use that are doing the hiring and exploitation. Keep bashing the supreme example of capitalism, and they will just keep counting their profits.
June 15th, 2007 at 8:28 pm
Yep, Sam, it’s all okay because they hire someone to hire illegal aliens. One hand washes the other.
June 15th, 2007 at 9:18 pm
Right Tedski,
And WalMart markets goods produced by child labor in other countries. Why don’t you pay those countries a visit and tell them to knock that crap off! Oh and while you’re away, hire a local painting contractor to paint your house. The illegal labor he uses won’t be on your conscience because you really didn’t know he was doing it. Riiiight.
June 16th, 2007 at 3:41 pm
Hey! Look, I’m not particularly a fan of WalMart myself. The only reason I am stirring the pot in this thread is that I see an awful lot of hypocracy today. Point out you favorite “demon” and accuse them of all sorts of dasdardly deeds but casually ignore the same circumstance taking place all around, especially when it “gores your ox”. Simply trying to play fair here.
June 17th, 2007 at 9:34 am
The big box stores drive out the small businesses that are the backbone of a solid economy. No one (small) business has the ability to drive out the rest and must rely on being competitive: read provide quality products and services at a price that make it competitive with its neighbors. Big box stores drive down prices in the short run, drive out small competing businesses, and then are free to charge all that the traffic will bear - by eliminating healthy competition. Frankly, that’s un-American!
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