A glimpse at the preface of the book gives you an idea of what's inside: a company promising new jobs to small towns everywhere only to pay near-poverty wages; a company that has dominated and destroyed small communities around America and is now threatening municipalities by surrounding large cities with their Sam's Club and Supercenters; a company that 14 years ago didn't sell groceries, is now the nation's largest grocery chain; a global giant so anti-union not one of their 3,020 (and counting) stores in the U.S. is unionized -- not food workers, not pharmacists, not meat cutters, not drivers. Not one.
Although we've been talking and writing about Wal-Mart for some time, page after page of Bill Quinn's book details the company's cutthroat tactics, making it the most feared retailer in American history.
Horrified and outraged. These are the words I have used to describe the evils of Wal-Mart. Now, the many sins of America's largest retailer have been clearly documented in the newly revised and updated paperback, "How Wal-Mart is Destroying America (and the World) And What You Can Do About It".
Wal-Mart is the largest private employer in the United States, with nearly 900,000 people working for Walton Enterprises. The author writes: "It is widely acknowledged that one of the great keys to Wal-Mart's formidable success is its lower-than-low cost of doing business. Wages in particular are as low as they can be.
Every gear in the whole vast machine is straining to keep costs down, profits up, and growth exploding. Of the hundreds of places Wal-Mart can (and does!) save money, its workers' hides are the favorite."
Why should we fear this goliath that has literally taken over the retail world? Quinn believes that there are seven bad things that happen when a Wal-Mart comes to town: Local store owners take the biggest hit; jobs are lost; other businesses suffer (like newspapers, banks and tourism); downtown dies; taxpayers pay for the disaster; other towns eventually suffer (the corporate strategy is to "carpet" the land with a sales area of a Wal-Mart roughly 70 miles in diameter); and Wal-Mart moves on. Once a small town's economy is destroyed, it moves on to the next growth phase, consolidating stores and erecting a Supercenter in a nearby city.
The well-devised mass destruction of free enterprise in America by this company goes clearly beyond the concerns of unions. It affects every single working American. I urge you to become anti-Wal-Mart activists in your communities. I urge you to pick up a copy of this book so you too can see the deviant corporate undertakings by this goliath.
I urge you to arm yourselves with this accurately detailed ammunition and approach your city councils and planning commissions before it's too late in your community. With this comprehensive history of the company, elected officials everywhere would absolutely reject any proposal from Wal-Mart.
Viva Las Vegas!
When Wal-Mart announced it would be bringing its Supercenters into Las Vegas, in Nevada's Clark County, in the fall of 1999, the county commissioners were listening.
Knowing that a Wal-Mart Supercenter includes a full-size grocery department, Clark County - whose jurisdiction is the law in about half of the Las Vegas metro area - has adopted a land-use law that limits the amount of space that discounters who "sell everything under one roof" can devote to groceries: this can be no more than 7.5 percent.
The ordinance does not mention Wal-Mart byname, and it could apply to other "big box" discounters such as Target, K-mart, and Costco. But its prime target was unmistakably Wal-Mart. The city of Las Vegas (the other half of Clark County) is expected to follow suit and vote in a comparable edict.
Labor unions gave birth to Las Vegas and have kept their clout down through the years. The casinos are nearly 100 percent union. All or nearly all the big grocery chains like Krogers and Albertsons are unionized. All are paying good wages - with a lot of company-paid benefits.
If one of the worst enemies of labor in the history of U.S. retailing tried to bring its cut-throat tactics to Vegas, we wager it's in for the nastiest fight in its history. The Walton family - long known for its lowdown, dirty fights with its competition - is likely to learn a long-deserved lesson.
When you kick labor unions, they kick back. Harder. A helluva lot harder.
January 12, 2006
At lunchtime, in the break room of the Wal-Mart store in Laurel, the television delivered the news from the opening day of the General Assembly:
Maryland lawmakers would attempt this week to override the governor's veto of a bill aimed at forcing Wal-Mart to offer more affordable health care coverage to its 17,000 workers in the state.
"You better listen," Cynthia Murray told her co-workers gathered there. When her shift ended at 3 p.m., she turned her back on the store and headed through the rain to Annapolis.
There, the 49-year-old sales associate was embraced by lawmakers and union leaders. Still wearing her blue apron, with its "How May I Help You?" slogan, Murray offered a rare statement in this debate that has drawn national attention and spurred an advertising and lobbying frenzy.
Hers was the voice of someone who might actually be affected.
"I've worked at Wal-Mart for more than five years, and I still can't afford their health care. I know many of my co-workers can't afford it either."
Murray said the $200-a-month plan she was offered to cover her and her husband would cost about a quarter of her monthly pay. So she goes without coverage and prays that she and her family will stay well. She said she might face repercussions for speaking out, but that is beyond her control.
"God puts us in the right place for the right reasons. That is why I am here."
Wal-Mart officials countered that the company recently expanded its range of heath care plans—including one that provides benefits for as little as $23 a month to a single worker.
"We provide insurance to over 1 million Americans," said Nate Hurst, a spokesman for the giant retailer. "Clearly this bill is about politics—bad politics."
The debate over the Fair Share Health Care Fund Act, commonly known as the Wal-Mart bill, has dominated politics in the run-up to the General Assembly, with the retailer arguing that Democrats have unfairly singled out one company and union leaders arguing that workers deserve better treatment.
Murray's words were a rallying cry to the bill's supporters, who could vote as early as today on whether to overturn last year's veto by Republican Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr.
The legislation, versions of which are being considered by more than 30 states, would require private employers with more than 10,000 workers to spend at least 8 percent of payroll on health benefits or make a contribution to the state's Medicaid program. Wal-Mart, with 53 stores and nearly 17,000 workers in Maryland, is the only large employer that does not meet that requirement.
Union activists and some lawmakers contend that the range of benefits offered by Wal-Mart is so expensive relative to workers' salaries, and eligibility is so restrictive, that many turn to Medicaid, the publicly funded health care program for the poor, for their coverage, and to a state health insurance program for children.
That leaves the state to pick up the costs, said House Speaker Michael E. Busch (D-Anne Arundel).
Busch could not provide figures for how many of Maryland's Wal-Mart workers are on Medicaid, and the AFL-CIO sued unsuccessfully to get that information, said Naomi Walker, the labor organization's director of state legislative programs.
But in 18 states that have released the information, Wal-Mart was among the top three employers that shifted workers into Medicaid, the children's insurance program and other state aid, Walker said.
A survey by Georgia officials found that more than 10,000 children of Wal-Mart employees were enrolled in the state's health insurance program for children at a cost of nearly $10 million annually.
Some of Maryland's Wal-Mart workers make so little that they qualify for such poverty programs.
The average wage for full-time sales associates in Maryland is $9.97 an hour, and full-time workers at Wal-Mart put in from 34 to 40 hours a week, Hurst said. At that rate, an employee working 40 hours a week earns $19,142 a year, an income below the $19,350 federal poverty level for a family of four.
Wal-Mart officials have said their company is living up to its responsibilities to provide adequate health care coverage to workers.
Under recently expanded benefits, Maryland workers now have a choice of several plans, including a "value plan" that costs $23 a month for a single worker, $37 a month for a parent and children, and $65 a month for two parents and children, said corporate spokesman Dan Fogleman.
That gives each family member three doctors' visits and three generic prescriptions before being subject to an annual deductible of $1,000. Full-time workers are eligible for enrollment after 180 days. Part-timers can enroll after two years.
"This plan would have been available" to Murray, Fogleman said. He said the company does not steer workers to Medicaid or other state programs.
For her part, Murray said Wal-Mart did not offer her any health insurance option other than the one she could not afford. She said she did not want to turn to Medicaid for help. "I probably do qualify, but that is not the way to go."
The article originally appeared in The Washington Post on January 12, 2006, and was written by Mary Otto.
