Will Labor Take the Wal-Mart Challenge? 

April 5, 2004

April 1, 2004

April 1, 2004

Bye Bye Big Box

This admonition comes from a handbook Wal-Mart distributes to managers, and gives an idea of the passion and vision behind Wal-Mart's unionbusting project. The $259 billion retail behemoth that has become a defining feature of the American landscape has also profoundly altered labor politics, deploying ever more creative and ruthless tactics to suppress the right to organize, while driving down wages and benefits in the retail industry and beyond.

The company is providing a business model widely imitated by other corporations, especially its competitors. To take one recent example, after striking for months, grocery workers in Southern California were forced to accept a vastly reduced health plan early this year, as supermarkets, anticipating competition from new Wal-Mart Supercenters throughout the state, refused to compromise with the union--probably the first time in history that a potential competitor who had not even entered the market yet was such a key player in a labor dispute. But the California grocers are not alone. Supermarkets all over the country have been lowering wages and decimating workers' health plans. Management claims these cutbacks are necessary to compete with Wal-Mart, but another explanation makes at least as much sense: "Greed," says Linda Gruen, a former Wal-Mart worker now organizing supermarket chains for the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW). "Management sees what Wal-Mart gets away with," she says, and realizes that the way to increase profits is to do the same.

Wal-Mart, which topped the Fortune 500 this year, for the third year in a row, is not just an industry leader: It is an economy leader, the nation's largest private employer by far, with over 1.2 million employees. That number is growing all the time, as Wal-Mart opens new stores just about every week. The average wage is around $8 an hour--and the health plan so expensive and so stingy in its coverage that many workers go without, or depend on the government to pay their medical bills. Says Susan Phillips, vice president of the UFCW and head of its working women's department, for any private-sector union in the United States today, "anytime you go into negotiations...it's like there's this invisible 800-pound gorilla sitting in the room at the bargaining table." This is reflected particularly by employers' ebbing generosity on healthcare, but also on wages, pensions and other benefits. Journalist Bob Ortega observed in his 2000 book, In Sam We Trust, that Wal-Mart's "way of thinking," its relentless focus on giving the customer the lowest price, "has become the norm," not just in retail but in all businesses. This can't be done without crushing labor.

That's why a consensus among labor leaders is emerging that organizing Wal-Mart workers is an urgent priority--perhaps the most urgent facing a labor movement that is losing density and influence. Asked what it will take to organize Wal-Mart, Al Zack, outgoing assistant director of strategic programs for the UFCW, points to Wal-Mart's stated commitment to remaining "union free." Says Zack, "When the labor movement...matches that commitment, then it will be successful."

It would be difficult to exaggerate the magnitude of this challenge. Wal-Mart's rhetoric is supported by diligent practice. The company screens out potential union supporters through its hiring process: In addition to excluding those with union histories, the company also administers personality tests to weed out those likely to be sympathetic to unions, and offers managers tips on how to spot such people.

The same handbook, which was given to management in a Wal-Mart distribution center in Greencastle, Indiana, urged managers to be wary of certain union-friendly types, including "the Cause-Oriented Associate," who in high school "led demonstrations against everything from 'red dye' to 'ban the bomb.' He once took a trip to India to visit his personal 'guru.'" Managers are also encouraged to avoid the "Overly-Qualified Associate...a Ph.D operating a grinding machine or a former accountant sweeping the floor.... This type of associate includes the associate who has formerly made substantially more money with other employers."

During the hiring process, many workers say they have had to sign forms agreeing that they would not support any effort to unionize the store, a clear violation of federal law. Lorraine Hill, who worked for Wal-Mart in Rock Springs, Wyoming, and in Oxford, Maine, says all her co-workers did this. "If you don't sign that paper you are not employed," she says. "It's not legal. It's not ethical. But if you are low income and you need the job, you abide by the rules."

Of course, these preventive measures do sometimes fail, and workers begin to organize. Wal-Mart is prepared for that, too. At any sign of union activity in a store, managers call the company's Bentonville, Arkansas, headquarters, which sends a "labor relations team" by private plane (Air Walton) to the offending store to crush the organizing effort, often the very day the call comes in.

In the United States, only one group of Wal-Mart employees has successfully organized. In February 2000 ten meatcutters in Jacksonville, Texas, voted 7 to 3 to unionize their tiny bargaining unit. Two weeks later, Wal-Mart abruptly eliminated their jobs by switching to prepackaged meat and assigning the butchers to other departments, effectively abolishing the only union shop on its North American premises. After more than three years, in June 2003, a federal labor judge ruled this move illegal and ordered Wal-Mart to restore the department and recognize the butchers' bargaining unit. Wal-Mart has appealed that decision.

Because the consequences are so minimal, Wal-Mart does not hesitate to break the law in order to stay union-free. Indeed, as the Greencastle handbook to managers notes frankly, during a union drive, "You...are expected to support the company's position.... This may mean walking a tightrope between legitimate campaigning and improper conduct." Wal-Mart has been found guilty of many violations of workers' right to organize, even firing union sympathizers. But paying fines--or in some cases, merely hanging a sign in the break room that states that the company violated workers' rights--is for Wal-Mart simply part of the cost of doing business, a small price to pay for keeping unions out. Until labor laws are reformed to make violating workers' rights a criminal offense--punishable by sending managers and CEOs to prison--running Wal-Mart campaigns based on National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) challenges may be fruitless.

Recently Wal-Mart decided that remaining union-free is a political issue, becoming 2003's number one corporate contributor to candidates, 85 percent of them Republicans. Most corporations, realizing that both Democrats and Republicans respond to business interests, give almost equally to the two parties. But Wal-Mart operates on the premise that while Democrats owe something to labor, Republicans don't--and therefore, if its donations can purchase GOP dominance, they are well spent. Wal-Mart, especially as it moves into urban areas and into union-friendly regions like California, is strategically trying to buy as many politicians and NLRB appointments as it can.

Yet despite Wal-Mart's clear focus on fighting unions, the labor movement has been slow to respond. In the late 1980s the UFCW began to realize that Wal-Mart's rapid growth and competitiveness--and rapid incursion into the grocery industry, which had been mostly unionized--posed an urgent threat to members' jobs. The first Supercenter--a twenty-four-hour Wal-Mart selling groceries in addition to the company's traditional range of goods, from ladies' underwear to lawn mowers--opened in 1988; by the end of 2003, Wal-Mart had opened 1,430 of them. Wal-Mart had historically been concentrated in "right-to-work" states in the South, but as it grew, the company encroached upon more unionized Western and Northeastern regions. Still, the union effort was halfhearted until the late 1990s, when supermarkets began losing market share to Wal-Mart and it became painfully obvious that the company threatened the UFCW's very survival--and its members' hard-won comfortable lives.

As the UFCW's humbling defeat in the California grocery strike showed, the union, after years of friendly relations with so many regional grocery stores, does not know how to conduct an antagonistic national campaign, or how to make use of nationwide publicity and public sympathy for workers. Many labor organizers, pointing to such failings, blame the UFCW for its failure to organize Wal-Mart.

But the mistakes of this particular union may almost be beside the point. While it is true--and sobering--that the UFCW devotes only 2 percent of its national budget to the Wal-Mart campaign, it is also true, as many in the labor movement are beginning to recognize, that there is no way any single union could tackle an opponent of this size and genius. As Mike Leonard, just-retired director of strategic programs for the UFCW, observes, if his union spent all its resources on organizing Wal-Mart workers, it would have to neglect the pressing needs of current members. As big as the UFCW is--at 1.4 million members, it is the nation's largest private-sector union--Wal-Mart will soon have more US employees than the UFCW has members. "It's not a fair fight," says Wade Rathke, founder and chief organizer of ACORN and Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 100, in New Orleans. No union has ever organized an entity the size of Wal-Mart, let alone one as creative and coordinated in its anti-unionism. "You have to admire this company," says Rathke. "They are very disciplined, and they've got a program." Labor doesn't, at least not yet.

Increasingly, labor leaders recognize this, and are taking the first step: admitting they have a problem. "This problem [Wal-Mart] is on the short list of any serious labor leader in the country," says Rathke. Andy Stern, president of the SEIU, has opened a dialogue on the subject on his weblog, soliciting ideas about strategy. (The SEIU is not attempting to organize Wal-Mart, nor is any union other than the UFCW, at this point.) Stern, who began the blog conversation with a picture of himself standing in front of one of Wal-Mart's thirty-nine Chinese stores, said in an interview that he sees the blog as an opportunity "to do what Howard Dean did," to stimulate interest, and then as a campaign evolves, mobilize people into action.

As the growing engagement of other unions in this discussion suggests, the UFCW cannot "stop" or change Wal-Mart alone. The task will demand the close cooperation and resources of other labor organizations. Asked what it will take to organize Wal-Mart, Ginny Coughlin of the textile union UNITE, which has recently begun organizing retail workers--but has no immediate plans to take on Wal-Mart--says, "I was just talking about this with a colleague the other day. We figured 3,000 organizers at a minimum. And all the resources, political will and leadership of probably four or five major unions." It is not inconceivable that this could happen: Labor leaders' recent rhetoric about greater cooperation between unions is more than talk. Several large unions are launching joint campaigns to organize low-wage workers. UNITE and HERE (the hotel and restaurant workers' union), for example, which are now in the process of merging, are working with the SEIU to organize employees at Sodexho, the nation's largest dining-services provider--which will involve more serious cooperation between labor organizations than we've seen in years. On May 12 prominent labor leaders held a meeting at SEIU headquarters to discuss the Wal-Mart problem, but partly because most people in the labor movement are preoccupied with defeating Bush, such dialogue is proceeding slowly.

Leonard, who ran the UFCW's Wal-Mart campaign for the past four years, thinks the "entire labor movement" should devote resources to helping Wal-Mart workers build a new, AFL-CIO-affiliated union "from the ground up." If other unions simply run a joint campaign against Wal-Mart, he argues, they are just going to drop out "as soon as they have their next big problem" affecting their own members' immediate interests.

International cooperation could be key to any Wal-Mart organizing strategy. As Andy Stern, just back from China, points out, "Wal-Mart is second only to our current President in unpopularity around the world" [see Carl Goldstein, "Wal-Mart in China," December 8, 2003]. Since Wal-Mart is an increasingly global company, fighting it invites potential for cross-border solidarity, especially in Germany, where many Wal-Mart workers are unionized and the company abides by a sectorwide agreement with a large retail union, and has been the target of pickets and warning strikes. In Britain some ASDA (British Wal-Mart) stores have shop stewards, but none of the workers are recognized as union members, or are covered by a collective-bargaining agreement. In Brazil Wal-Mart has had to reach agreement with unions on some workers' rights issues, while in Japan all of the company's workers are unionized, and Wal-Mart abides by an agreement reached with the stores' previous owner.

Many in the US labor movement believe that Wal-Mart requires a new organizing strategy. "There is no existing organizing model that unions have effectively employed to date that would organize this company," says Wade Rathke, who believes workers need a way to build their own institutions that is "not based on the permission of the employer."

Joel Rogers, a longtime social-justice activist and University of Wisconsin political scientist, agrees that the traditional model of organizing--by industry, with a focus on getting a majority vote in each shop, which under the law makes all the workers in that shop part of the union--cannot work for Wal-Mart. Rogers advocates an approach he calls "open-source unionism," in which workers could join unions even if the majority of their co-workers had not yet chosen to do so [see Richard B. Freeman and Joel Rogers, "A Proposal to American Labor," June 24, 2002]. Membership would focus on the individual, not the firm or job; a member could still belong to the union if and when she changed jobs. "It would be a kind of 'Wal-Mart Workers Association,'" says Rathke. This feature makes particular sense at a company like Wal-Mart, where turnover is so high. Under this model, employers could not insure that by defeating unions in elections, their workplaces would remain union-free. While these unions would lack collective-bargaining rights, members would receive advice from the union on how to protect their rights during disputes, and help in improving pay and working conditions through collective action. They would also benefit from alliances with community groups and other unions in putting pressure on their employer. Open-source unionism certainly needs re-branding, since only technologically knowledgeable geeks--most of whom are middle class--would understand that phrase, which derives from a term referring to the free exchange of software on the Internet. But it could provide a structure enabling workers' political activism, making it much easier for workers at companies like Wal-Mart to agitate to improve their situation, in cooperation with other workers.

This model isn't just a wonky abstraction. Though they may use different language to describe it, women and immigrants--including sweatshop workers in the United States and Latin America, and New York City taxi drivers--have been at the forefront of similar new organizational strategies. In her 2001 book Sweatshop Warriors: Immigrant Women Workers Take On the Global Factory, Miriam Ching Yoon Louie describes how garment workers have developed worker centers both to agitate for rights on the job and to develop political consciousness and become part of a larger social movement. These are, of course, much smaller-scale than a Wal-Mart Workers Association would be, but the principles--organizing without permission from employer or government, and affiliating with workers who are not in the same shop--are the same.

"It is essential that Wal-Mart workers have something like that," says Jane Collins, a professor of rural sociology and women's studies at the University of Wisconsin who has studied women's labor organizations in Latin American free-trade zones. Most Wal-Mart workers are women, and women--whether in Latin America or in immigrant communities in the United States--have been at the forefront of these new forms of organizing because, says Collins, they have been excluded, or poorly served, by the traditional unions. Similarly, Wal-Mart women find themselves in their current dismal position both as a result of mainstream labor's failure to recognize, early on, the importance of organizing low-wage retail workers and because of working-class women's historic--and ongoing--exclusion from unionized skilled trades.

"This might not work either," admits Rathke, of the Wal-Mart Workers Association idea. But it should be tried, he argues, because "we need a new strategy."

Most people agree that any serious approach to forcing Wal-Mart to the bargaining table must eventually threaten the company's profits. Labor organizers used to think they could do this by asking the public not to shop at Wal-Mart, but now most concede that's impossible, given the retailer's low prices. Their own members shop at Wal-Mart, making at least 30 percent of union credit-card purchases at the retail giant. Even activists thinking seriously about how to oppose the retailer keep finding themselves in its parking lots. "I love that damn store," says Rathke, who recalls being a loyal customer when he lived in Arkansas and needed the discounts. "They had me. I wasn't making 2 cents to put together." Now he lives in New Orleans, and admits, "Damned if I don't go down to Sam's for a new tire! They do have something that works. You can't just convince people they're evil." Indeed, many rural and working-class women view Wal-Mart as an ally, an oasis of low prices in an unfriendly world. In her chart-topping paean to country pride, "Redneck Woman," Gretchen Wilson sums it up irresistibly: "Victoria's Secret, well their stuff's real nice/But I can buy the same damn thing on a Wal-Mart shelf half price/And still look sexy, just as sexy as those models on TV/No, I don't need no designer tag to make my man want me." The question of how to threaten profits, given such intense consumer loyalty, is one of many that the labor movement's current dialogue must engage.

While simply telling people not to shop at Wal-Mart may be a losing battle, fighting Wal-Mart and companies like it will require convincing the public that discounts are no substitute for economic justice. Says Beth Shulman, author of The Betrayal of Work: How Low-Wage Jobs Fail 30 Million Americans and Their Families, "We need to talk about cost in a larger way. It is not just about saving $25, but the cost to the lives of workers and their families, and to society." That conversation has already begun in Georgia, Washington State and elsewhere, where studies have shown that Wal-Mart employees depend on public assistance far more than do workers employed by other large companies. April Hotchkiss, who makes $8.33 an hour as a clerk in a Pueblo, Colorado, Supercenter, has had her healthcare costs paid for by the state's program for the indigent. She dreams of the day she will no longer have to shop or work at Wal-Mart. "Whenever I'm able to quit this place, and find something better, I'm never going to set foot in another [Wal-Mart] again," she says. "I don't care how low the prices are--of course the prices are low, because they don't pay anybody worth crap!"

Ultimately, for this campaign to succeed, the entire progressive movement--not just labor--will have to make the unionization of Wal-Mart a priority. Pointing to the recent victory in Inglewood (a Los Angeles suburb where voters rejected a move by Wal-Mart to exempt itself from local zoning rules and erect a massive Supercenter) and the momentum of similar battles in Chicago and elsewhere, Rathke says that when it comes to fighting Wal-Mart, "there is more traction in the community than on the labor side." Andy Stern agrees, envisioning his blog conversation as the beginning of a movement-wide campaign by progressives to bring pressure on Wal-Mart. "The campaign needs to begin not as a labor campaign," says Stern, pointing out that community organizations "are more used to sustaining people around issues for long periods." Similarly, while Stern thinks there is "clearly an opportunity to create a Wal-Mart Workers Association," given that so many employees are unhappy with their working conditions, he thinks it might be a job for ACORN and other community organizations, since "it is not a traditional union model."

But Stern believes the labor movement should put resources behind a central organization that could serve as a resource for--and help coordinate--the many constituencies (workers, environmentalists, feminists, anti-sprawl advocates, churches, small-business owners) opposing Wal-Mart. At present, these groups work largely in isolation. Says Rathke, "There's no place to call and ask, 'How do you bring the ghostbusters in?'"

Labor activists talk a lot about involving the "community," which all agree is an important component in the struggle to unionize Wal-Mart. Yet one advantage Wal-Mart has in this regard is that with 70 percent of its stores located outside of metropolitan areas, and "Main Street" dying everywhere, it's doing business in many places where there isn't much of a community. In urban areas like Inglewood, and in some small towns, black churches, small-business associations and other institutions have been able to facilitate a discussion about whether Wal-Mart serves or thwarts the common good. But in many of the rural and exurban counties and townships where the retailer has traditionally operated, there has been no basis for such a debate: only isolated families struggling to get by, grateful to be able to load up their cars with cheap groceries from Wal-Mart. As is often the case, rhetoric about "community" can blind us to the crucial problem of its absence. On the other hand, wherever there is a thriving civic culture, that culture is an essential ally in the fight against Wal-Mart. In Vermont, for example, controversy over proposed superstores recently inspired the National Trust for Historic Preservation to declare the entire state "endangered" by the retailer.

It's encouraging that labor leaders are talking about this problem and entertaining so many new approaches. Yet as Mike Leonard cautions, in the labor movement, "it's a pretty rare day when we go beyond talking about a new idea, and that's part of the problem." And many workers are not optimistic now. Linda Gruen, who tried for several years to organize her Wal-Mart co-workers, is "not sure we will ever unionize Wal-Mart." April Hotchkiss, who still works at Wal-Mart and is trying to organize her co-workers, shares Gruen's view at times. "It is like parting the Red Sea," she says. "Sometimes I think it ain't going to happen. It is one of the hardest things I've ever tried to accomplish. I'd probably be better off trying to run the New York City Marathon."

This article can be found on the web at:

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20040628&s=featherstone Visit The Nation http://www.thenation.com/ Subscribe to The Nation:

[back to top]

Good Jobs First

A new report from the non-profit Good Jobs First uncovers $1 billion in tax subsidies to Wal-Mart. Click here to read the report. http://www.goodjobsfirst.org/pdf/wmtstudy.pdf
 

[back to top]

Judge Approves Wal-Mart Class-Action Case

By DAVID KRAVETS, AP                             [back to top]

SAN FRANCISCO (June 23) - Creating the largest private civil rights case in U.S. history, a federal judge approved a class-action sex-discrimination lawsuit against Wal-Mart Stores Inc. representing as many as 1.6 million current and former women workers.

The suit alleges that the retail giant set up a system that frequently pays its female workers less than their male counterparts for comparable jobs and bypasses them for key promotions.

Wal-Mart, the nation's largest private employer, sought to limit the scope of the lawsuit filed in San Francisco three years ago on behalf of six women.

Nine months after the case was argued, U.S. District Judge Martin Jenkins ruled Tuesday to expand the lawsuit to include virtually all women who have worked at Wal-Mart's 3,500 stores nationwide since December 1998.

The decision that the case merits class action was pivotal because it gives lawyers for the women tremendous leverage as they pursue punitive damages, as well as back pay and other compensation.

''I think it's a terrific victory for the women who work at Wal-Mart who have labored for years under working conditions where they have been told repeatedly they have been unsuitable for management and not suitable to make as much as men,'' said Joseph Sellers, one of the attorneys representing the women.

Bentonville, Ark.-based Wal-Mart downplayed the significance of the ruling and promised an appeal.

The decision ''has absolutely nothing to do with the merits of the case,'' spokeswoman Mona Williams said. ''Judge Jenkins is simply saying he thinks it meets the legal requirements necessary to move forward as a class action.''

In a daylong hearing in September, company attorneys urged Jenkins to allow so-called mini-class action lawsuits targeting each outlet. Wal-Mart contends its stores, including Sam's Club warehouse outlets, operate with so much autonomy that they are like independent businesses with different management styles that affect the way women are paid and promoted.

Pursuing the allegations as a single class action ''is absolutely unmanageable on a nationwide basis,'' Wal-Mart lawyer Paul Grossman told Jenkins. ''It would require a mind-boggling number of individual determinations.''

Jenkins ruled that a congressional act passed during the civil rights movement in 1964 prohibits sex discrimination and that corporations are not immune.

The judge decided that the ''plaintiffs present largely uncontested descriptive statistics which show that women working at Wal-Mart stores are paid less than men in every region, that pay disparities exist in most job categories, that the salary gap widens over time, that women take longer to enter management positions, and that the higher one looks in the organization the lower the percentage of women.''

Jenkins found that the evidence so far ''raises an inference that Wal-Mart engages in discriminatory practices'' against women.

Wal-Mart contends the suit ignores the thousands of women who earn more than their male counterparts. The retailer also says the lawsuit's allegations are flawed because they don't consider the factors that cause one job to pay more than another. For instance, some sales jobs require a gun license, while others pay a premium for workers skilled in handling live crickets sold for fishing, Grossman said.

Williams added that Wal-Mart is evaluating its employment practices.

''Earlier this month Wal-Mart announced a new job classification and pay structure for hourly associates,'' Williams said, adding the plan was to ''ensure internal equity and external competitiveness.''

The trial is expected to play out in at least two phases. It would start with the women trying to demonstrate that Wal-Mart has a pattern of paying women lower wages and passing them over for promotions. Wal-Mart would then get a chance to dismantle that theory.

The next phase, if a judge or jury found Wal-Mart did have a pattern of discrimination, would let the plaintiffs seek damages. With so many women in the case, the plaintiffs attorneys have developed a mathematical model to help them determine how much each plaintiff was owed - whether for wages or because they were passed over for promotion.

John C. Fox, a California labor attorney, said women could be entitled to recover wages if a statistical analysis shows similarly situated male employees earned more. But if women are seeking compensation for being glossed over for promotions, each plaintiff would have to prove that, which Fox said could be virtually impossible because of the number of women involved.

''It strikes me this case is crying to be settled,'' he said.

[back to top]

Reform at Wal-Mart?

by Nico Pitney - CommonDreams.org                    [back to top]
June 8, 2004

It was a vast and shameless annual meeting worthy of the vast and shameless corporation that hosted it.

With blue and white concert lights flickering and Patti LaBelle belting out "Somewhere Over the Rainbow," more than 15,000 store employees, shareholders, and executives filled up the University of Arkansas' basketball arena last Friday to "cheer and wave flags" and celebrate the worker-exploiting, taxpayer-gouging, sprawl-inducing, sweatshop-abusing behemoth known as Wal-Mart.

The corporate culture of America's New Gilded Age was on full display. Store employees, many of whom make near-poverty wages, were urged by one wealthy executive to go out and tell "our" story because "we're under scrutiny like we never have been before." Later, Reuters reported, "Chief Financial Officer Tom Schoewe danced in the aisle and former CEO David Glass -- flanked by [Halle] Berry and actress Susan Lucci -- did the twist."

"Any criticism of the company," Reuters added, "seemed a million miles away."

Except that it wasn't -- in fact, it was just down the road. A coalition of Arkansas social justice activists called Against the Wal organized a convergence in Fayetteville to protest the shareholders' meeting, and will be leading a roadshow with musical performances and Wal-Mart teach-ins through the mid-south next month. The embedded Reuters reporter just didn't bother to look.

Still, the meeting's jovial atmosphere was understandable. Wal-Mart's profits soared 18 percent this quarter, and the company has announced plans to litter "big box" warehouses and superstores around the globe, from rural America to Europe, Japan, and China (the site, notably, of this year's Wal-Mart board meeting).

Moreover, the Bush administration is firmly backing Wal-Mart's favorite Congressional legislation that would force class action lawsuits out of state courts and into "defendant-friendly federal courts" -- great news for a company that is "sued more often than any American entity except the U.S. government."

The big story from this weekend's meeting, though, was a pledge by Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott to cut bonuses to top executives by a measly 7.5 percent -- that's bonuses, not salaries -- if the store failed to meet diversity goals. Additionally, Scott said, the company will soon be reorganizing its pay structure. No details were announced, other than this one magnanimous promise sure to make workers salivate in anticipation of forthcoming riches: many employees will not receive a pay increase, but no one will actually see their wages drop.

CEO Scott, it should be mentioned, makes 897 times the pay of the average Wal-Mart worker. I've had a good time daydreaming about that enlightening fact suddenly flashing up on the arena megatron behind Scott while he's announcing these sham pay tweaks.

Explanations for the reforms ran the cynical gambit. One 14-year Wal-Mart veteran "alluded to the bad publicity over Wal-Mart's pay and negative comments from politicians," Business Week reported. Others suggested "a response to the massive sex-discrimination case filed three years ago against Wal-Mart." Retail analyst Robert F. Buchanan guessed that Wal-Mart "may be hoping to use [them] as 'shark repellent against the unions,'" by goading employees into thinking that they don't need to organize to receive wage hikes.

What's clear, of course, is that change is necessary, though the debate over tactics is still being waged. Within the electoral sphere, anti-Wal-Mart activists face many of the same difficulties as progressives more generally when it comes to this year's presidential race.

A vote for Bush/Cheney is out of the question. In March, Vice President Dick Cheney actually toured a Wal-Mart distribution center in Arkansas, where he cited Wal-Mart "as 'one of our nation's best companies'" and, naturally, "marvelled at its efficiency."

John Kerry would surely be somewhat of an improvement. The presumptive Democratic nominee walked the picket line with striking UFCW workers last year and has railed against Wal-Mart in various campaign speeches. Yet other evidence suggests that activists will have to remain vigilant even if Kerry wins. For example, Kerry's wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, frequently used the same rhetoric as her husband until it was reported in February that she owned more than $1,000,000 in Wal-Mart stock, much of it purchased as recently as 2002.

Some suggest that the impetus to mitigate Wal-Mart's harm in communities will need to come primarily from independent, bottom-up activist campaigns. University of Deleware historian Susan Strasser has pointed to the grassroots resistance movements that other large, low-wage retailers faced in the past. "Woolworth openly boasted of its high turnover and low pay. Sears was so concerned about an anti-mail-order campaign in 1906 that it started shipping its packages in plain-brown wrappers, [...] and A&P fought a massive antitrust case." Even today, Strasser remarked, Wal-Mart's "success is stimulating countervailing forces."

And to those who doubt whether the goliath can ever be stopped, she noted that "Sears and A&P are now shadows of their former selves, while the Woolworth stores have vanished." Indeed.

So although Wal-Mart is the only major retailer to refuse to sell the popular anti-war flick, "Uncovered: The Whole Truth about the Iraq War," you can still probably nab a copy of an old Propellerheads album with that hit track, "History Repeating." Turn it on at your next local anti-Wal-Mart meeting -- I hear it's great when you're doing the twist.

Nico Pitney is an activist in southern California and the author of PriorityWire.org, updated around-the-clock with interesting news and tidbits about globalization, trade, corporate power, and development issues. He can be reached at prioritywire@yahoo.com

[back to top]

Medford Council says 'no' officially to Wal-Mart

The deadline for Wal-Mart to file a supercenter appeal is around June 24

By MEG LANDERS - Mail Tribune                                [back to top]
June 4, 2004

Saying it's too big and doesn't fit in the neighborhood, the Medford City Council on Thursday gave its final and official "no" to a Wal-Mart Supercenter proposed for Miles Field.

It's too early to say whether Wal-Mart will appeal the decision to the Oregon Land Use Board of Appeals, according to Wal-Mart spokesperson Eric Berger.

Greg Hathaway, a Portland attorney representing Wal-Mart, said the deadline to file a LUBA appeal would be around June 24.

"I will speak with the Wal-Mart people next week," Hathaway said. "I would think the decision probably would come before that (June 24)."

Medford's Site Plan and Architectural Commission approved the application in April after Wal-Mart had made several recommended revisions to the original plan.

After considering three appeals filed against the commission's vote, the City Council voted against the proposed store on May 20. Thursday's vote finalized the council's position.

Meanwhile, no hearing date has been set for a LUBA appeal filed by Wal-Mart regarding a proposed Central Point store.

"That's definitely moving forward," said Hathaway.

Similar to what happened in Medford, the Central Point City Council on April 15 reversed a planning commission decision that OK'd a 207,000-square-foot store proposed for the corner of East Pine and Hamrick roads.

Wal-Mart appealed the Central Point council's decision on May 6.

The council argued that the project was not in line with city planning goals and would be better suited in a different area.

[back to top]

Retailers Face Overtime Suits

Ann Zimmerman - Wall Street Journal                              [back to top]
May 26, 2004

Some of the nation's biggest and most cost-sensitive retailers, including Wal- Mart Stores Inc. (WMT), RadioShack Corp. (RSH) and Dollar General Corp. (DG), are battling a raft of lawsuits accusing them of using low-level managers to do the work of regular employees, in order to avoid paying overtime, Wednesday's Wall Street Journal reported.

Wal-Mart, a retailing giant with about 3,500 stores and 1.2 million workers in the U.S., and a well-known focus on lean margins, already faces 30 overtime- related suits on behalf of hourly workers in 28 states. Assistant managers who filed suit in Michigan and California, seeking back pay and damages say they spend much of their days on the same tasks assigned to hourly employees entitled to overtime.

The suits claim there is very little difference between the job duties of the hourly workers and assistant managers, especially the nighttime assistant managers, who, "in most cases, are simply glorified stockers who unload trucks, move products into the store and stock shelves," according to legal documents.

Such practices could be illegal, although the retailers deny wrongdoing. Under federal law, managers may be entitled to overtime pay if more than 40% of their time isn't spent supervising or if their jobs don't include decision making.

Wal-Mart disputes the assistant managers' claims, saying that its managers' time is taken up largely with interviewing job candidates, making out schedules and handling other supervisory duties.

[back to top]

Medford council rejects Wal-Mart

By MEG LANDERS - Mail Tribune                                [back to top]
May 21, 2004

Citing incompatible size and design with adjacent properties, the Medford City Council late Thursday said no to the Wal-Mart Supercenter proposal for the Miles Field site.

The Council voted 5-1 to reverse the Site Plan and Architectural Commission's April 2 decision to approve the Wal-Mart application.

"I don't know what art is, but I know what ugly is," said Councilman John Michaels, admitting he was quoting Councilman Skip Knight.

Council members cited the architectural features, overall design and one-story footprint of the proposed 206,000-square-foot store as reasons for overturning the commission's approval.

It was unclear what the next step of the process will be - Wal-Mart representatives said they were undecided over what course of action to take.

The council heard a third appeal of the commission's decision Thursday from the South Gateway Center Partners, made up of South Gateway developers Bob Kaczor of Medford and Bob Barks of Seattle.

On May 6, the council heard the first two appeals, filed by former Medford City Councilman Bill Mansfield and by Wendy Siporen, a member of the Talent City Council.

The April 2 SPAC decision approved the application for the 206,533-square-foot supercenter, to be built along Highway 99 at Center Drive, where Miles Field is located.

Even though the appeal and public testimony Thursday was about traffic concerns, council members said the decision had nothing to do with traffic.

Portland attorney Dana Krawczuk, representing South Gateway Center Partners, presented an argument that a comprehensive traffic study was needed for the proposed superstore.

Chris Koback, a Portland-based attorney representing Wal-Mart, said the South Gateway Center Partners were contorting the language of the city code, and that Wal-Mart is in full compliance with the city's requirements.

The council had the choice of upholding the SPAC decision, reversing, modifying or sending it back until the Wal-Mart representatives decided Thursday they would not waive the 120-day application period deadline date.

The application period expires May 29, so not waiving it took away the council's ability to remand the decision back to the site plan commission.

Following public testimony, which saw six area residents oppose the project and two speak in support, the council began discussion. Several members voiced concern that Wal-Mart was not more willing to work with the community.

"It is not compatible with the surrounding area," said Councilwoman Claudette Moore. "I shop at Wal-Mart. I have no problem with Wal-Mart," she said, explaining she was concerned with how the superstore would fit in the neighborhood.

Councilman Jim Key said he did not support reversing the commission's decision.

He said even though he has struggled with the notion of a Wal-Mart Supercenter coming to town since he first heard about it, he thought the council could do things such as limit the size of the building.

"I believe we can condition the approval," he said.

But Councilman Jim Kuntz said he supported reversing the decision.

"I believe the burden of proof for compatibility has not been met," he said.

Mayor Lindsay Berryman said the nearest buildings, including the Rogue Federal Credit Union, the Armory and Harry and David, have the height of two-stories. She would like to see Wal-Mart decrease the size of their footprint and build a second story.

"Comfort Inn is a four-story building," she said.

Following the meeting, Koback declined comment because the decision pertained to previous hearings which he had not been present for, but Chuck Martinez of Medford, who secures sites for Wal-Mart in Oregon and Southern Washington, said he was a little bit surprised by the council decision.

"We did work with the city," he said, adding that they had satisfied many requests the Site Plan and Architectural Commission had made.

"It seems very inconsistent with past applications," he said, adding that others, like Fred Meyer, had not been required to do a second story or to screen their storage containers.

He said they will regroup and consider options, one of which is an appeal to the state Land Use Board of Appeals.

"We're not going to go away," he said.

[back to top]

WAL-MART AGREES TO HILLTOP SITE

By James Temple - Contra Costa Times                          [back to top]
May 14, 2004

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is one step from the 'top.

After five years of negotiations, the world's largest company has reached a "formal agreement" with the owner of Hilltop mall in Richmond to move into the long-vacant Macy's site.

Before it can sign a final lease, however, Wal-Mart must complete negotiations with the mall's other large tenants. J.C. Penny Co. Inc., Macy's and Sears, Roebuck and Co. possess refusal rights concerning other mall tenants, said Wal-Mart spokeswoman Amy Hill, who could not elaborate on the specifics.

Representatives of Hilltop's owner, Bloomfield Hills, Mich.-based retail developer Taubman Centers Inc., did not return calls before press time.

Wal-Mart hopes to finalize the deal by this summer, Hill said. The store would open around nine months after the lease is signed, suggesting a possible opening date as early as next spring.

The former Macy's site is a three-story, 150,000 square foot building that has been closed since the Federated Department Store subsidiary moved into the Emporium-Capwell space in 1998.

Though it's not the first time Wal-Mart has occupied a multi-tiered building in a mall, it is unusual for the low-priced retail giant, whose brand is synonymous with its solitary, single-story blue boxes.

"It is definitely an adjustment for somebody used to shopping in the typical one-story store, but I think most customers are finding it pretty acceptable," Hill said. "And our experience has been that it has helped us revitalize malls in need of some new life."

In addition to Macy's sitting dormant for a half dozen years, the Gap, Limited and Eddie Bauer have quietly closed there over the years, replaced, in the first case, by a Fashion $5.

But plugging a Wal-Mart into a gaping mall hole is as much retail experiment as proven panacea, but it's one that struggling malls are increasingly willing to try.

"The retail environment is such that retailers are trying new venues ... the blurring of those clean lines will continue," said Michael Niemira, chief economist and director of research for the International Council of Shopping Centers.

Whether a Wal-Mart can bring a distressed mall back to life depends on any number of factors, including the mix of existing retailers and regional demographics, he said.

But the logic is sound: "To the extent that it's a place where there is more repeat business, you end up bringing traffic to the mall," Niemira said.

The city of Richmond is equally interested in this traffic.

"We're anxious to see the (deal) come to 100 percent fruition," said Steve Duran, director of Richmond's community and economic development department.

He said the store would generate significant new jobs and sales tax revenue for Richmond, the latter being no small issue for a city grappling with a $35 million budget deficit this year.

Still, the deal could yet fall apart: Wal-Mart and Taubman were close to finalizing a deal in 2002, when discussions broke off unexpectedly.

[back to top]

WAL-MART SETTLES WATER CASE FOR $3.1M

Company agrees to settle a violation of the U.S. Clean Water Act at 24 sites in nine states.

May 12, 2004                                            [back to top]

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the world's biggest retailer, has agreed to pay a $3.1 million civil penalty to settle charges of violations of the federal Clean Water Act at store construction sites across the country, the U.S. government said Wednesday.

Wal-Mart also agreed to institute better control measures to reduce storm water runoff at construction sites, the U.S. Justice Department and Environmental Protection Agency said in a statement.

Shares of Wal-Mart (WMT: down $0.81 to $53.72, Research, Estimates) traded slightly lower in a broad-based sell-off on Wall Street in mid-afternoon trading Wednesday.

The complaint filed against Wal-Mart alleged violations at 24 sites in nine states. It included charges it failed to get a permit before beginning construction and did not develop a plan to control polluted runoff water.

"Runoff from construction sites is a primary contributor to the impairment of water quality in the nation," said Thomas Skinner, acting assistant administrator of the EPA's office of enforcement and compliance.

A spokesman for Wal-Mart, which posted a $9 billion profit in the last fiscal year, was not immediately available for comment.

[back to top]

WAL-MART'S BIG-CITY PLANS STALL AGAIN

By STEPHEN KINZER - New York Times                                   [back to top]
May 6, 2004

CHICAGO, Less than a month after voters in Inglewood Calif., rejected Wal-Mart's effort to build a store there, Wal-Mart was dealt another blow on Wednesday when the Chicago City Council postponed a vote on zoning changes that would have allowed it to open its first two stores here.

The setbacks in Chicago and Inglewood reflect the increasing difficulty Wal-Mart is facing as it tries to push in to more urban markets.

Most of Wal-Mart's more than 3,500 stores in the United States are in rural and suburban areas. Chicago may be a major test of whether organized labor, which is relatively strong here, can block or obstruct the company's plans to continue expanding in big cities.

"It would be nice to have seen the proposal go through and be voted on today," said John Bisio, a Wal-Mart spokesman, "but this just gives us the opportunity to engage people and go back and dispel a lot of the misinformation that's out there."

The dispute has pitted some of the city's most prominent politicians, clergymen and civic leaders against each other. Both sides brought busloads of people to City Hall for the council meeting, and there were boisterous demonstrations in the corridors and on nearby streets.

Supporters of Wal-Mart's expansion plans here say the company offers both badly needed jobs and rock-bottom prices. They said they were disappointed by the council vote, but still expected it to approve the zoning changes at its next meeting on May 26. Individual aldermen are able to block a vote on such changes once, but under council rules a roll-call vote must be taken at the next meeting.

Opponents vowed, however, to intensify their campaign against the giant retailer, which they say crushes small businesses and lowers labor standards by paying low wages, offering minimal benefits and opposing efforts by its employees to unionize.

Aldermen who represent the poor and mainly African-American neighborhoods in Chicago where Wal-Mart wants to build the stores support the company. They say the neighborhoods, on the South Side and West Side, are desperate for the estimated total of 600 jobs Wal-Mart will bring. The City Council usually defers to the wishes of local aldermen on zoning matters, but the Wal-Mart proposal has stirred such controversy that the Council set aside that tradition on Wednesday.

"This is certainly not a local issue for one ward or for Chicago," said William J. P. Banks, an alderman who voted against the plan. "It's a nationwide issue, and it's not going to go away anytime soon. People are looking for a quick fix in areas where economic development is very poor, but down the line they'll see that along with that quick fix come a lot of problems."

A leading opponent of Wal-Mart, Jamie Daniel, who heads a coalition of labor, religious and civic groups called the Chicago Workers' Rights Board, said she thought opponents had "a good shot" at blocking the company's plan.

"This vote shows that aldermen still have a lot of questions and concerns about Wal-Mart," Ms. Daniel said. "We've been organizing like maniacs, and now it's going to be even more intense."

The most vocal supporter of Wal-Mart on the Council, Emma Mitts, who represents the neighborhood where the West Side store would be built, said she was "a little upset" by the Council's decision.

"Let them try to organize in my community," Ms. Mitts said of the opponents. "We've been organizing for a year. How are they going to organize in a month?"

Labor unions are stronger and more combative in Chicago than in most places where Wal-Mart has opened outlets. Seeking to counter their influence, Wal-Mart has hired a formidable team of local public relations and legal consultants, including the law firm of Michael Daley, brother of Mayor Richard M. Daley.

Mr. Bisio, the Wal-Mart spokesman, said his company was "a very good corporate citizen" and had contributed tens of thousands of dollars to community projects in cities and towns near Chicago where it has stores.

"Our average hourly wage is $10.70 an hour, which compares favorably to other Chicago retailers like Target and Home Depot," Mr. Bisio said. "As far as having an impact on the overall economy, if you talk to the Chambers of Commerce in any town where we're present, they'll tell you that we not only create jobs, but we also help attract sales revenues for ourselves and neighboring retailers, which generates taxes that pay for law enforcement jobs and roads and everything else."

Mr. Bisio said that Wal-Mart was not anti-union, and that "the reason our associates haven't wanted third-party representation is because they have faith in the company, and it provides them with tremendous opportunity."

In recent days, both supporters and opponents of Wal-Mart's entry into Chicago have held public meetings to rally support.

Opponents gathered at a South Side church on Saturday and heard a succession of labor leaders and economists denounce Wal-Mart. Oneeconomist, Chirag Mehta of the University of Illinois at Chicago, presented a report by the university's Center for Economic Development that predicted that the West Side Wal-Mart would drain customers from 763 nearby stores and "displace more jobs and income than it creates."

On Tuesday afternoon, about 200 West Side residents who support the retail chain gathered at the site of the proposed Wal-Mart for a rally that had the fervor of a revival meeting. The Rev. Pearlie Freeman opened it with a prayer that concluded, "We need Wal-Mart to come here, God, and make a difference for our people."

The final speaker was Alderwoman Mitts, who whipped the crowd into a shouting fervor. She promised that she and her constituents would transform Wal-Mart once it opened here.

"We want to take the worst retailer in the world, the worst, as they say, and make it the best," she said. "But you know something? To make them the best, you've got to have them inside."

Some retail experts doubt, however, that Wal-Mart would make concessions in Chicago that it has refused to make elsewhere.

"Wal-Mart has a lot of power," said Kenneth Thompson, a professor of management at DePaul University. "It would be very hard for a few aldermen or community figures to negotiate with a company that's this tough. And what do they do if Wal-Mart says no? Once the store is open, they can hardly close it down."

The proposed South Side Wal-Mart would be part of a large new mall, while the one on the West Side would be a free-standing store with 150,000-square-feet of shopping space. There is a Walgreen's a block away from the site, and a mall across the street has a large grocery store, a beauty supply store, two shoe stores and chain outlets including Old Navy, Radio Shack and Marshall's.

Wal-Mart's uniquely powerful role in the American retail economy and its reputation for vigorously fighting unions, has attracted increasing attention from labor leaders. One of them, John Wilhelm, a member of the A.F.L.-C.I.O. Executive Council, said on a visit to Chicago this week that he had asked John Sweeney, the A.F.L.-C.I.O. president, to make Wal-Mart the central focus of the American labor movement.

"After the 2004 elections are over, we should make this our main project," Mr. Wilhelm said. "No one union can organize Wal-Mart. We need to face this in a comprehensive way."

[back to top]

Aldermen open door a bit for Wal-Mart - West Side store backed by panel

By Dan Mihalopoulos - Chicago Tribune staff reporter                             [back to top]
April 21, 2004

Plans for Chicago's first Wal-Mart store in a largely black neighborhood on the West Side received a boost Tuesday from the same City Council committee that delayed the proposal last month amid criticism of the retail giant's labor record.

The Zoning Committee cited the city's strong pro-union tradition in stalling the plan for a former industrial site at Kilpatrick and Grand Avenues. The sole vote against the project Tuesday was cast by the panel's chairman, Ald. William J.P. Banks (36th).

Banks later said he would very likely clear the way for the full council to vote May 5 on the proposal in the 37th Ward and on a plan for another Wal-Mart on the South Side.

Wal-Mart's push to open a store in predominantly black neighborhoods of Chicago and in other large cities has fueled tension, as evidenced in Tuesday's emotional two-hour debate at City Hall.

In putting off decisions on the Wal-Mart stores, organized labor's council allies bucked a long tradition of letting aldermen dictate zoning matters in their own wards. Some African-American aldermen responded by threatening to block projects in other parts of the city until colleagues respected the aldermanic privilege of black council members.

The issue also has created an unusual situation in which Rev. Jesse Jackson, a vocal Wal-Mart critic, finds himself at odds with black aldermen who want to welcome the world's largest retailer into their economically struggling communities.

Ald. Emma Mitts (37th) said her constituents are eager to shop at a new West Side Wal-Mart store and no longer want to drive to the discount chain's suburban stores.

As for criticisms that the company's business practices hurt workers, Mitts said, "I don't know about them because I go in there and shop. I'm not trying to get into their business."

Unions and other Wal-Mart foes told aldermen that the retailer provides low wages and poor health benefits. They recounted widely reported complaints from Wal-Mart workers, including immigrants and employees who have tried to organize unions.

The opponents called on city officials to withhold support for the project pending written assurances from Wal-Mart that it would pay good wages to employees at Chicago stores.

"You all have the reputation of being the baddest politicians in the country," said Toni Foulkes, an activist with the ACORN community organization. "When you go down to negotiate with [Wal-Mart], remember who you are, a Chicago politician."

But dozens of West Side residents appeared at the meeting at City Hall to cheer for the plan. Black religious leaders organized the show of support for Wal-Mart. Some said unions have not done enough for minorities and should not impede economic development in poor areas.

"Any job is better than no job," said Rev. Ronald Wilks of Soul Saving Missionary Baptist Church on the West Side.

Chicago Federation of Labor President Dennis Gannon acknowledged that the project would bring jobs and sales-tax revenue to the city, but he quickly added, "What kind of jobs are we talking about?"

Wal-Mart spokesman John Bisio said that the Bentonville, Ark.-based company has no plans to open supercenter stores, which sell groceries, in the city. But Bisio said Wal-Mart would not put that promise in writing, as its critics have demanded.

Unions are being unfair to Wal-Mart by asking it to do more than other non-union "big box" retail chains already in business in Chicago, said Ald. Carrie Austin (34th).

When Gannon asked why Wal-Mart would not provide written assurances, Austin shot back: "And how many other people have you asked to put it in writing? Did we ask Target? Did we ask Home Depot? Did we ask Menards?"

The West Side Wal-Mart would have about 300 full-time and part-time workers at the 11-acre site of a former Helene Curtis plant.

The South Side Wal-Mart being considered by Chicago officials would form part of a larger retail development at 83rd Street and Stewart Avenue in the 21st Ward.

Wal-Mart traditionally has focused on doing business in rural and suburban areas. As suburbs become saturated with stores, retailers have tried to expand into big cities, where Wal-Mart has encountered heated protests.

Voters in Inglewood, Calif., a mostly black and Hispanic community near Los Angeles, rejected a plan for a Wal-Mart store in a referendum two weeks ago. Jackson traveled there to speak against Wal-Mart, and he promised Monday to organize opposition in Chicago.

Ald. Howard Brookins (21st) said he prefers that his constituents shop at a Wal-Mart in their ward instead of suburban Wal-Marts.

"People have free will," he said. "They don't have to shop at Wal-Mart if they don't want to. They don't have to work at Wal-Mart."

[back to top]

State Supreme Court clears way for Wal-Mart class-action suit

The dispute over wages could involve 230,000 current and former employees.

By Claire Cooper -- Bee Legal Affairs Writer              [back to top]
Thursday, April 15, 2004

SAN FRANCISCO - The California Supreme Court cleared the way Wednesday for a trial in one of the largest labor suits pending against Wal-Mart, a statewide claim that managers forced employees to work without rest and meal breaks.

Without dissent or explanation, the justices refused to review an Alameda County judge's certification of the case as a class action.

Frederick Furth, the plaintiff's lawyer, said the class could be as large as 230,000 current and former workers, making the case the largest of its kind against the retail giant and its Sam's Club subsidiary.

Trial has been set for September in Oakland.

About 20 such wage-and-hour cases are pending against Wal-Mart in courts across the nation, but few so far have been awarded class-action status, according to Brad Seligman, executive director of the Impact Fund.

Seligman is the lead counsel in a nationwide sex-discrimination suit, awaiting a judge's ruling on class certification, involving potentially 1.5 million female Wal-Mart workers who say they were denied raises and promotions.

Other major cases allege Wal-Mart employees have been required to work off the clock or that employees have been illegally exempted from overtime-pay regulations. None of the class actions has gone to trial.

Furth said, "We are very much looking forward to the trial and to finally getting this class a fair hearing before a jury of its peers."

Christi Gallagher, speaking for Wal-Mart, said, "Although we're disappointed that the Supreme Court chose not to intervene at this early stage, we look forward to continuing our vigorous defense in the trial court."

The company has denied all allegations of wrongdoing.

Its employee handbook says workers are entitled to two rest breaks and a meal break per shift and are to be paid if breaks are interrupted.

The suit, which was filed in 2001, accuses Wal-Mart of publishing one wage policy and pursuing another, an "institutionalized policy" of "wage abuse." The suit seeks an injunction, back pay and damages for employees at more than 140 Wal-Mart and Sam's Club stores in California.

Lead plaintiff Andrea Savaglio worked at a Wal-Mart store in Pleasanton during the first half of 2000. She claims she wasn't properly compensated for missed or interrupted meal and rest breaks and was required to work at other times without pay.

According to the most recent version of the complaint, filed in 2002, some hourly Wal-Mart employees were locked in the store overnight to continue working after clocking out.

[back to top]

Analyzing the "Sins" of Wal-Mart

By Wendy Zellner - Business Week         [back to top]
April 15, 2004

At a California conference, a diverse crowd, from academics to union workers, explored the growing backlash against the giant

After losing a bitter battle to build a store in Inglewood, Calif., Wal-Mart (WMT ) might like to write off the humiliating defeat at the ballot box as an isolated event. But an unusual one-day conference at the University of California Santa Barbara on Apr. 12 suggests that the world's largest retailer ain't seen nothing yet.

"Wal-Mart: Template for 21st Century Capitalism?" drew historians, sociologists, and other academics from around the country. Community activists, environmentalists, union workers, and others eagerly absorbed the discussions as they pondered the kinds of coalitions that might stop or transform Wal-Mart in the future. Three hundred people, including students, attended the conference.

Yes, there was admiration for Wal-Mart's powerful use of logistics and information technology, the kind of activity that used to get most of the public attention. But the bigger agenda at the UCSB's Center for the Study of Work, Labor & Democracy focused on Wal-Mart's "sins" -- from low wages and lackluster benefits to stress-filled jobs and anti-union managers.

THEY DON'T GO THERE.

In this oceanside city some 30 miles from the closest Wal-Mart, even the conference organizers expressed amazement at how the company has become such a lightning rod for controversy. Professor Nelson Lichtenstein, who teaches history at UCSB, says the idea for the event came to him after fielding numerous inquiries about Wal-Mart during the recent California grocery strike. "There's no such thing as 'Wal-Mart studies,' but there's something going on here," says Lichtenstein. Historian Susan Strasser from the University of Delaware says when she mentioned her plans to attend the conference to friends and acquaintances, she was stunned at the level of interest it generated.

Not surprisingly, on this liberal college campus in a city obsessed with urban planning, those attending were a decidedly anti-Wal-Mart crowd. One of the panelists was a United Food & Commercial Workers researcher. Another was a lawyer involved in the massive sex-discrimination suit against Wal-Mart. Many of the academic participants acknowledged that they rarely, if ever, step foot in a Wal-Mart store, and few had ever visited Bentonville, Ark., the company's headquarters.

Lichtenstein says Wal-Mart was invited to participate. Peter Kanelos, a spokesperson for Wal-Mart in California, says he didn't attend because he doesn't have time to go to all the events he is invited to. He told BusinessWeek Online that the anti-Wal-Mart reports at the conference were "the typical rhetoric that's espoused by labor." He continued: "I just have to question how fair and balanced the forum was."

MORE FACE-OFFS TO COME.

So is this just the yapping of some Ivory Tower eggheads and some longtime Wal-Mart enemies preaching to media "elites" from BusinessWeek, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, PBS, and other outlets? That's certainly the way Wal-Mart's staunchest defenders are likely to paint it.

But like it or not, the opinions of this far-flung group are helping to shape a broad and growing anti-Wal-Mart movement that goes well beyond organized labor. And considering that the retail behemoth is in less than 40% of the top 100 grocery markets, Wal-Mart will increasingly face this crowd as it tries to move into untapped urban areas with its supercenters.

The daylong litany of Wal-Mart's alleged failings should provide plenty of fodder for its opponents. Take employee relations, once considered a Wal-Mart strength. Ellen Rosen, a professor at the Center for the Study of Women at Brandeis University, is using Wal-Mart as a case study in a book on gender stratification in the retail trade. She has been collecting the tales of dozens of current and former Wal-Mart workers, from cashiers to store managers.

NO TAX BONANZA.

Many hit on similar themes: humiliating discipline, constant stress, a lack of resources to do their jobs, and over it all, the ironic veneer that everyone is part of the "Wal-Mart family." Charges of sex discrimination and wage-and-hour law violations are no fluke, insists Rosen, but a direct result of the way Wal-Mart constantly strives to drive down labor costs.

David Karjanen of the Center for Comparative Immigration Studies at the University of California San Diego, sees few benefits for communities from the jobs and sales-tax revenue Wal-Mart generates. When he looked at the impact of one Wal-Mart project in San Diego, he found that it brought in very little, if any, additional tax revenue for the city, which gave $10 million in direct subsidies to Wal-Mart. At the same time, most of the jobs created by the redevelopment project were part-time and below "self-sufficiency" levels in San Diego -- an hourly wage of $11.38, according to the Center on Policy Initiatives, a local advocacy organization.

While some studies have shown that Wal-Mart creates a small number of net new jobs, "more important is the issue of job quality," insists Karjanen. "There's no reason why the world's largest retailer can't talk to communities about raising the bar."

"DESPERATELY AFRAID." Wal-Mart has argued that its wages and benefits are competitive with others in retailing. And given its ambitious growth plans, it contends, it would be self-defeating to treat workers as badly as critics say it does. Professor James Hoopes of Babson University, a conference participant, says "Wal-Mart is desperately afraid of the reputation it's getting as a bad employer."

Some conference goers took solace in the presentations on Wal-Mart's sometimes bumbling efforts abroad. Julio Moreno, a University of San Francisco history professor, called Wal-Mart's performance in Argentina "disastrous." He credits that in part to the retailer's initial obliviousness to the building fiscal crisis in that country and inflexibility in the store formats Wal-Mart used there. On top of that, it faced stiff competition from French retailer Carrefour.

Even in Mexico, where Wal-Mart is now the largest retailer, with about 7% of total sales, there are reasons to believe its future gains won't come easily, predicts Chris Tilly of the University of Massachusetts in Lowell. "Wal-Mart actually charges higher prices than the small stores" in Mexico, some 5% to 15% more, figures Tilly, based on his studies there.

SIMILAR FATE.

Mexican shoppers don't have the "culture of convenience" and are more likely to care about the freshness of their food, prompting them to shop from street vendors, mobile markets, and other small venues. And many consumers say they don't see a difference in the service, prices, or assortments of the big chains, he says. "I think the future of Wal-Mart in Mexico is going to be marked with a question mark."

What about its future in the U.S.? Historian Strasser points out that Wal-Mart is hardly the first retailer to depend on low-cost labor or to face strong resistance. Woolworth openly boasted of its high turnover and low pay. Sears (S ) was so concerned about an anti-mail-order campaign in 1906 that it started shipping its packages in plain-brown wrappers. Through the 1930s and '40s, anti-chain-store legislation proliferated across the country, and A&P fought a massive antitrust case.

Today, those campaigns are long forgotten. But Sears and A&P are shadows of their former selves, while the Woolworth stores have vanished. Is Wal-Mart destined to suffer the same fate? Strasser notes that Wal-Mart's size relative to the economy and its suppliers is much bigger than anything seen before. But, she says, "Wal-Mart's success is stimulating countervailing forces."

INNER CONFLICT.

Whether those forces change or slow Wal-Mart remains to be seen. And that's in part because Wal-Mart's success puts so many people in conflict with themselves. Strasser cites her hairdresser as a case in point. As a small-business owner, he wants to oppose Wal-Mart. But still, he has bought seven low-price bikes from the chain so every member of his household can enjoy one. That seems like the stuff of which Wal-Mart ads are made.

Strasser appears sympathetic but then asks a question that might make many a shopper squirm: "Shouldn't kids learn to share? What's happening in a culture where everybody gets to have his own bike because they're so cheap? How do we move beyond the single-minded self-interest of price?" That's a debate that's now echoing far beyond the serene world of Santa Barbara.

[back to top]

The Wal-Mart Myth

Jonathan Tasini -TomPaine.Commonsense                           [back to top]
April 12, 2004

Not that I'm obsessed with Wal-Mart, but there are two new nuggets worth noting in the saga of the economic Evil Empire. The first got some attention in the press: Voters in Inglewood, California, rejected an initiative that would have approved the retail giant's plan to open up a mega-store in the community that would have covered an area the size of 17 football fields. Using the ballot initiative process, Wal-Mart tried to bypass politicians who passed an ordinance limiting the size of big retail outlets.

On this point, what got missed is an analysis of the vote results. To put the measure on the ballot in the first place, Wal-Mart successfully collected more than 6,500 signatures (through a front group called Citizens' Committee to Welcome Wal-Mart to Inglewood) and spent $1 million on the campaign, including hiring an advertising and marketing firm, which produced materials and commercials to bombard the local residents. Yet, after all the votes were counted, only 4,575 residents voted for the Wal-Mart-backed measure, while 7,049 voted against it—a resounding defeat.

In other words, hundreds of citizens who had initially signed a petition to qualify the measure for a vote ultimately voted no. The simple reason was the coordinated opposition campaign waged by a coalition of labor, elected officials, clergy and small business owners. Each had a stake, whether it was the threat of Wal-Mart's horrendous labor practices or Wal-Mart's attempt to undermine the authority of elected officials. In other words, despite Wal-Mart's almost unimaginable economic power, it is possible to defeat the corporate giant with a broad and somewhat non-traditional coalition.

The second nugget got far less attention, unless you're inclined to read the truly radical press: Business Week. In the April 12 issue, reporters Stanley Holmes and Wendy Zellner penned a terrific piece called, "The Costco Way," with an even more provocative sub-title: "Higher wages mean higher profits. But try telling Wall Street."

The authors point out that Costco recently posted a 25 percent profit gain, as well as a 14 percent sales hike. Yet Wall Street punished Costco's stock, driving it down 4 percent. What gives? As the authors report: "One problem for Wall Street is that Costco pays its workers much better than archrival Wal-Mart Stores Inc. does, and analysts worry that Costco's operating expenses could get out of hand. 'At Costco, it's better to be an employee or a customer than a shareholder,' says Deutsche Bank analyst Bill Dreher."

And there it is in a nutshell. In today's economy (or, for that matter, yesterday's economy), whether a company treats its workers fairly and satisfies consumers does not matter to Wall Street. Stock analysts don't reward such a feat—preferring instead that a company conform to Wall Street standards by wringing out every cent from regular people's wallets.

But the great piece of reporting (and public service) that Holmes and Zellner perform is that they actually run the numbers and get beyond the rhetoric. They compare Costco to Wal-Mart's Sam's Club, the unit with which it directly competes. Costco, which has about a 20 percent unionization rate, pays workers 40 percent more than Sam's Club and gives them comparatively superior benefits (for example, health care and profit-sharing plans) to Sam's Club.

Costco, surprise, has a lower turnover rate and a far higher rate of productivity: it almost equaled Sam's Club's annual sales last year with one-third fewer employees. Only six percent of Costco's employees leave each year, compared to 21 percent at Sam's. And, by every financial measurement, the company does better. Its operating income was higher than Sam's Club, as was operating profit per hourly employees, sales per square foot and even its labor and overhead costs. Here's a quote to emblazon for corporate America: "Paying your employees well is not only the right thing to do but it makes for good business," says Costco CEO James D. Sinegal.

It's one thing for wacky columnists to bemoan the Wal-Martization of America. But Wal-Mart cannot let stand a salvo from the mainstream business press. My suspicion is that Wal-Mart will do everything possible to discredit the authors, in a campaign that will make the White House's assault on Richard Clarke look mild by comparison.

During the dreadful supermarket strike in Southern California, the big supermarkets said they had no choice but to demand draconian cuts from their 70,000 workers because of the competitive challenge posed by Wal-Mart and its lower prices. The radicals at Business Week explode that myth, encapsulated in the article's final sentence: "Costco shows that with enough smarts, companies can help consumers and workers alike."

[back to top]

Voters in California Reject Wal-Mart

By ALEX VEIGA, AP Business Writer            [back to top]
April 7, 2004

INGLEWOOD, Calif. - Voters in this Los Angeles suburb rejected a ballot measure Tuesday that would have allowed Wal-Mart to build a warehouse-sized store while skirting zoning, traffic and environmental reviews.

With all 29 precincts reporting and absentee ballots counted, Inglewood voters opposed the initiative, with 60.6 percent voting 'no' and 39.3 percent voting 'yes,' said Gabby Contreras of the city clerk's office.

That amounts to 7,049 votes against the initiative and 4,575 in favor. Contreras said there are about 40,000 registered voters in the city.

"This is very, very positive for those folks who want to stand up and ... hold this corporate giant responsible," said Daniel Tabor, a former City Council member who had campaigned against the initiative.

Inglewood's City Council last year blocked the proposed shopping center, which would include both a Wal-Mart Supercenter and other stores, prompting the company to collect more than 10,000 signatures to force the vote in the working-class community.

But Tuesday's vote is not likely to settle the debate, which has pitted religious leaders, community activists and unions against the world's largest retailer. Opponents have vowed to take legal action if the measure passes.

Wal-Mart has argued in Inglewood and elsewhere in California that its stores create jobs and said residents should be able to decide for themselves if they want the stores in their community.

But opponents say the Supercenters amount to low-wage, low-benefit job mills that displace better-paying jobs as independent retailers are driven out of business. They also fear the stores will contribute to suburban sprawl and jammed roadways.

Alversia Carmouche, a beauty shop owner who voted against the measure Tuesday, said she was convinced the behemoth discount store would ultimately hurt the community.

"Maybe the store would possibly be a good thing in the beginning, but it will drive out the smaller businesses," said Carmouche, 66. "I really feel it will absolutely close this town out."

Others argued the city southwest of Los Angeles is in need of the kind of jobs Wal-Mart has to offer.

"It's going to bring jobs in the community for young people," said Magda Monroe, 65, who voted for the measure. "I see nothing wrong with that, even if it's minimum wage (jobs), it's better than nothing."

Objections to the Bentonville, Ark.-based Wal-Mart have surfaced elsewhere around the country, including Chicago, where the City Council recently stalled a measure to approve the first Wal-Mart inside city limits because of concerns about the company's labor practices.

The company succeeded in lobbying residents of Contra Costa County in suburban San Francisco. Residents there voted last month to allow a Supercenter. But Wal-Mart also lost a vote that day to allow it to open another store near San Diego.

But organizing a ballot initiative in Inglewood was a rare move by Wal-Mart, said Ken Walker, regional director at Kurt Salmon Associates, a retail consulting company.

Previously, Wal-Mart has battled zoning boards, but Walker said this is the first time he's seen the discounter taking the issue to a public referendum.

Wal-Mart officials have said they have not decided what they would do if the initiative failed. The company spent more than $1 million on its Inglewood campaign, according to campaign-finance records, while opponents have spent a fraction of that amount.

[back to top]

Wal-Mart Canada employees in Jonquiere, Quebec, rejected unionization by the United Food and Commercial Workers Union late Friday.

The Associated Press                     [back to top]
April 5, 2004

MISSISSAUGA, Ont. (AP) - According to the UFCW Canada Web site, the vote against union representation at the Jonquiere store was 74 to 65.

Wal-Mart said Monday "its associates chose, once again, to deal directly with their company instead of opting for third-party representation."

But the union vowed to continue its organizing efforts.

"We're not going away," said Michael J. Fraser, UFCW Canada's national director. "The Jonquiere workers who want a union can make a new application here in a few months."

Fraser also noted in a written statement that the Saskatchewan Labour Board is about to rule on another application for unionization at a Wal-Mart store in North Battleford.

Last June, Wal-Mart associates at a Thompson, Manitoba, store voted against union representation by 61 to 54.

None of Wal-Mart's 4,800 stores throughout the world is unionized.

[back to top]

Wal-Mart's Inglewood Battle May Hold Lessons for L.A.

Political, labor leaders are watching closely for clues to the kind of fight that might be ahead.

By Jessica Garrison and Sara Lin - Times Staff Writers       [back to top]
April 1, 2004

With Inglewood voters set to decide Tuesday whether Wal-Mart can build a Supercenter in town, the battle over the chain's expansion throughout California may soon shift to Los Angeles, where officials are laying plans to effectively ban the megastores in much of the nation's second largest city.

From Calexico to Contra Costa, the retail giant has successfully fought efforts to keep out the centers, which combine the trappings of a normal Wal-Mart with aisles of groceries.

But in Inglewood, Wal-Mart has employed a new strategy.

The world's largest company has put an initiative on the ballot that would sideline local officials and allow the development without the usual traffic studies, environmental reviews and public hearings.

"The stakes in Inglewood are the highest they have ever been anywhere," said Madeline Janis-Aparicio, executive director of the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy, a community organization that is trying to rally residents against the initiative. "They want to throw out all the local planning laws and make themselves a little Wal-Mart city."

In Inglewood, Los Angeles and elsewhere, many labor and community groups are opposed to the nonunion Wal-Mart stores because they say they depress wages, drive out existing businesses, create traffic problems and actually reduce the total number of jobs in the surrounding area.

Wal-Mart officials say they are only trying to give consumers what they want: low prices, jobs for young people and sales tax revenue for cash-strapped cities.

"It's important that Inglewood consumers have the same shopping that many of the neighboring communities have had for years," said Wal-Mart spokesman Peter Kanelos. "Wal-Mart and our customers are tired of being bullied by the unions. If the unions and the local politicians they put in office want to attack Wal-Mart, they can rest assured that we'll fight back."

In the city of Los Angeles, where officials are putting the finishing touches on an ordinance that would effectively prohibit the Supercenters in much of the city limits, political and labor leaders say they are watching Inglewood closely for clues to the kind of fight the company may wage against them.

Councilmen Eric Garcetti and Ed Reyes introduced a motion more than a year ago that would prohibit stores with more than 100,000 square feet that devote more than 10% of their inventory to nontaxable food and drugs in areas of the city designated as economic assistance zones, which cover about 60% of the city. A Supercenter can run 200,000 square feet.

The proposal still must go before the city's Planning Commission and the council could vote on it as soon as this summer. Mayor James K. Hahn has said he supports the idea, as does City Atty. Rocky Delgadillo.

Garcetti said the ordinance is necessary to "maintain small businesses and protect decent paying jobs."

"We've seen the record of the Supercenters throughout this country in shutting down main streets ... and in replacing good paying jobs with poverty-level jobs that take billions out of the local economy," he said.

But some local leaders take issue with blanket prohibitions against Wal-Mart Supercenters.

Los Angeles City Councilman Bernard C. Parks has opposed Garcetti's and Reyes' proposed ban. A traditional Wal-Mart store opened in his district last year in the Baldwin Hills-Crenshaw Plaza, and has proven to be tremendously popular, Parks said. "Certain communities like the 8th District .. should not be restricted from having access to those willing to come in to the community," Parks said.

Ever since Wal-Mart announced plans to build 40 Supercenters throughout California, their impending arrival has triggered changes in the grocery industry and sparked skirmishes between the company and organized labor and their allies.

The specter of the Supercenters fueled the longest supermarket strike in Southern California history last fall and winter. About 70,000 grocery workers, who earn an average of $19 an hour, walked picket lines for 4 1/2 months to protest proposed reductions in health benefits that the supermarkets said they needed to hold their own against Wal-Mart. The strike was settled in February with a two-tier system under which the stores will pay new hires less in wages and benefits than veteran workers.

With the strike over, organized labor, including the United Food and Commercial Workers union, which represents grocery workers, has turned its attention to mobilizing local communities to keep the Supercenters out.

In some communities, such as Bakersfield and Hemet, residents, often backed by union money, have sued to block construction. In others, such as Oakland and Turlock, city and county leaders have enacted laws that would prohibit them.

Wal-Mart has been fighting them every step of the way ? and has not yet lost a Supercenter battle. In Calexico and Contra Costa County, for example, the company has persuaded voters to repeal prohibitions against Supercenters. In other instances, the retailer has filed lawsuits against cities.

Wal-Mart is using a new strategy in Inglewood. Instead of launching a campaign to repeal an ordinance, the company is pushing for a more sweeping initiative that would allow construction of a shopping center the size of 17 football fields without normal city input. It would be built on an empty lot between the Hollywood Park racetrack and the Forum.

Inglewood officials and Wal-Mart have been tussling over the development, which could include a Supercenter, for more than a year. The first volley came in October 2002, when the Inglewood City Council adopted an emergency ordinance to prevent construction of retail stores larger than 155,000 square feet that sell more than 20,000 nontaxable items, such as food and drugs.

Within a month, Wal-Mart had enough petitions to force a public vote on the ordinance. At the same time, the company threatened to sue the city for alleged procedural violations.

Inglewood officials backed down, rescinding their Supercenter ban. Outraged at the retreat, the United Food and Commercial Workers union successfully backed its own candidate for City Council. Faced with the possibility that the new council would revive attempts to block its plans, Wal-Mart backed a group called "Citizens Committee to Welcome Wal-Mart to Inglewood" and quickly gathered a new batch of signatures for an initiative.

Both sides are pushing hard in the working-class town, which is roughly split between African Americans and Latinos. Wal-Mart has spent more than $1 million on an election in which fewer than 10,000 people are expected to vote. The company has flooded the city with television commercials and mailers depicting happy African American families and calling the development "good news for everyone in Inglewood."

Other fliers trumpet the project as a boon for Inglewood youth who need entry level jobs and say that $3 million to $5 million in new sales tax revenue could boost the police force and "fix up our streets and sidewalks."

Mayor Roosevelt F. Dorn, who says the Wal-Mart development would create 2,000 construction jobs and more than 1,000 permanent jobs for residents, is the only Inglewood elected official who has endorsed Measure 04-A.

The other side, meanwhile, is trying to make the point that the development would not only hurt Inglewood's established businesses and bring in the wrong kind of jobs, but would set a dangerous precedent.

"Beyond the question of do you like Wal-Mart or not, the real issue is, is it appropriate for them to bully their way into the city and not comply with local laws ... state environmental law ... and public input into the process," said Assemblyman Jerome Horton (D-Inglewood).

Horton said he intends to introduce legislation that would require future developments of this size to comply with the California Environmental Quality Act.

A broad spectrum of community leaders have come out against the initiative, including city, county and state officials, clergy from the Nation of Islam, the Catholic Church and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

But they acknowledge that they are facing an uphill fight ? especially because they have far less money. The Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy has spent less than $20,000, while the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor-backed Voter Improvement Project has budgeted $125,000 for the fight.

"We just don't have the kind of funds to be on television like they are," said Miguel Contreras, the labor federation's executive secretary and treasurer. "We'll be outspent 10 to 1."

Still, California is giving Wal-Mart a run for its money. "The political obstacles set up by our competitors and the unions have made it a challenge," said Robert McAdam, the company's vice president for state and local government relations.

Harley Shaiken, a professor of geography at UC Berkeley who studies labor and the political economy, said the retailer's victories may be coming at a price here. "Wal-Mart is winning," he said. "But it is a costly victory. It's expensive in dollar terms ... but it is also expensive in image terms. No retailer wants to be constantly fighting a battle about its image in the community."

But labor leader Contreras predicts an intense fight in the city of Los Angeles. "We'll do the battle royale in Los Angeles," he said. "This will be a battleground, a national battleground."

[back to top]

No Choice - Wal-Mart prepares to bury the left under a mountain of money

By Glen Ford and Peter Gamble - In These Times      [back to top]
April 1, 2004

Jim, John, Alice, Sam and Helen may carry the worlds most dangerous genetic markers. They are the Waltons, heirs to the global destructive force called Wal-Mart.

With more than $100 billion in personal assets among them, the five Waltons occupy positions six through 10 in the Forbes billionaires rankings, twice as rich as Microsofts Bill Gates, the guy at the top. Collectively, they are antisocial malevolence with a last name. These spawn of Bentonville, Arkansas harbor an abiding hatred for the public sphere: business regulatory controls, nondiscrimination laws, wage and workplace safety standards, the social safety net all of it as expressed through the operations of their retail empire, which is both the largest employer in the United States and biggest importer of goods made in China. As the Democratic Socialists of America put it: Wal-Mart is more than just a participant in the low-wage economy: It is the most important single beneficiary of that economy. It uses its economic and political power to extend the scope of the low-wage economy and threatens to extend its business model into other sectors of the economy, undermining the wages of still more workers.

Such a vast project of political economy is far too complex for four middle-aged children of wealth and the 84-year-old matriarch, Helen. The familys immediate personal ambitions are more modest: to destroy public education in the United States. To that end the Waltons, through their Walton Family Foundation and in close collaboration with Milwaukees Bradley Foundation, literally invented the national school choice network and its wedge issue-weapon, vouchers.

It is the existence of the school vouchers movement that allows the Bush administration to savage and massively disrupt the nations public schools while positing alternative forms of education, both vouchers and charter schools that often operate very much like public-funded private schools. Choice has become national policy under Bushs Department of Education, which has doled out more than $75 million to organizations birthed by the Waltons, Bradley and their allies. (See Funding a Movement by People for the American Way, www.pfaw.org.)

Public educations defenders, already outgunned by the combined resources of the right-wing political funding network plus the full weight of the Republican executive branch, now await the deluge: an infusion of $20 billion into the Waltons private philanthropy, most of it earmarked for education reform the euphemism for school privatization. At the usual rate of foundation disbursement, this would translate as $1 billion a year a tidal wave of money, enough to reinvent the voucher movement many times over.

The Money Storm

The Waltons planned transfer of $20 billion in Wal-Mart stock to the family foundation, most likely precipitated by tax exigencies, was heralded by the corporate media as a boon to prospects for education reform. Family voucher impresario John styles himself a savior of inner-city dropouts. Theyre choosing the streets over a school that apparently doesnt work for them, Walton told a receptive USA Today reporter. If choice destroys the public system, then why are we so sanguine about the choices those kids make?

This minority-aimed wedge has a sharp edge. The obscenely rich Waltons arent slumming, but rather are pursuing a super-cynical, fiendishly clever, grand strategy on the way to final victory: destruction of the public sphere. Although the Waltons and their friends would love to franchise (and, ultimately, monopolize) the education marketK-12 is worth $350 billion yearly to taxpayers it is a mistake to view school privatization in vulgar market terms. Thats not how the denizens of right-funded think tanks think.

The public schools by far are the most pervasive public institutions, social spaces, in American society. Therefore, they must be made fully subservient to private capital. To the world-coveters of the Waltons class (all several hundred of them, plus their legions of hirelings), public education is more an obstacle than a potential convertible asset.

In the here and now, two forces stand in the way of total corporate hegemony over U.S. political life: Black American voters and organized labor, particularly the teachers unions, whose members are highly active and dependably progressive even in the more reactionary regions of the country. Blacks and labor are the two pillars of the national Democratic Party, without which not even a shell would remain.

Vouchers are the rights chosen tools to pit African Americans (and more recently, Hispanics) against the teachers unions and labor in general (an ambitious plan, since blacks make up a disproportionate chunk of organized labor). The Waltons and their paid strategists believe they have identified the soft spot in the black body politic: the confluence of African-American reverence for education and the cruel denial of educational justice in the cities. Through relatively small outlays of money small, that is, for the super-rich and a great deal of corporate media collaboration, the right has made great strides in just a few years in using the voucher issue (it was never an issue for blacks, before) to create the impression that there exists a substantial alternative, conservative political current in black America. This myth is given credibility through purchase of black spokespersons for the right-funded (and now federally-funded) voucher movement. An alternative black political leadership is being assembled around school choice, totally beholden to the most reactionary elements of corporate America. Should these black compradors gain significant traction, progressive resistance to corporate (and racist) rule in the United States will collapse.

How much traction can a billion dollars a year buy? Nobody in black America has ever seen the kind of money that the Walton Foundation will have at its disposal once the $20 billion stock transfer is completed. The prospect is terrifying.

Progressives are hard pressed, as it is. The two principal advocacy organizations opposed to vouchers are People for the American Way (PFAW) and the NAACP, with annual budgets of about $15 million and $30 million, respectively. The teachers unions the National Education Association (NEA, 2.7 million members) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT, 1 million members) spend about $350 million a year combined, for all purposes. Only a tiny fraction of these organizations resources can be spared for the anti-voucher fight, while right-wing foundations and the Bush Education Department lavish tens of millions on voucher propaganda, recruitment, cooptation and institution-building.

If the Waltons continue their policy of allocating about 80 percent of their grants to education, and if only half that amount is targeted to reform privatization in one guise or the other their yearly choice war chest would be larger than the combined budgets of the NEA, the AFT, the NAACP and PFAW. Thats overkill.

War Against All

If evil could be branded, its emblem would be the Wal-Mart logo. The retailer has become so large, and behaves so aggressively, it sometimes appears as a force of nature, like weather. Three huge grocery chains with a 70 percent combined national, big-city market share ambushed the United Food and Commercial Workers union this winter, all the while crying that Wal-Marts low-wage, few-benefits model made them do it. After more than three months on strike and lockout, UFCW President Doug Dority accepted a two-tier, higher premium health coverage settlement. If the Wal-Mart model is a private-sector inevitability, then larger circles of solidarity are the only defense. The UFCW Web site carried Doritys statement:

We must have national health-care reform. No one company, no one union, no industry or group of workers alone can fix the healthcare system. Now is the time for action. 2004 is the year to put health care reform on the political agenda and demand that every candidate for office commits to comprehensive, affordable health insurance for every working family.

Labor cant beat the Wal-Mart model piecemeal, or even if it were united. A larger mobilization is needed.

Wal-Mart shifts the burden of its exploitation to the public, causing federal taxpayers to pay more than $2,000 per employee in social safety net costs to subsidize John, Jim, Sam, Alice and Helens profits. In Georgia, Wal-Mart employees kids wind up in disproportionate numbers on the state program for uninsured children. Wal-Mart is Georgias No. 1 employer, and the state cant fight that kind of power not alone.

In Los Angeles, Wal-Mart attempts to usurp the publics power to decide how communities are developed, asserting a virtual right to barge in where its not wanted. Coalition for a Better Inglewood representative the Rev. Altagracia Perez invokes a more comprehensive constituency and a deeper principle:

Despite its track record throughout this country of replacing good jobs with poverty-wage jobs, driving out small businesses and destroying communities, Wal-Mart is asking voters to sign away all their rights to regulate development in their community. If the Wal-Mart initiative goes forward unchallenged, it will send a signal that communities have no role, no voice, no power in the decisions that affect their lives. We cannot let this happen.

The circles of resistance become larger, because the Wal-Mart model attempts to diminish and weaken us all. Wal-Mart wants more than blood it covets every inch of social space, the places where human civilization lives.

Soon the diabolical Walton family will pump a billion more dollars a year into its offensive against public education, seeking to saturate African-American politics with paid flunkies, drive a wedge between blacks and labor, and cripple the peoples ability to resist.

We must build a bigger circle.

[back to top]

Bye Bye Big Box

Under the influence of PPS, Wal-Mart abandons mega-stores in favor of locally-owned, downtown shops.

Project for Public Spaces       [back to top]    
April 1, 2004

Wal-Mart, the big box retailer that altered the face of America with its supersized discount stores, now wants to restore a sense of place to thousands of communities. PPS can claim a major role in this surprising about-face. Last January, PPS President Fred Kent addressed the Wal-Mart annual board meeting with a well-received keynote address titled "Thinking Outside The Big Box: How Wal-Mart Can Turn A Place Around." Kent's ideas seemed to strike an immediate chord with Wal-Mart executives and stockholders, and by March the nation's largest retailer announced that it will begin shifting its operations from mega stores on the edge of town to small, downtown stores with independent owners.

A prototype storefront for 'the new Wal-Mart.'

The Arkansas-based retail giant also announced it would favor local manufacturers over national distributors, and that it is looking into establishing local farmers markets featuring locally-grown produce outside its thousands of North American stores. This would be a huge boon for small farmers, as Wal-Mart accounts for nearly 30% of all grocery purchases nationwide. "We were all moved by the place making message and the potential it represents for the towns and cities in which we operate," explained David D. Glass, Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Board of Directors of Wal-Mart.

"We're tired of being on the wrong side of the community-building equation."

"We're tired of being on the wrong side of the community-building equation," he added, noting that he believes the firm's bottom line can take a back seat to broader community [regional] goals. "We think we can take that to the shareholders and make a convincing case that a stronger local economy will be better for our stores in the long run," Glass said.

Kent said he was surprised but pleased that his speech had created such an immediate impact. "Frankly I expected a hostile reaction," he admitted, "but the slide show depicting small, public markets around the world seemed to win them over, especially the shots of couples kissing over various varieties of fresh vegetables. Those images can sway even the most hardcore bottom-line oriented people."

Kent added that he looks forward to seeing what happens with the new Wal-Mart near the PPS office in Greenwich Village storefront, but that he intends to stick to familiar grocers and shops in the neighborhood.

 [back to top]