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Boss ordered cat killed:
workers
New York Daily News
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http://www.nydailynews.com
Friday, December 31st, 2004
EVANSVILLE, Ind. - They blamed it on
the boss, but two Wal-Mart workers in Indiana were briefly jailed for
following their manager's orders to shoot and kill a stray cat. The
pair, both assistant managers, repeatedly shot the homeless kitty with a
pellet gun from the store until it died the following day, authorities
said.
A truckdriver who reported the
incident said he saw store employees placing what he believed to be a
dead animal in shrinkwrap a day after he heard workers joking about
shooting the cat.
The world's biggest retailer said all
managers at the Wal-Mart Supercenter involved in the shooting have been
suspended without pay pending an internal investigation and could be
fired.
"We were outraged when we learned of
this incident. This kind of action is completely inconsistent with the
way we do business," company spokeswoman Sharon Weber said.
Christopher Anderson, 29, and Jeffrey
Hardin, 21, told Vanderburgh County sheriffs on Wednesday that the
store's manager ordered them to get rid of the animal, which was living
in a storage trailer behind their store.
According to a police report, store
manager Darrel Weitzel told sheriffs he did instruct some of his
employees to get a gun and get rid of the cat after attempts to coax it
from the trailer failed.
Anderson and Hardin are due back in
court on Tuesday on charges of felony animal cruelty.
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Ruling
Allows Wal-Mart Janitors to Expand Lawsuit
SmartMoney
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December 30, 2004
A federal judge in New Jersey ruled
that illegal immigrants who contend they were underpaid when they worked
for contractors as janitors in Wal-Mart stores can begin expanding their
lawsuit to include potentially thousands of similar plaintiffs, Friday's
Wall Street Journal reported.
U.S. District Judge Joseph A.
Greenaway Jr. took an initial step toward certifying the janitors'
lawsuit against Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (WMT) as a "collective action," a
classification that would mean that any contract janitors who worked at
Wal-Mart stores since January 2000 could take part in the suit. He
ordered Wal-Mart to help prepare a notice letting potential plaintiffs
know of their legal option and to provide contact information so that
notice can be widely disseminated.
James L. Linsey, the lead counsel for
the 17 former janitors who are plaintiffs in the suit, estimated there
are "tens of thousands" of former contract janitors who could join the
suit. He said the suit would seek "many millions of dollars" from the
retailer.
David Murray, an outside lawyer
representing Wal-Mart in the case, said the ruling is "just a very
standard preliminary step." Although the ruling begins the process of
notifying more potential plaintiffs of the lawsuit, he said, Wal-Mart
will be able to argue later that the case should be limited to a much
smaller number of plaintiffs.
The suit was filed in November 2003, a
few weeks after a federal raid of 61 Wal-Mart stores in 21 states
rounded up 250 illegal immigrants working as contract janitors in the
stores. The raid also sparked a federal grand-jury investigation into
violations of federal immigration laws.
Wal-Mart stopped using contractors to
provide janitors in its stores about a year ago, Mr. Murray said.
Collective-action status in a lawsuit
resembles class-action status, except in a collective action each
plaintiff must individually opt into the case. In a class-action suit,
all eligible plaintiffs are considered part of the suit unless they opt
out.
Wall Street Journal Staff Reporter
Jeffrey Ball contributed to this report.
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Contract
workers at Wal-Mart gain in overtime case
Judge says
immigrants can file lawsuit collectively
By ANDREW DUNN
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Bloomberg News
Dec. 30, 2004, 8:54PM
A federal judge gave undocumented
Wal-Mart Stores contract workers the right to seek out colleagues and
form a group to collectively sue the company for unpaid overtime and
minimum wage violations.
U.S. District Judge Joseph A.
Greenaway of Newark, New Jersey, gave lawyers for Wal-Mart janitors six
months to notify eligible workers that they may join the suit against
Wal-Mart. Greenaway will determine next summer whether the group
comprises workers with similar enough claims that they can sue
collectively.
The ruling will allow potentially
"tens of thousands" of former Wal-Mart employees from countries
including Mexico, Mongolia and the Czech Republic to participate in the
suit, said lawyer James Linsey, who brought the case.
Wal-Mart's lawyer, David Murray of
Willkie Farr & Gallagher in Washington, called the number "way off the
mark."
U.S. officials arrested more than 250
suspected illegal immigrants in raids on 61 Wal-Mart stores in October
2003. Federal prosecutors in Pennsylvania are investigating whether
Bentonville, Arkansas-based Wal-Mart, the world's biggest retailer,
knowingly hired contractors who used illegal immigrants to clean its
stores. The New Jersey suit was filed a month after the raids.
Wal-Mart didn't immediately return a
call seeking comment placed after business hours.
Plaintiffs often seek to sue as a
group because it is cheaper than suing individually and gives them more
leverage to negotiate a settlement.
The order also requires the company to
"produce the names, addresses and nationalities of all Wal-Mart former
and current contract janitors since January 2000" and to provide
information on relevant contracts.
The judge excluded employees of
Wal-Mart unit Sam's Club from the group. After the parties have reviewed
the evidence, the judge will consider whether collective treatment
should be granted permanently, Murray said.
Linsey said his firm would notify
potential claimants through a Web site and ask for permission to post
notices at Wal-Mart stores. He said he has also visited Warsaw and
Prague to find eligible former Wal-Mart employees.
By allowing the group to sue
collectively, Greenaway rejected a motion by Wal-Mart to dismiss the
labor-law count of the four-count suit.
Greenaway has yet to decide whether to
dismiss three other counts, which allege that Wal-Mart engaged in
racketeering, violated workers' civil rights and falsely imprisoned the
workers. Linsey said the case could produce "well over $100 million" in
damages.
"It is very routine for judges to
allow for notice and not argue about the number and scope," said Murray.
After looking at the records, "the
judge will take full arguments on whether collective treatment should or
should not be granted."
The company has also been sued by six
women claiming they were paid less and offered fewer promotions than
male employees. In June, a federal court in San Francisco allowed 1.6
million other workers who may have similar claims to join the case,
making it the largest class action ever approved in a private
discrimination suit.
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Wal-Mart
Workers Accused of Shooting Cat
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EVANSVILLE, Ind. (AP) - Two
Wal-Mart employees who police say followed a manager's orders to
shoot and kill a stray cat have been charged with federal animal
cruelty.
The men, both assistant managers
at the Supercenter, were arrested and released after a court
appearance Wednesday. Christopher Anderson, 29, and Jeffrey Hardin,
21, told police the store's manager ordered them to get rid of the
animal that was living in a storage trailer behind their store.
All managers potentially involved
in the incident have been suspended without pay pending an internal
investigation and could be fired, said Wal-Mart spokeswoman Sharon
Weber.
"We were outraged when we learned
of this incident. This kind of action is completely inconsistent
with the way we do business," she said.
A truck driver who reported the
incident said he saw store employees placing what he believed to be
a dead animal in shrink wrap a day after he heard workers joking
about shooting the cat.
Store manager Darrel Weitzel told
police he had told some of his employees to get a gun and get rid of
the cat after attempts to coax it from the trailer failed, according
to a police report.
Anderson and Hardin were scheduled
for a hearing Jan. 4
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Wal-Mart's China operation a study in contrasts
Workers at many
of the factories that supply goods to the stores can't afford to
shop there
Vanessa Hua, Chronicle Staff Writer
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Wednesday, December 29, 2004
Dongguan, China -- Inside this toy
factory in southern China, childhood memories are born. Cuddly
bears, soft pastel bibs, blankets are midwifed by migrant workers
who see their own babies but once a year.
Row upon row of workers at Germton
Enterprises in this huge new industrial area of China make thousands
of such products. Most are bound for Wal-Mart and other retailers
around the globe that rely on this cheap labor.
Just a few miles away,
middle-class shoppers cruise Dongguan's brightly lit, well-stocked
Wal-Mart. Here they find American products like Pantene shampoo,
Johnson's baby milk-bath and Disney infant clothes. Yet here, too,
shoppers pick up medicinal deer antler, live turtles and Greatwall
Cabernet Sauvignon.
The Wal-Mart illustrates China's
paradox: The global chain stocks its shelves with goods churned out
by Chinese manufacturers like Germton, yet few of its factory
workers can afford to shop there. In the past two decades, the
standard of living in China has risen dramatically after the
government began economic reform. But progress has been uneven,
divided along geographic and social lines.
Dongguan, two hours north of Hong
Kong in the Pearl River Delta of Guangdong province, is thick with
thousands of factories that line the roads. Dongguan, with a
population of 7 million, has more than 14,000 companies backed by
foreign investment and 8,000 domestic enterprises. For 2002, total
exports from the area reached $23.7 billion.
In two decades, the farming area
has been transformed into factories, gated housing developments,
golf courses and upscale shopping malls.
In 1989, Andy Hung, Germton's
general manager, and a business partner set up the Dongguan factory
at a cost of $2 million.
Germton, whose name in Chinese
means fertilized land, makes goods sold at Wal-Mart and Kmart,
churning out toys for companies such as Mattel, Play- skool, Fisher
Price, the Learning Curve, Baby Einstein and Tiny Love. Today,
Hung's factory has about 4,000 employees who work six days a week --
3,500 factory workers and 500 management and administrative staff.
The factory workers earn about $120 per month, while managers and
others earn $300 to $2, 000 per month. The average monthly wage for
factory workers in the coastal province is about $100, economists
say.
This year, Germton is expected to
reach $30 million in sales, with about $8 million to the United
States.
Germton opened its first U.S.
sales office in 1995 in South San Francisco. By having offices here,
the company can keep track of trends and maintain better relations
with its buyers, Hung said.
Hung picked the Bay Area because a
cousin he grew up with immigrated here and could help him set up the
office. A framed oil painting of the Marin redwoods, purchased at
Fisherman's Wharf, hangs in his office in Hong Kong.
United Commercial Bank in San
Francisco opened a line of credit for Germton, a key to the
company's expansion.
Germton's factories, dormitories,
medical clinic, library, ping-pong tables, traditional shrine, and
English and management training classes are all behind a gate.
Across the street are vegetable fields ringed by more factories.
Inside the factory, workers
labored over sleeping mats, stuffed animals, tiny colorful socks,
blankets covered in leaping sheep -- the most intimate items of
childhood.
A man stuffed fluff into a
deflated brown bear. A chain of Tiggers sprang from another sewing
machine. Another man stamped yellow buttons onto bibs trimmed in
red. A line of masked workers silk-screened layer upon layer of
color, until the image emerged -- Winnie the Pooh, lying on his
belly, shaded by a circus tent.
Worker Yang Chui-Ping, 37, earns
between $84 and $96 per month sewing stuffed animals. She sends
about $604 home each year to support her two teenage daughters and
husband, who runs a men's clothing store in Sichuan province, about
40 hours away by train.
Yang has heard of Wal-Mart, but
said she has never has been there. But she's proud that many
products sold worldwide are made in her homeland.
"China is developing and become
more and more powerful," she said in Mandarin over lunch in the
company's cafeteria.
Her family has a television, and
her husband even has a cell phone. Someday, maybe in the next three
to four years, Yang said, she can return to open a shop with her
husband. She is saving to buy a beautiful house, she added, to
replace the concrete one where the family now lives.
In 2003, Wal-Mart purchased $15
billion worth of Chinese goods made by factory workers like Yang.
The retailer accounted for about 10 percent of China's exports to
the United States. Within the next five years, Wal-Mart expects to
buy $25 billion to $30 billion worth of products from China.
With China's entry into the World
Trade Organization, foreign investment is expected to flow into
less-developed areas of China as companies seek new areas to build
factories. Some worry that the new development will drive down wages
in factory centers such as Dongguan.
At the same time, low-cost
agricultural imports such as soybeans from the United States are
likely to cut into peasant income, creating more pressure for
farmers to seek employment in the cities. Their migration will
expand the labor pool and could cause wages to decline, labor
advocates say.
China's middle class traces its
roots to the mid-'70s, when economic reforms began. In the
countryside, new policies dissolved communes and increased the price
of agricultural products, narrowing the gap between urban and rural
residents. Urban reforms included closing many state-owned
enterprises, along with reducing job security, medical care and
pensions. But at the same time, both state and foreign investment
has enriched cities.
Urban professionals are prospering
in real estate, communications, engineering, advertising and other
emerging fields, with opportunities for good pay and quick
promotions.
"They have a chance to expand
their life," said Xiaobo Hu, a research fellow at Stanford
University's Hoover Institution.
On a rainy Saturday afternoon in
Wal-Mart, Niu Zhi-Yuan, 28, shopped for children's socks. The prices
and quality are good, the accountant said through a translator. The
service is also better than at other retailers.
"More smiles," she said.
She and her husband, a finance
manager, moved from Jiangxi province about seven years ago, because
Dongguan had more opportunities and higher wages.
Niu shops at Wal-Mart once a week.
Her son and his grandmother go to Wal- Mart every day to walk around
because there are no playgrounds nearby and she thinks the store is
a safe, familiar place.
In the grocery section, Zhao Ying,
31, fished for live prawns with his 4- year-old son, Do Do.
Behind him, a butcher hacked away
at a pig hanging on a meat hook while buyers called out their
orders.
Wal-Mart is not the cheapest
option, Zhao said, but he likes the convenience and the parking. His
son also likes the toy factory on the top floor of the mall, Zhao
said.
Wal-Mart is betting on this
growing class of shoppers. The retailer now has 43 stores in 20
cities in China, with 21,000 employees. It plans to open an
additional 10 to 12 stores in 2005.
In 1996, Wal-Mart opened its first
store in China, in Shenzhen. Although the stores feature the
familiar red uniforms and smiley-face logo, the quintessential
American retailer is also learning to do as the Chinese do.
In the United States, Wal-Mart's
signature greeters are often senior citizens. But in China, where
there is great respect for the elderly, the greeters are much
younger. In southern China, customers like to eat turtle soup during
the winter, so there are big bubbling tanks of it in the stores,
just like the markets in San Francisco's Chinatown.
About 95 percent of Wal-Mart's
products in its China stores are locally made.
"We have a small number of stores
compared with the customer base. We see huge growth potential," said
James Lee, vice president of corporate affairs in China, citing the
country's population of 1.3 billion. "We're excited."
Much of that growth is likely to
come from the emerging middle class, like the staff and management
at the Germton factory.
After a six-day work week, three
women employees feasted on huo guo, or hot pot, dipping mushrooms,
slices of beef, chicken, rice noodles, fish balls and green
vegetables into the boiling spicy broth.
After dinner, they headed to a
club where they clinked bottles of San Miguel beer.
These young women in their 20s can
have meat whenever they want. It's a contrast to their childhoods,
when they ate meat only once a year, at Chinese Lunar New Year.
Angel Fu, 25, moved to Dongguan after graduating from college
because she heard the city had jobs. The daughter of factory
workers, she rode 44 hours by train, in a seat instead of a sleeper
to save money. She is an executive who oversees workers and
training. She summed up China's economic gains in her lifetime:
"Yi qian, wo men chi bao. Xian zi
wo men chi hao," she said.
"In the past we ate our fill. Now
we eat well."
E-mail Vanessa Hua at vahua@sfchronicle.com
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Radio-tag adoption slower than expected at Wal-Mart
NY TIMES NEWS SERVICE
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Tuesday, Dec 28, 2004,Page 12
Advertising A year and a half ago,
Wal-Mart served notice that it expected its top 100 suppliers to be
shipping goods to it with new radio tagging technology by Jan. 1,
2005. While it may still be true, as the saying goes, that the best
way to predict the future is to create it, Wal-Mart's experience so
far has served as a reminder that creating the future is not all
that easy.
With Jan. 1 just days away, the
technology is not yet ready to meet the needs of either Wal-Mart or
its suppliers. The tags, which are typically about the size of a
credit card and contain an antenna and microchip encased in plastic,
receive query signals from scanning devices called readers. Using
the energy captured from those signals, they broadcast a snippet of
code identifying the goods to which they are attached.
To date, most of Wal-Mart's
suppliers have not figured out inexpensive ways to automate the
printing and application of the tags. Although read rates are
improving, no one who uses the technology has systems that can
reliably read the information 100 percent of the time in factories,
warehouses and stores; Wal-Mart said the rate was about 60 percent
in its stores.
Nor is the data currently
integrated well enough with other technology to initiate changes in
manufacturing or shipping sched-ules that could actually save the
large sums of money that would make the investment worthwhile.
"The progress has been much slower
than many people anticipated, and in some cases it's stalled," said
Andrew Macey, vice president of the Sapient Corp, a technology
consulting firm in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Wal-Mart's official position is
that it is working closely with suppliers, meeting its goals and
learning valuable lessons that will pay off as the technology
continues to roll out. But analysts who regularly survey major
consumer goods companies said that most participants were
cooperating with Wal-Mart out of fear of offending the retailer and
were, as much as possible, putting off investments in the
technology.
"The big manufacturing companies
have advocates for the technology who are very positive, but the
people on the floor who are implementing it are much more negative,"
Kara Romanow, an analyst at AMR Research, said.
Wal-Mart's goal was to wring
billions of dollars from the supply chain by using the tags to keep
shelves filled with whatever consumers were buying, cut back on
shipments of other goods and combat theft.
The mandate was soon defined in
narrower, more practical terms as supplying tagged cartons and
pallets, not individual items, to a limited number of stores through
just three Texas distribution centers by the Jan. 1 deadline.
Wal-Mart said recently that more
than 100 suppliers would be tagging bulk shipments to the three
Texas centers next month. But only 40 will be tagging everything
they send. Of the remainder, two have been so tied up in a complete
overhaul of their entire information technology infrastructure that
they have put off attempting to introduce radio tagging. Some
suppliers will be tagging as little as 2 percent of the goods going
to the centers.
"We think the average supplier
will be tagging about 65 percent of the volume they ship to the
three centers," Linda Dillman, the chief information officer of
Wal-Mart, said.
Although the progress toward
adoption has been slow, it has an air of inevitability.
Radio tagging, known as RFID (for
radio frequency identification), has been spreading through the
economy for decades in applications like automated toll collection,
tracking tags for animals and wireless cards controlling access to
buildings.
Copyright © 1999-2004 The Taipei
Times. All rights reserved.
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Homer,
Alaska, Restricts Large Retail Stores
Dec. 23, 2004
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After two years of
consideration---including a review by a city council-appointed task
force, numerous public hearings, and a voter referendum---the town
of Homer, Alaska, has adopted an ordinance that limits stores to no
more than 45,000 square feet and requires retail development
projects larger than 15,000 square feet to undergo a community
impact review.
Homer has a population of about
5,000 and is located on the Kenai Peninsula.
Under the size restrictions, no
building housing primarily retail uses may have a footprint in
excess of 66,000 square feet. This allows for larger buildings
provided they are multi-story. Furthermore, individual stores within
these buildings are capped at between 25,000 and 45,000 square feet,
depending on the area of town in which they are located.
Retail development projects larger
than 15,000 square feet must undergo a community impact review and
obtain a conditional use permit.
"Large retail and wholesale
development can result in substantial impacts to the community, such
as, but not limited to, noise, traffic, community character,
environment, and the local economy," the ordinance notes. "The
purpose of this section is to address these impacts and provide for
detailed review of such uses."
In addition to traffic, site
design, and architectural requirements, the impact review considers
the proposed store's impact on employment and wages; the cost of
municipal services; and the health of the downtown. It also weighs
any change in the volume of "locally retained profits" resulting
from the development and its impact on existing businesses.
The cost of all independent
studies and investigations required to complete the review are to be
paid by the developer.
The new rules were originally
prompted by the supermarket chain Kroger's interest in building a
94,000-square-foot Fred Meyer superstore in Homer. Concerned that a
store of that size could drive all competing grocery stores out of
business, harming the local economy and leading to higher consumer
prices, the city council enacted a temporary moratorium on
large-scale retail stores in 2003.
Kroger has now proposed a
45,000-square-foot Fred Meyer store, which would be the smallest in
the chain. The proposal will be the first project subject to Homer's
new community impact review process.
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Wal-Mart
Elected "Grinch of the Year" for 2004
Cintas and
Comcast Runners-Up in National Contest to Determine Who Did the Most
Harm to Workers and their Families this Year
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WASHINGTON -- December 22 -- The
retailing giant Wal-Mart was named 'Grinch of the Year' in a
national online poll held between December 6 and December 22 by Jobs
with Justice.
Wal-Mart is a fitting recipient of
the Grinch title. As the United States' largest retailer and largest
employer, Wal-Mart is a driving force in setting wage standards
wherever its stores are located. Despite nearly $9 billion in
profits, its wages are so low that many employees are eligible for
food stamps. Even so, local taxpayers often finance Wal-Mart's
expansion through tax breaks and development incentives.
Wal-Mart has created such high
barriers to qualify for its health care benefits, that many workers
are left dependent on publicly financed medical services, a largely
hidden taxpayer subsidy. According to a research study in
California, Wal-Mart workers seek $86 million a year in state aid
because of inadequate wages and benefits. In effect, Wal-mart
cleverly shifts a portion of its labor costs to the public.
Earlier this year, Wal-Mart
admitted that it routinely locked overnight workers in its stores.
Wal-Mart was also sued this year in the largest sex-discrimination
case in history, brought on behalf of about 1.6 million current and
former employees.
Around the country, Jobs with
Justice coalitions have been in the middle of many community-based
campaigns calling attention to the impact of Wal-Mart by demanding
agreements from this giant corporation to improve its hiring and
employment practices. Local Jobs with Justice coalitions in Chicago,
IL, St. Louis, MO, Buffalo and New Paltz, NY, Washington, DC, Eugene
and Bend, OR, and Toledo, OH have held rallies and hearings on
Wal-Mart, published reports about its potential impact on
communities, and pushed for comprehensive 'Big Box' store ordinances
to help communities gain more leverage in the development process.
"The overwhelming vote to name
Wal-Mart 'Grinch of the Year' reflects the growing concern that
working families have with this mega-corporation," said Fred
Azcarate, Executive Director of Jobs with Justice. "Jobs with
Justice and our many allies are building a movement to challenge
Wal-Marts low road strategy." Over sixty percent of the more than
2,300 votes cast in this year's election were for Wal-Mart.
Wal-Mart has more than 3,500
stores and 1.3 million employees. The company is based in
Bentonville, Arkansas. Learn more about how Wal-Mart is harming
working families at www.walmartwatch.com.
Cintas, the largest uniform
provider and industrial launderer in the nation, was runner up in
the Grinch contest. Cintas workers have been injured and killed on
the job as a result of illegal and unsafe working conditions. It has
been charged with over 100 violations of health and safety
standards, many for repeated violations that could lead to "death or
serious physical harm." Cintas workers have routinely been
disciplined or fired after reporting their injuries or filing
worker's compensation claims, a serious violation of workers'
rights.
Despite lucrative profits, Cintas
has pushed increased health insurance costs onto its employees,
making it impossible for many workers to afford insurance. To make
matters worse, many employees of Cintas report being paid below the
federal poverty line.
Cintas operates 351 facilities in
the U.S. and Canada, including 15 manufacturing plants and seven
distribution centers that employ more than 28,000 people. The
company is headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio. Learn more about how
Cintas is harming workers at www.uniformjustice.org.
Comcast, the nation's largest
cable TV and broadband Internet company, won third place in the
poll. Like Wal-Mart, Comcast has adopted a low road approach to its
employees. "Comcast acts like a bully, refusing to adhere to the
rules or community standards," said former maintenance technician
Shannon Kirkland, who worked for Comcast for 11 years. "Comcast uses
its disproportionate power to deny workers their rights."
Earlier this year, Jobs with
Justice's National Workers' Rights Board released a report "This is
Comcast: Silencing Our Voice at Work" documenting its widespread
pattern of abuse of workers' rights and illustrating why the United
States' 75 year-old labor laws need to be modernized.
Comcast is headquartered in
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and employs 68,000 people in 4,000
communities. Learn more about how Comcast is harming workers at
www.comcastwatch.com.
Each year JwJ coalitions across
the country hold local 'Grinch of the Year' elections to determine
the most deserving greedy Grinch in their hometowns. This year's
local winners included: Missouri Governor Bob Holden in St. Louis
and Ed Hickey of Add Temps in Providence.
To learn more about the Grinch
awards and the other companies nominated to have most harmed working
families in 2004, visit www.jwj.org/Grinch/2004Vote.htm.
Jobs with Justice is a national
network of more than 40 local coalitions of unions, community
groups, faith-based organizations, and student groups working
together to fight for social and economic justice. Over 100,000
individual activists have taken the Jobs with Justice Pledge to be
there five times a year for someone else's fight as well as their
own.
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Down and Out in Discount
America
By Liza Featherstone,
The Nation
Posted on December 22, 2004
[back to top]
This article is adapted from Liza
Featherstone's 'Selling Women Short: The Landmark Battle for Workers'
Rights at Wal-Mart' (Basic).
On the day after Thanksgiving, the
biggest shopping day of the year, Wal-Mart's many progressive critics
not to mention its business competitors finally enjoyed a bit of
schadenfreude when the retailer had to admit to "disappointing" sales.
The problem was quickly revealed: Wal-Mart hadn't been discounting
aggressively enough. Without low prices, Wal-Mart just isn't Wal-Mart.
That's not a mistake the big-box
behemoth is likely to make again. Wal-Mart knows its customers, and it
knows how badly they need the discounts. Like Wal-Mart's workers, its
customers are overwhelmingly female, and struggling to make ends meet.
Betty Dukes, the lead plaintiff in Dukes v. Wal-Mart, the landmark
sex-discrimination case against the company, points out that Wal-Mart
takes out ads in her local paper the same day the community's poorest
citizens collect their welfare checks. "They are promoting themselves to
low-income people," she says. "That's who they lure. They don't lure the
rich.... They understand the economy of America. They know the haves and
have-nots. They don't put Wal-Mart in Piedmonts. They don't put Wal-Mart
in those high-end parts of the community. They plant themselves right in
the middle of Poorville."
Betty Dukes is right. A 2000 study by
Andrew Franklin, then an economist at the University of Connecticut,
showed that Wal-Mart operated primarily in poor and working-class
communities, finding, in the bone-dry language of his discipline, "a
significant negative relationship between median household income and
Wal-Mart's presence in the market." Although fancy retailers noted with
chagrin during the 2001 recession that absolutely everybody shops at
Wal-Mart "Even people with $100,000 incomes now shop at Wal-Mart," a
PR flack for one upscale mall fumed the Bloomingdale's set is not the
discounter's primary market, and probably never will be. Only 6 percent
of Wal-Mart shoppers have annual family incomes of more than $100,000. A
2003 study found that 23 percent of Wal-Mart Supercenter customers live
on incomes of less than $25,000 a year. More than 20 percent of Wal-Mart
shoppers have no bank account, long considered a sign of dire poverty.
And while almost half of Wal-Mart Supercenter customers are blue-collar
workers and their families, 20 percent are unemployed or elderly.
Al Zack, who until his retirement in
2004 was the United Food and Commercial Workers' vice president for
strategic programs, observes that appealing to the poor was "Sam
Walton's real genius. He figured out how to make money off of poverty.
He located his first stores in poor rural areas and discovered a real
market. The only problem with the business model is that it really needs
to create more poverty to grow." That problem is cleverly solved by
creating more bad jobs worldwide. In a chilling reversal of Henry Ford's
strategy, which was to pay his workers amply so they could buy Ford
cars, Wal-Mart's stingy compensation policies workers make, on
average, just over $8 an hour, and if they want health insurance, they
must pay more than a third of the premium contribute to an economy in
which, increasingly, workers can only afford to shop at Wal-Mart.
To make this model work, Wal-Mart must
keep labor costs down. It does this by making corporate crime an
integral part of its business strategy. Wal-Mart routinely violates laws
protecting workers' organizing rights (workers have even been fired for
union activity). It is a repeat offender on overtime laws; in more than
thirty states, workers have brought wage-and-hour class-action suits
against the retailer. In some cases, workers say, managers encouraged
them to clock out and keep working; in others, managers locked the doors
and would not let employees go home at the end of their shifts. And it's
often women who suffer most from Wal-Mart's labor practices. Dukes v.
Wal-Mart, which is the largest civil rights class-action suit in
history, charges the company with systematically discriminating against
women in pay and promotions.
Solidarity Across the Checkout Counter
Given the poverty they have in common,
it makes sense that Wal-Mart's workers often express a strong feeling of
solidarity with the shoppers. Wal-Mart workers tend to be aware that the
customers' circumstances are similar to their own, and to identify with
them. Some complain about rude customers, but most seem to genuinely
enjoy the shoppers.
One longtime department manager in
Ohio cheerfully recalls her successful job interview at Wal-Mart.
Because of her weight, she told her interviewers, she'd be better able
to help the customer. "I told them I wanted to work in the ladies
department because I'm a heavy girl." She understands the frustrations
of the large shopper, she told them: "'You know, you go into Lane Bryant
and some skinny girl is trying to sell you clothes.' They laughed at
that and said, 'You get a second interview!'"
One plaintiff in the Dukes lawsuit,
Cleo Page, who no longer works at Wal-Mart, says she was a great
customer service manager because "I knew how people feel when they shop,
so I was really empathetic."
Many Wal-Mart workers say they began
working at their local Wal-Mart because they shopped there. "I was
practically born in Wal-Mart," says Alyssa Warrick, a former employee
now attending Truman State University in Missouri. "My mom is obsessed
with shopping.... I thought it would be pretty easy since I knew where
most of the stuff was." Most assumed they would love working at
Wal-Mart. "I always loved shopping there," enthuses Dukes plaintiff Dee
Gunter. "That's why I wanted to work for 'em."
Shopping is traditionally a world of
intense female communication and bonding, and women have long excelled
in retail sales in part because of the identification between clerk and
shopper. Page, who still shops at Wal-Mart, is now a lingerie saleswoman
at Mervyn's (owned by Target). "I do enjoy retail," she says. "I like
feeling needed and I like helping people, especially women."
Betty Dukes says, "I strive to give
Wal-Mart customers one hundred percent of my abilities." This sentiment
was repeated by numerous other Wal-Mart workers, always with heartfelt
sincerity. Betty Hamilton, a 61-year-old clerk in a Las Vegas Sam's
Club, won her store's customer service award last year. She is very
knowledgeable about jewelry, her favorite department, and proud of it.
Hamilton resents her employer she complains about sexual harassment
and discrimination, and feels she has been penalized on the job for her
union sympathies but remains deeply devoted to her customers. She
enjoys imparting her knowledge to shoppers so "they can walk out of
there and feel like they know something." Like Page, Hamilton feels she
is helping people. "It makes me so happy when I sell something that I
know is an extraordinarily good buy," she says. "I feel like I've done
somebody a really good favor."
The enthusiasm of these women for
their jobs, despite the workplace indignities many of them have faced,
should not assure anybody that the company's abuses don't matter. In
fact, it should underscore the tremendous debt Wal-Mart owes women: This
company has built its vast profits not only on women's drudgery but also
on their joy, creativity and genuine care for the customer.
Why Boycotts Don't Always Work
Will consumers return that solidarity
and punish Wal-Mart for discriminating against women? Do customers care
about workers as much as workers care about them? Some women's groups,
like the National Organization for Women and Code Pink, have been hoping
that they do, and have encouraged the public not to shop at Wal-Mart.
While this tactic could be fruitful in some community battles, it's
unlikely to catch on nationwide. A customer saves 20-25 percent by
buying groceries at Wal-Mart rather than from a competitor, according to
retail analysts, and poor women need those savings more than anyone.
That's why many women welcome the new
Wal-Marts in their communities. The Winona (Minnesota) Post extensively
covered a controversy over whether to allow a Wal-Mart Supercenter into
the small town; the letters to the editor in response offer a window
into the female customer's loyalty to Wal-Mart. Though the paper devoted
substantial space to the sex discrimination case, the readers who most
vehemently defended the retailer were female. From the nearby town of
Rollingstone, Cindy Kay wrote that she needed the new Wal-Mart because
the local stores didn't carry large-enough sizes. She denounced the
local anti-Wal-Mart campaign as a plot by rich and thin elites: "I'm
glad those people can fit into and afford such clothes. I can barely
afford Shopko and Target!"
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