For all the criticism that Wal-Mart receives for its low wages and minimal health benefits, the retail giant says more than 11,000 people in the Bay Area are clamoring to get a job at its new Oakland store.
The country’s largest employer plans to welcome customers into its 148, 000-square-foot store on Edgewater Drive next Wednesday, and it says it already has filled 350 of its 400 openings.
I have zero problems with Wal-Mart. In fact, more to the point: I like Wal-Mart. They have a lot of stuff there. For cheap.
Okay, so they’re anti-union. That’s not cool. But let’s face it: the labor movement is stuck in the 1950’s: they’re battling corporations with anachronistic tools that don’t work in today’s globalized world. Unions don’t matter when big companies can simply shutter their stores and move to another “right to work” state — or to a third-world country.
The people who complain about how evil Wal-Mart is are usually rich enough that they can shop wherever they want. And they can rail against the company’s labor record because they’d never ever be reduced to actually working there, so the issue’s purely academic. The truth is that if you want to support the working stiff, you should be all for Wal-Mart, since they offer goods for lower prices than anywhere else.*
I feel the same way about McDonald’s and Starbucks, two corporate behmoths similarly disliked by the patchouli-wearing trustafarian crowd. You know what? I like a quarter pounder with cheese every once in a while. And also, I think Starbucks coffee tastes pretty good.
In the third-world countries I’ve visited and lived in, the local folks — despite what the anti-globalization, Che Guevara-T-shirt-wearing college kids claim — feel a similar affinity for Mickey Dee’s and Starbucks. They’re good places to work. And they provide pretty good products.
It doesn’t surprise me, then, that the Oakland Wal-Mart is getting swamped with job applications. Even in the People’s Republik of California.
*Another anti-Wal-Mart argument is that they use their size and clout to unfairly put independent hardware stores out of business. Yes, that’s unfortunate. But you can no more blame Wal-Mart for this than you can blame cheap imported cars for the troubles of the American auto industry. Them’s the breaks in a free market economy.
3 replies on “Don’t Hate on Wal-Mart”
People point to Walmart and cry “anti-union”.
Unions enable disfavored people to live satisfactorly without addressing their disfavor. This way their family’s problems are never resolved. Without the union they would have to accept the heirarchy, their own inferiority.
Unions serve to empower.
Walmart is anti-union because they are good. They try to help people address and resolve their problems by creating an enviornment where there are fewer hurdles.
Media ridicule and lawsuits are creations to reinforce people’s belief that Walmart is evil in a subsegment of the industry dominated by the middle and lower classes.
Low-cost disfavored Chinese labor is utilized by corporate america to maximize margins. They all do it. Only WalMart gets fingered because they are the ones who help, and those who seek to create confusion in the marketplace want to eliminate the vast middle class who have a real chance and instead stick with lower classes who may not work otherwise. So they dirty him up while allowing the others to appear clean.
The coining of the term “Uncle Sam” was a clue alluding to this::Sam Walton’s WalMart is one of few saviors of the peasant class.
Miguel: haven’t seen the show, nope. But I’d like to check it out. I’m pretty sure I know, just from the title, what the answer to the question is, as far as Frontline is concerned: “no.”
As for China, I see great hypocracy in US trade policy: Bush and his gang are all for “free markets” in cases where we can sell our expensive stuff to poorer countries (i.e. NAFTA), but when it comes to China’s cheap labor and cheap goods, we change our tune.
Newley: Did you happen to see the Frontline program on Wal-Mart? It was, as is so often the case with Frontline, excellent. Especially with respect to how China fits into the mix. Definitely worth checking out. Here’s the overview and a link to the site.
FRONTLINE explores the relationship between U.S. job losses and the American consumer’s insatiable desire for bargains in “Is Wal-Mart Good for America?” Through interviews with retail executives, product manufacturers, economists, and trade experts, correspondent Hedrick Smith examines the growing controversy over the Wal-Mart way of doing business and asks whether a single retail giant has changed the American economy.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/walmart/