I just wanted to throw my two cents in here about something many of you have brought up and that is the "Buy American" Campaign. I think many of you have a misconception of what this plan was all about. Wal-Mart had been buying from foreign entities for their obviously lower prices (which I also might ad were private companies that employed their own people and treated them within the labor laws, or lack there-of, in those individual countries) The "Made in America" idea was a challenge by Sam Walton to the American suppliers to find a way to produce the same merchandise as their foreign competitors with the same quality at a lower price. If they succeeded in doing this, Wal-Mart would buy those goods exclusively from those suppliers. And companies such as Hershey's did just that and have made billions from the massive amount of their products sold by Wal-Mart and their subsidiaries. However, the majority of the suppliers failed to meet this challenge, which is why the campaign ended and you still see that some of the merchandise is made outside the US. Sam Walton was definately a penny pincher, and still today those same cost effective measures, however extreme some of them may be, are still implemented. If any of you have ever been to Bentonville, AK to the main corporate office building you would see that. This building accomodates over 13,000 associates, the majority of which are upper management, executives, (even the CEO) by the use of small cubicles. The desks, computers and other office supplies are second hand; bought mostly from garage sales and auctions. While these employees are highly paid (making well over $200,000 yearly) they resign themselves to these lesser commodities for the greater good of the company. Cost cutting also comes in the form of Wal-Mart "bullying" suppliers into selling them goods at a very low price, forcing these merchants to find ways to be more cost effective. How awful for these "poor little vendors" to be forced to find a better way to operate and make a bundle from Wal-Mart in the process.
You always hear about the unfair treatment of the employees and the skimpy benfits, but no one ever talks about the successful associates. Every quarter Wal-Mart releases a magazine-like bulletin to all of its stores with pages upon pages of 20+ years anniversaries. If these people are so mistreated, why do they stay so long? One of the previous posts stated that less than 1 in 50 employees net $50,000 from the purchase of company stock. That may be due in part to the high turnover rate (which I will discuss momentarily). If you work for a company for less than a year can you reasonably expect a $50,000 return on your investments? In fact, there are several hundred employees that are basics sales associates that have stayed with the company 15+ years and between the stocks, profit sharing, 401K and stakeholders bonuses, they will retire with more than a million dollars!
Someone also mentioned that the upper management and CEO's still control the votes. This is not true. Wal-Mart selects several associates from each of their stores all over the world to attend in the week long festivities that is the annual Wal-Mart shareholders meeting. They also invite anyone that is a stockholder to these meetings with open arms. As a matter of fact, in the companies younger days, when there were a lot less shareholders (between 2500-3000) all of the associates and other shareholders were invited to Sam and Helen Walton's home (which to this day is still where Mrs. Helen lives, and while large and beautiful, it is meager in comparison to the mansion you would expect of multi-billionaires) for dinner and other festivities.
And I also believe that the high turnover rate is most probably due to the fact that Wal-Mart hires so many younger people, (still in school, etc.). It's just basic reality that employees ranging in age of 16-25 spend less than 2 years at any employer. And while the percentage figures of the turnover rates are so high, you should also consider the amount of people Wal-Mart employs. If you compare that in respect to a company that employs, say 50 people of the same comparison in ages, etc. the percentages would be much the same. Also, have you ever noticed that wherever a Wal-Mart is built, a Lowe's or Home Depot as well as many other higher end retailers are soon to follow. I think that is very good for the economy. Actually, if you think of it like this, how terrible would the economy be if Wal-Mart went out of business. The ripple effect would be phenominal, especially when you realize that some companies such as Proctor & Gamble, and other global giants would also go out of business if they could no longer have Wal-Mart as a customer.
And as far as the "Mom & Pop" stores, I think Wal-Mart raises the level of expectation of competition, which is a benefit that extends to the consumers. If "Mom & Pop" can't keep up and find a way to compete better, that's just the risks you take when you go into retail. Let's face it, competition is a major part of retailing. Without it, our pocket books would all suffer the wrath of competition-less prices.
Furthermore, we are condemning this corporate, evil, giant of a retailer for coming up with inventive ideas to cut their own operational costs, and doing what they do better than anyone else in the business. What is so bad about doing your job well and being lucrative while doing it? Anyways...just a few of my own thoughts. Looks like I've really touched a nerve with some of you and I apologize.
angliz0801 wrote: And as far as the "Mom & Pop" stores, I think Wal-Mart raises the level of expectation of competition, which is a benefit that extends to the consumers. If "Mom & Pop" can't keep up and find a way to compete better, that's just the risks you take when you go into retail. Let's face it, competition is a major part of retailing.
You make some excellent points, angliz, but I have to disagree with you on this one. "Mom & Pop" stores cannot compete with Wal-Mart's prices because they cannot buy in the quantities Wal-Mart does, and thereby dictate the prices they will pay their suppliers. Another thing...Wal-Mart often buys sample containers of merchandise from wholesalers as a trial, then if the products sell well, finds another (usually third-world)manufacturer who will sign exclusive contracts with Wal-Mart to make identical products for less. This is also not an option for "Mom & Pop" stores.
However, although Wal-Mart can offer lower prices than anyone else, they cannot hope to compete with "Mom & Pop" stores when it comes to service, individual attention and one-of-a-kind merchandise. These are the areas in which "Mom & Pop" stores shine. And, not coincidentally, why I prefer to pay a little more to patronize those shops.
Angliz, yes, I think Walmart was a fine store when Sam Walton was still alive, but when you realize what happens when companies like Walmart have their products made with laboreres who are little more than slaves, it is very difficult to justify shopping there. Here is a short quote from the first post I made:
Quote:The daily work shift at the Qin Shi Factory is 12 to 14 hours, seven days a week, 30 days a month. At the end of the day the workers return "home" to a cramped dorm room sharing metal bunk beds with 16 other people. At most, workers are allowed outside of the factory for just one and one half hours a day. Otherwise they are locked in.
Not just WalMart employees but the people who work for their suppliers are being shortchanged.
An article in my local paper this week mentioned a woman who sews 1200 shirtsleeves a day -- one every 15 seconds for a more-than-twelve-hour day. It's the best job she can get, she is barely eking by, yet is in so much pain she can't hold her toddler on her lap without anti-inflammatory drugs.
WalMart showed one factory owner a European-made sweater costing about $125 and asked if the factory owner could produce a knockoff at a cost of $10/dozen (yes, ten dollars for twelve sweaters)... the owner refused, and WalMart found another supplier. When that happens, the factory loses all their WM orders, and fails. All the employees are out of work.
This kind of abuse is what allows WalMart to undercut other prices. If you think these "poor little vendors" haven't tried everything to cut their costs, think again. The only thing they can do now is get more work for less pay out of each employee...
Ah, the beauty of Capitalism at it's height.
Anyone know how the Mutual Funds scandal is going?
Everyone keeps mentioning the terrible work conditions of the employees in other countries and how awful it is that Wal-Mart imports it's merchandise. So, now I'm wondering, these days, what do you really think is "Made in the USA"? There is not an aspect of any business that does not have some part in overseas businesses. Whether it be in the form of foreign labor, or particular supplies and equipment to make their own products. Take the automobile industry for example. So called "All American" giants such as Ford, Chrysler, and General Motors interchange auto parts with foreign entities on a regular basis. (i.e. have you ever been in an Eagle Talon v/s a Mitsubishi Eclipse or a Ford Ranger v/s a Mazda Pick-up? They are identical because they are made by the same overseas companies!!) You can't buy a vehicle these days (except perhaps a Harley-Davidson) that is 100% American (do you think that computer you are on right now was 100% made in America? Think again!). And why is that? Because is saves these companies money. That's the point of being in business...the more you save, the more you make. Even in our personal lives we try to save as much as we can while grocery shopping and such, so we can keep more of our money. Does this put us into the same category with these evil companies? It's the same concept, only on a smaller scale.
angliz0801 -As an aside to what you were saying, I want to relate something that happened to me yesterday. My husband is a pack rat. He buys and saves things "just in case". We have a number of toilet flappers, "just in case" the flapper goes, in the middle of the night.
Anyhow, one of our shower heads was starting to work improperly. My husband went into the garage, to see if he had anything that he could use amongst his "junk".
Five minutes later, he proudly returns with a package. It is a solid brass shower head, brand new. It has a price tag of $4.79, so who knows how old it is? He is all excited. He rushes over to me, and tells me to look at the package. Do you know what made him so excited? The package said,
"Made in the U.S.A.!"
angliz0801, I am not naive enough to think Sam didn't know that the sweatshops abroad had an advantage that could not be overcome stateside, if he merely asked it to be so.
He was shrewd and smart enought to know the playing field could not be leveled. I think it's more likely he was trying to show loyalty to connections that got him to where is was at the point that he had to make the next step to competitiveness and profitability.
I don't think the guy was a monster or that everything Wal Mart does now is bad.
The flipside of getting things made abroad is, if made in the USA the items that sell for $1.50 would instead cost $20.00. American consumers are all about saving a buck, that's what has driven the whole scenario, coupled with some greed at the top of the operation.
Another dark side of Wal Mart is they advocate emanant domain, or at least they will go a long with politicians who are hungry for the tax revenues generated by a Wal mart, if there is a piece or pieces of property they want to locate on. Wal Mart will stop at almost nothing for a marketing advantage.
I've been inside a Wal-Mart, twice. I didn't see anything I wanted and I haven't been back. That was almost ten years ago.
Like Osso, I am proud that my town wouldn't allow Wal-Mart to build here. Somebody has to take a stand. We have a Target in a new shopping area, which I assume from Diane's remarks is as bad, but I didn't go to the link, because, "Yes, ignorance is bliss!" I worked as a peon for Dayton-Hudson a long time ago and was treated well, so I do shop there... for sweatshirts & oddments.
While I have been defending Wal-Mart and it's practices, unfair or not, I did want to make a statement of aggreement with Brand X's topic about the politics of city tax revenue. About a year ago a regular Wal-Mart was closing and relocating to become a Supercenter about a mile down the road. The big problem was that the way this town was situated, the highway was the city line. So if you were on one side of the road, you were in Town A and on the other side you would be in Town B (and yes this very busy intersection of the road and Hwy. have cause problems for cops and motorists alike when a traffic accident occurrs due to difficulties in deciding which city would take the police report...lol) So anyways, the Supercenter was to be relocated to the other side of the Hwy. which would put it in Town B. This caused such an uproar with both Town A (which was fighting to keep the tax revenue) and Town B (that wanted it) that the parking lot that Wal-Mart now calls home (also home to a hardware supply store on the left and an office supply store on the right) was actually rezoned to include Wal-Mart in Town A's city plan! So if you're at the stores to either side, you are in Town B, but if you are in Wal-Mart you are still in Town A. It was pretty ludicrous! As a matter of fact, the builders screwed up after this rezoning occured and the line actually runs through the right quarter of the store itself! If you find that confusing, you should try living there!! lol
lol We've got an entire Mall with the same problem here angeliz! Only it's built across state lines.
The Pheasant Lane Mall in Nashua, NH/Tyngsboro MA has the state line curring through a few of the stores and most all the parking is in MA.
The problem here is that NH doesn't have a state sales tax but MA does. The stores put their cash registers on the NH side of the store so customers didn't have to pay MA sales taxes.
Politicians and Wal Mart. I know eminent domain is not unique to Wal Mart but I think they certainly don't mind the abuse of it for their benefit.
Quote:2003-09-27
Birmingham, AL. Lawsuit Filed to Stop City From Giving $10 Million in Corporate Welfare to Wal-Mart.
Wal-Mart is the richest company on welfare. It uses tax dollars to gain unfair advantage over its competitors, and to build new stores that shut down older ones. As of last winter, the state of Alabama had 34 Wal-Mart discount stores that were open, and 15 that were closed. The state had a total of 1.2 million square feet of "dark stores" on the market--most of these properties were closed to make way for larger superstores nearby. And more closures are coming. Wal-Mart announced last year that it wanted to replace an "aging" company discount store in Huffinton. According to the Birmingham News, city officials in Birmingham promptly offered to give Wal-Mart $10 million in corporate welfare by refunding sales taxes to the company as an enticement to build a supercenter locally. Under the deal, the city would give Wal-Mart a 90% refund of the sales tax for roughly the first five years of the store's sales. With sales expected to be around $2.2 million a year, it would take just under 5 years to reach $10 million, at which point, the city would begin to receive the sales tax. Birmingham officials defended the give-back deal by pointing out that Wal-Mart would "create" 250 jobs. No analysis was done of how many jobs it would destroy. But a local merchant and a city resident filed a lawsuit in September of 2003 to prevent the city for honoring this blatant corporate free lunch. Southeastern Meats of Pelham, Inc, and William Craig charged in Jefferson County Court that Birmingham officials were giving Wal-Mart an unfair advantage over its smaller competitors, of misusing tax dollars, and of unfairly using eminent domain powers to coerce landowers to sell their land to the Wal-Mart development. Southeastern Meats has operated a store near the proposed Wal-Mart site for more than two decades. The company complains that the city never offered them any tax incentives to stay. "Southeastern Meats is standing up for all other small businesses that will be hurt by this new Wal-Mart," the merchant's attorney said. The lawsuit says that the tax break is just a fancy giveway that will redistribute the tax money already being collected, with money formerly spent at smaller merchants in Birmingham now going to Wal-Mart. "The city's $10 million gift to Wal-Mart cannot be justified on the grounds that it will generate new jobs or additional tax revenue," the suit says. "The city's gift was irrelevant to Wal-Mart's business decision to replace it's Wal-Mart stores with supercenters. The Huffman Wal-Mart would have been replaced with a supercenter regardless of the city's $10 million gift." The law firm handling the lawsuit told the News that "with possible schoolteacher layoffs due to the funding crisis and police suing over not being paid overtime, the city cannot afford to be giving away money to the world's richest corporation. That's corporate welfare." The lawsuit also takes issue with the city's threat to take properties by eminent domain, which gave Wal-Mart "an unfair and unlawful advantage over its competitors." "By using the threat of eminent domain, Wal-Mart was able to coerce the landowners and tenants of the coveted parcel to sell the land to Wal-Mart for less than it could have been obtained on the open market." The lawsuit claims that eminent domain is supposed to be used for public developments--like roads and schools--not for private gain.
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Quote:Wal-Mart fight in Alabama town could be harbinger for Colorado
Some Alabaster residents say the city-sanctioned "urban renewal" plan looks a lot like a giant shopping center. The Halls and a handful of neighbors are sitting on the final sliver of a 400-acre swath of land that the city says is "underutilized." Just off I-65 about 20 miles south of Birmingham, the location is prime for a supersize Wal-Mart, a movie theater and chain restaurants.
Last fall, a redeveloper began buying property for a 100-acre shopping center, plus land for roads and other city projects. Officials hit a kink in their plans, though, when they got to the Halls' neighborhood. Owners of six properties, representing about 12 acres, refused to sell. At a stalemate, city officials declared the neighborhood "blighted" so that they could use eminent domain to condemn the property.
"These people are at retirement age and in various conditions of poor health, and at this stage in their lives they're being asked to pick up and move everything for a Wal-Mart," said Jim Pino, a lawyer the property owners have hired to fight the condemnation...
..."Legislative bodies all over the country have defined public use as something that enhances the tax base and creates jobs, and you can fit a lot into that definition," said Basil Mattingly, an associate law professor at Georgia State University. "Public use, for all practical purposes, is not a limitation any longer."
Alabaster's renewal plan expressly said the city was looking for land to boost its tax base. Property rights advocates say it's an alarming trend.
City officials are "acting more like real estate agents than public servants," said Dana Berliner, senior attorney with the Institute for Justice, a nonprofit group in Washington that helps landowners fight condemnations.
Berliner said her group has documented 10,000 cases of eminent domain abuse in the past five years, in which government has taken property from one private party and handed it over to another...
....Legally, it doesn't matter in many jurisdictions what a neighborhood looks like once it's part of a redevelopment project. Alabama law says if any piece of a redevelopment area is deemed blighted, surrounding areas can be considered in danger of blight. The state defines blight, in part, as an area or building marked by faulty design, lack of ventilation and an "obsolete layout." ...
...Mary Wright has lived in the neighborhood for 30 years. She said it's curious that city officials stepped in to declare the area blighted only after Wal-Mart got interested in the area.
Wal-Mart is known for sponsoring referenda to overturn County property development rulings that go against them. Wonder how they fund 'blight' designations on targeted properties??
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I have to admit that I needed another copy of the Extended Version of "The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring" last year and at about $16.00, there was no source on line who was that cheap. "The Two Towers" was already out-of-stock by the time I got their and the Walmart owned Sam's Club price is about the same as the lowest online. I know corporate welfare can be a problem and the politician's answer is that it saves jobs. So, in essence, it isn't any different than the TVA or any government project which provides employment. Of course, the government handouts should be to stabilize an industry (such as they did with the airlines even though it was their lax security policies that caused a very bad catastrphe).
Interesting article in today's NY Times about how Wal-Mart has "invaded" Mexico. (their word, not mine)
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/06/international/americas/06MEXI.html?th
Any time you get into a debate like this, people are going to be polarized. I will just share a story on what I feel to be the true meaning of "Buy American."
I did a cooking class for a ex-pat Brit who told me she had recently moved to Toronto from Rochester. Rochester, New York? No, Rochester, Wisconsin. The only place to buy fresh produce, which she grew up on in England, was Wal-Mart. So...she and the hubby go to Wal-Mart and buy the best fresh veggies they can find. The cashier gives them a strange look and says: "Yer not from around here, are you?"
Wal Marts are, by company policy, not displaying any product with a union label.
