Thought it a good idea to bring this forum back from the 'dead.'
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Wal-Mars Invades Earth
July 25, 2004
By BARBARA EHRENREICH
It's torn cities apart from Inglewood to Chicago and
engulfed the entire state of Vermont. Now the conflict's
gone national as a presidential campaign issue, with John
Kerry hammering the megaretailer for its abysmally low
wages and Dick Cheney praising it for its "spirit of
enterprise, fair dealing and integrity." This could be the
central battle of the 21st century: Earth people versus the
Wal-Martians.
No one knows exactly when the pod landed on our planet, but
it seemed normal enough during its early years of gentle
expansion. Almost too normal, if you thought about it, with
those smiley faces and red-white-and-blue bunting, like the
space invaders in a 1950's sci-fi flick when they put on
their human suits.
Then it began to grow. By 2000, measures of mere size -
bigger than General Motors! richer than Switzerland! - no
longer told the whole story. It's the velocity of growth
that you need to measure now: two new stores opening and $1
billion worth of U.S. real estate bought up every week;
almost 600,000 American employees churned through in a year
(that's at a 44 percent turnover rate). My thumbnail
calculation suggests that by the year 4004, every square
inch of the United States will be covered by supercenters,
so that the only place for new supercenters will be on top
of existing ones.
Wal-Mart will be in trouble long before that, of course,
because with everyone on the planet working for the company
or its suppliers, hardly anyone will be able to shop there.
Wal-Mart is frequently lauded for bringing consumerism to
the masses, but more than half of its own "associates," as
the employees are euphemistically termed, cannot afford the
company's health insurance, never mind its Faded Glory
jeans. With hourly wages declining throughout the economy,
Wal-Mart - the nation's largest employer - is already
seeing its sales go soft.
In my own brief stint at the company in 2000, I worked with
a woman for whom a $7 Wal-Mart polo shirt, of the kind we
had been ordered to wear, was an impossible dream: It took
us an hour to earn that much. Some stores encourage their
employees to apply for food stamps and welfare; many take
second jobs. Critics point out that Wal-Mart has consumed
$1 billion in public subsidies, but that doesn't count the
government expenditures required to keep its associates
alive. Apparently the Wal-Martians, before landing, failed
to check on the biological requirements for human life.
But a creature afflicted with the appetite of a starved
hyena doesn't have time for niceties. Wal-Mart is facing
class-action suits for sex discrimination and nonpayment
for overtime work (meaning no payment at all), as well as
accusations that employees have been locked into stores
overnight, unable to get help even in medical emergencies.
These are the kinds of conditions we associate with third
world sweatshops, and in fact Wal-Mart fails at least five
out of 10 criteria set by the Worker Rights Consortium,
which monitors universities' sources of logoed apparel -
making it the world's largest sweatshop.
Confronted with its crimes, the folks at the Bentonville
headquarters whimper that the company has gotten too
"decentralized" - meaning out of control - which has to be
interpreted as a cry for help. But who is prepared to step
forward and show Wal-Mart how to coexist with the people of
its chosen planet? Certainly not the enablers, like George
Will and National Review's Jay Nordlinger, who smear the
company's critics as a "liberal intelligentsia" that favors
Williams-Sonoma. (Disclosure: I prefer Costco, which pays
decent wages, insures 90 percent of its employees and is
reputedly run by native-born humans.)
No, Wal-Mart's only hope lies with its ostensible
opponents, like Madeline Janis-Aparicio, who led the
successful fight against a new superstore in Inglewood,
Calif. "The point is not to destroy them," she told me,
"but to make them accountable." Similarly Andy Stern,
president of the Service Employees International Union,
will soon begin a national effort to "bring Wal-Mart up to
standards we can live with." He envisions a nationwide
movement bringing together the unions, churches, community
organizations and environmentalists who are already
standing up to the company's recklessly metastatic growth.
Earth to Wal-Mars, or wherever you come from: Live with us
or go back to the mother ship.
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company
If the author's name doesn't sound familiar, see:
http://www.pbs.org/now/printable/transcript_ehrenreich_print.html
