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Published on Monday, May 10, 2004 by the Charleston Gazette / West Virginia
Editorial
WITH ITS spectacular growth across the nation and world, Wal-Mart is already three times larger than its closest retailing competitor, a French-owned chain. Wal-Mart's global work force is now nearly 1.5 million.
But the Arkansas-based giant - which destroys local stores when it moves into a community - is facing intensified grass-roots opposition as it tries to expand in America from its base in the rural South and Midwest.
Running out of small towns to invade, Wal-Mart is now moving to urban areas, including several in California. Last month, voters in Inglewood, a low-income community near Los Angeles, voted down a Wal-Mart that would have been exempt from environmental and zoning laws.
Elected leaders in other cities, such as San Francisco, are considering passing bans on "big box" supercenters, often as big as 17 football fields.
Last month, Business Week reporter Wendy Zellner wrote about "a broad and growing anti-Wal-Mart movement that goes well beyond organized labor."
Since "the retail behemoth" is currently in less than 40 percent of the nation's top grocery markets, Wal-Mart is likely to meet increased grass-roots opposition in urban centers, Zellner predicts.
The company's insistence on censoring "obscene" magazines and recordings might cause problems. The market for hard-core rap music is small in Bentonville. But it's not small in Los Angeles.
Wal-Mart, vigorously anti-union, pressures agricultural suppliers and manufacturers to sell their products at lower prices. At the same time, the giant purchases more and more products from nations like China that pay workers a pittance.
Here in West Virginia, Wal-Mart collected more than $12.5 million in super tax credits between 1994 and 2004. The money helped finance giant stores in Charleston, Nitro, Elkins, Weston and Ripley. The tax credits were given for "creating jobs" - but rows of boarded-up storefronts along downtown Main Streets are mute testimony to jobs that were lost.
The presence of Wal-Mart also pressures competitors to cut their wages and benefits. Fierce retail competition sparked strikes by workers in several states, including the bitter walkout by Kroger workers in West Virginia.
During a typical year, low wages lead 44 percent of all Wal-Mart hourly employees to quit their jobs, according to Business Week.
Wal-Mart now employs more people than any other business in West Virginia. It replaced Weirton Steel as the state's top employer a few years ago.
Wal-Mart customers love lower prices on clothes and groceries.
But Wal-Mart's low wages make "half their [employees'] families eligible for the federal food stamp program and government-funded health care for their children," the San Francisco Chronicle reported this month.
Is it really free-market competition when taxpayers must pick up the tab for the public safety net needed by Wal-Mart workers?
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