The antichrist of retail?

February 27, 2005

[:"blue"] Opinions of this article, please...It's from a blog that I recently read. Any stats to refute the stats inferred in the article will be greatly appreciated.... [/]

A recent article on the Slate website spoke out against Wal-Mart. It took a press release by H. Lee Scott Jr and analysed it. The press release claimed that Wal-Mart wasn't a bad company. Its average employee wage was $10USD an hour and compared to other local retailers, it had more full time employees and offered more insurance coverage to its employees. Timothy Noah, the writer of the article, claimed that average wage would be silly thing to look at the average because high paid employees (whose income was well above the sale clerks income) was included in the average. He estimated, though various sources of reference, that the medium wage of an employ was $8.50 an hour. He also found that "full time" in the U.S. was usually considered 40 hours a week, except at Wal-mart, where it was 34 hours a week. Noah calculated that the average income for a sales clerk would be about $1000 under the poverty line in the USA.

The UFCW also ran a story on Wal-Mart, claiming that the store used overseas, sweatshop-made, clothing while simultaneously campaigning to "buy American". The UFCW found that Wal-Mart imported 10% of ALL China's exports. It also found that sweatshops for Wal-Mart often refused its workers access to healthcare, forced workers to work overtime, and locked bathrooms so workers could not use them during working hours (and this is just the short list). In 2002 Wal-Mart was forced to pay the huge fines for 1,436 child labour infractions. In the china sweatshops, workers are women between the ages of 17-25. They are housed in a dormitory type setting with 15+ to a room. They are monitored 24 hours a day, work for a mere 12-28 cents an hour, and fired when they reach the age of 25 because they are "too old".

Wal-Mart is cheap and easy, just like a whore. But they aren't a whore, they are a pimp. They sell the goods of others to the benefit of those on the very top. The chief executive officer of wal-mart, H. Lee Scott Jr., makes around $29 million a year, including stock option grants. His workers make barely enough to survive. Why do we put up with it? He isn't the only one that makes million off the little guy, Michael Eisner, CEO of Disney, makes obscene amounts while those making plush toys for him starve.

So what can we do? Do we boycott the companies? We can, but usually it hurts the workers more than those at the top. Do we scream and yell and pretend it is helping? We can. Write letters, make songs, legislate ethics? All of these things have been tried to various forms or another. In the end, it is always the little people that gets screwed. So drop the soap and bend over, the big guy wants your action!

February 27, 2005

I don't want to defend Wal-Mart's practices other than to say they provide what the market demands. If the market decides to pay more and shop at places like JC Penny, Sears, Target, etc than Wal-Mart will adjust to provide the market what it wants.

That said I see numerous issues with the apparent bias of the article.

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in the U.S. was usually considered 40 hours a week, except at Wal-mart, where it was 34 hours a week.

Who considers full-time to be 40 hours a week? The Department of Labor? My wife has worked at a number of places where the employees recieved full-time benefits if they worked 35 hours or more a week.

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Noah calculated that the average income for a sales clerk would be about $1000 under the poverty line in the USA.

At $8.50/hour and 34 hours per week they would be living in poverty if they were single. That is true. However if they were single parents and not recieving any child support they would be in worse condition. Yet most of these jobs are for supplementary income. That is one way Wal-Mart keeps prices down. They hire women whose husbands are the bread winners or retirees looking to work a few hours during their retirment. Of course some people go and apply for these jobs that should actually be getting educated and finding better paying jobs but that is not Wal-Mart's fault.

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The UFCW also ran a story on Wal-Mart, claiming that the store used overseas, sweatshop-made

Believing anything a Union says is a little foolish. Unions are not a good source of information. Furthermore, what is a sweatshop? That word seems to be able to have various meanings. It could be a closed-in factory with no windows or fans and temps. about 80º or simply a factory without air conditioning. We can accept that what an American labor union calls a sweatshop is actually what we consider a sweatshop to be.

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The UFCW found that Wal-Mart imported 10% of ALL China's exports.

Again, hard to believe a union and 10% of China's exports is an awful lot. If that is true, all of those products are not being sold in the US. However one has to ask why those numbers are not coming from the Department of Commerce which is much more credible than a labor union.

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In the china sweatshops, workers are women between the ages of 17-25. They are housed in a dormitory type setting with 15+ to a room. They are monitored 24 hours a day, work for a mere 12-28 cents an hour, and fired when they reach the age of 25 because they are "too old".

I have seen some news programs that have exposed some of the poor working conditions in some of these countries and they are bad. The positive is that they are not forced labor and are free to leave. Many do long before they are 25. But again notice the author gives no support for this and just throws it out there. Also, not all factories in third world countries are like that. Many of these factories offer the best paying jobs in the community. And the government often tells the factories how much they can pay their workers.

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Wal-Mart is cheap and easy, just like a whore.

Here a red flag goes up that says, "I am biased, I am biased!" At this point the reader should really start questioning everything else in the article.

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Michael Eisner, CEO of Disney,

This must be an old article or the author really doesn't know what is going on. Michael Eisner is no longer with Disney.

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Do we boycott the companies? We can, but usually it hurts the workers more than those at the top.

Here he again shows his true colors. He wants to hurt the people at the top. Why? How is hurting the guys at the top going to help anyone? It won't. It is pure class envy. Truth is that boycotting is exactly how we can change things if that is our goal. Why? Because they will give the market what the market demands. If the market demands retailers that pay their employees like medical workers they will do that. However the only way the market can makes its demands known is through a boycott.

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