WPCNR WHITE PLAINS VOICE. September 15, 2004: A union contact writes the CitizeNetReporter about the possibility of Wal-Mart coming into White Plains at the former Sears location on Main Street. Mayor Joseph Delfino is on record as opposing the location of Wal-Mart to White Plains as being too close a competitor to Target. Here is our correspondent's critique of Wal-Mart:

Dear CitizeNetReporter

There seems all so much discussion on building height, sewer flow and athletic directors but not a peep about this 500 lb gorilla coming into White Plains at the old Sears location.

[I'm told they've not penned the deal]

Wal-Mart threatens the wages, health-care, benefits, and livelihoods of workers across the country and around the world. Wal-Mart leads the race to the bottom in wages and health-care.

There is no questioning the company¹s incredible efficiency and shrewd market sense.  The innovative business strategy of Sam Walton has transformed the retail industry.  But along the way his successors have lost track of the community and worker focused values on which Walton built his success.

As the largest corporation in the world, Wal-Mart has a responsibility to the people who built it.  Wal-Mart jobs offer low pay, inadequate and unaffordable healthcare, and off the clock work.  Having a job at Wal-Mart means relying on family, the community, or the government to pay the bills and provide health care.  Wal-Mart¹s growth actually depresses natural wage increases. In areas where Wal-Mart increased its share of the retail food market by 20% or more 1998-2002, cashiers¹ wages fell 40%-31% below the national average increase.

Wal-Mart¹s disregard for its workers encourages other employers to do the same.  The company pressures its extensive network of vendors to cut labor costs and lower prices every year.  The demands force clothing, toy, plumbing, and grocery suppliers to layoff workers, lower wages and benefits, and take their factories overseas or move from one low cost country to another.  As one Honduran manufacturer, worried that his business will soon lose out to Chinese factories, told the LA Times, ³We¹re earning less and producing more.²

But even in Wal-Mart¹s shadow, every business must take responsibility for its own choices.  In the current contract dispute in Southern California, resulting in 70,000 grocery workers on strike and locked out, three of the most profitable companies in the industry are hiding behind Wal-Mart while effectively eliminating health care for their employees.  Safeway, Kroger, and Albertsons¹ combined profit rose 91 percent over the last five years and they control 61 percent of the grocery market in Southern California; yet, they are asking their workers to sacrifice their health to increase those profits even more. 

At the heart of this fight is a question of values -- the values of the hard-working, middle class American worker or the underlying greed of the largest company in the world.  Every person working hard for a living earns the right to a decent wage, affordable health-care, and a voice on the job.  But Wal-Mart¹s greed provides other companies a license to chip away at the rights of working America, influencing everything from wages to working conditions.  Wal-Mart is transforming America from a secure middle class country to one of extremes: those struggling to survive at the bottom and the rich getting richer at the top.

Wal-Mart is bad news.

Have a survey on that.

*Target is no prize either, but they are not the biggest company in the
world.

A Union Executive

Anonymous