The Wal-Mart Way

“You shouldn’t shop at Wal-Mart, their employees make low wages and the company doesn’t provide health insurance for them,” my mother spoke as I continued to look for an available parking space in the sea of cars that is a Wal-Mart parking lot. She continued, “And women are paid less for doing the same job as their male counterparts.” I continued to look for a place to park about a mile from the front of the store at this point. At 1pm on a Saturday it seemed as if, pardon the pun, everybody and their mother was at Wal-Mart.

Wal-Mart is probably the most powerful company in U.S. history. Its low prices keep people coming back; but if you follow the trail of low prices in America to low wages in China you also see where American jobs have gone. By squeezing its suppliers for impossibly low prices, Wal-Mart has forced most of them to move operations and jobs to low-wage countries. The Wal-Mart way of the lowest prices has led to the lowest wages and job loss here in the United States. Wal-Mart fights to keep wages and benefits low by battling workers’ attempts to form unions. The company has closed stores rather than negotiate with workers who want to form unions.

By exploiting the rise of information technology and the explosion of the global economy Wal-Mart changed the balance of power in the world of business. Multi-national manufacturers no longer have the most power, global retailers do. Sam Walton’s philosophy of buying cheap, selling for less than the other guy, and making a profit on high volume and fast turn over have forced many Wal-Mart workers to rely on public aid because they cannot afford both health insurance and food for their families.

Wal-Mart has so pacified shoppers into ignoring the difference between the price of something and the cost, that Americans are only starting to realize ever-cheaper prices have consequences. Says Steve Dobbins, president of thread maker Carolina Mills: "We want clean air, clear water, good living conditions, the best health care in the world--yet we aren't willing to pay for anything manufactured under those restrictions."

You can't buy anything if you're not employed; while there are certainly other factors contributing to the historic level of unemployment, it is clear that as a country we have shopped ourselves into joblessness.