The High Moral Cost of Low Prices

OKay, as many of you know have had a personal ban on Wal-Mart for at least the past year and a half. Many have asked me about this personal protest and have encouraged me to do a blog about it. Don't get me wrong I understand why people go to Wal-Mart it is the cheapest on many items and has 24 hour convenience. Thankfully, at this point in my life I can afford the few extra pennies per item and have a flexible enough schedule to shop during normal business hours, but I understand there are those that can't. However, for the rest of us there is a high moral and economic price for those unbelievably low prices. I watched a documentary last night that beautifully summarized most of my issues with the retail giant- so if anyone gets a chance to rent Wal-Mart the High Cost of Low Prices it is a shocking and saddening profile of the company's business practices. Most of my information used in this blog is courtesy of our federal government in a report compiled by The U.S. House of Representatives' DEMOCRATIC STAFF OF THE COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION AND THE WORKFORCE by REPRESENTATIVE GEORGE MILLER,SENIOR DEMOCRAT to view a copy of the complete report use the following link: http://www.democracymeansyou.com/walmart/WALMARTREPORT/

Keep in mind when you read the following that Wal-mart had profits of 6.6 Billion dollars in 2002 and profits have increased every year since.

• Wal-Mart drives down both manufacturing and retail wages throughout the world. The average full-time Wal-mart associate makes $8-9 per hour. The median household income for my town of Wentzville is $47, 232 (which I know is higher than many areas, but still) it would take a household almost three full-time Wal-Mart employees to be able to earn the average income of this city. These below poverty level wages drive down wages throughout the entire community and especially in retail.
• Remember Wal-Mart's ad campaign of the 90's encouraging everyone to "Buy American" well it seems like Wal-mart should take its own advice. Approximately 50-60% of all Wal-Mart products are imported from overseas. "In 2003, Chinese purchases jumped to $15 billion, or almost one-eighth of all Chinese exports to the United States. Today, more than 3,000 supplier factories in China produce for Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart maintains an extensive global network of 10,000 suppliers.Whether American, Bangladeshi, Chinese, or Honduran, Wal-Mart plays these producers against one another in search of lower and lower prices. American suppliers have been forced to relocate their businesses overseas to maintain Wal-Mart contracts. Overseas manufacturers are forced to engage in cutthroat competition that further erodes wages and working conditions of what often already are sweatshops."(Congressional Report)
• According to the Institute for Policy Studies:Wal-Mart's 2004 hourly pay: Wal-Mart CEO H. Lee Scott, Jr. (based on $17,543,739 per year, 40 hours per week) $8,434.49/hr
  Average Full-time U.S. Wal-Mart Employee $9.68/hour
  Select Wal-Mart subcontractors:
  Bangladesh $0.17 /hr. China $0.17 /hr. Indonesia $0.46 /hr. Nicaragua $0.23 /hr. Swaziland $0.53 /hr.
• Wal-Mart also fails to provide its workers with decent, affordable insurance plans. Wal-mart employees pay approx. 46% of their health care costs and that coverage carries high deductibles and copayments. According to a Feb 16, 2004 congressional report by Rep. George Miller, " A single worker could end up spending around $6,400 out-of-pocket about 45 percent of her annual full-time salary ­ before seeing a single benefit from the health plan." Whats more Wal-Mart knowing they do not pay decent wages encourages their employees to apply for government assistance programs such as Medicaid, WIC, and Food Stamps. The Democratic Staff of the Committee on Education and the Workforce estimates that one 200-person Wal-Mart store may result in a cost to taxpayers of $420,750 per store or about $2,103 per employee in government sudsidies. Why are taxpayers paying for a multi-BILLION dollar company's employees to go to the doctor and feed their families?
• One of the reasons Wal-Mart can get away with low wages and dreadful insurance is because they are extremely anti-union. Wal-mart actually has a rapid anti-union response team that will converge on a store at the slightest mention of a union. This team conducts surveillance and blankets the store with anti-union propaganda. "When employees have managed to obtain a union election and vote for a union, Wal-Mart has taken sweeping action in response. In 2000, when a small meatcutting department successfully organized a union at a Wal-Mart store in Texas, Wal-Mart responded a week later by announcing the phase-out of its meatcutting departments entirely. Because of deficient labor laws, it took the meatcutters in Texas three years to win their jobs back with an order that Wal-Mart bargain with their union. Rather than comply, Wal-Mart is appealing this decision." (Congressional Report)
• The loss of small, local business is the most heart-breaking effect of Wal-Mart on the community, the documentary mentioned above really focuses on this aspect and follows several small business owners in their quest to stay open once Wal-Mart joins the neighborhood. Unfortunately, none of them survived and their property values actually decreased. Realtors know that once Wal-mart comes in there will be a string of empty shops in downtown that no one will be able to use and adjusts values accordingly. The main argument from the local business owners was that most cities give Wal-Mart huge tax breaks and pay for essential infrastructure, but no one gave them any handouts they built their businesses from the ground up often over many decades and it all disappears with one grand opening. Small businesses offer service and that good home town feeling that so many desperately seek, it is sad how so many towns and citizens are so willing to trade these values to save a few dollars. Wal-mart sells itself as providing jobs to a community, but studies have shown that for every two jobs Wal-Mart provides the community loses three from small business, and more often than not the jobs lost paid better and had better benefits.
• One of my personal issues with Wal-Mart is minor in the grand scheme of things, but being the free speech advocate I am, its what started my negative feelings toward the store. Wal-Mart will not sell CDs with a parental advisory sticker for explicit content. Now I have no problem with a retailer choosing not to sell what they consider explicit material; however, Wal-Mart continues to sell R rated movies that often involve the same if not worse content and, whats most irritating, Mature rated video games like Grand Theft Auto. I don't understand why Wal-Mart censors artists for using foul language, but sell video games in which you can kill cops and have sex with prostitutes?
• Unfortunately, these are just a few of the many reasons of why I (and many others) believe Wal-Mart is destroying America. I haven't even gotten into the class action lawsuits that have been settled for using illegal immigrants, discriminating against its female employees, and not paying workers for forced overtime.

It is people like me who chose not to shop there and speak out against their unfair practices who will eventually make things better and if this blog convinces just one person not to shop at Wal-Mart and/or Sams Club it was worth the time it took to write. I am also planning a part two to this blog about how Costco offers the same wholesale prices and services as Sam's Club does, but without all the troubling problems associated with Wal-Mart, so stay tuned! If anyone has any further Wal-Mart questions please feel free to email me. And remember--Just Say NO to Wal-Mart!!