Always Low Prices--Always.

Always Low Prices has Moved!

2004-05-07T13:39:00.000-04:00

ALP can now be found at alp.truckandbarter.com We have moved off Blogger onto a Movable Type powered blog! That's .net, NOT .com, which is currently owned by someone trying to make a quick buck off WM.

The ALP Blogger archives will remain for posterity...

Some WM Opposition

2004-05-07T07:16:00.000-04:00

A letter writer in Fredericksburg,VA wants to save the small Ferry Farm WM that will close and be replaced by a Supercenter. She also wants to save a local river from runoff.

Residents in Sandy want to see a closed gravel pit become a park instead of a WM.

There's a "traffic horror show" in Pawtucket, with claims that WM will bring an extra 20,000 cars. That's some WM.

Bomb Threat Against WM

2004-05-07T07:06:00.000-04:00

Folks, even if you hate WM with a passion, calling up the store and telling an employee that you've planted a bomb is not a good idea.

Micha Gertner Strikes Again

2004-05-06T19:41:00.000-04:00

Undaunted by strident criticism of his previous post, Micha Gertner (of Catallarchy) takes to WM's defense with vigor in Wal-Mart and its Discontents:

These successful business practices have given Wal-Mart a huge market share, and this makes the company a very visible target. When people think of big corporations, they think of Wal-Mart. When people think of cheap products made with sweatshop labor, they think of Wal-Mart. When people think of the “creative destruction” that capitalism inevitably brings, i.e. the closing of sentimental but inefficient and pricey mom-and-pop stores and their replacement with large, impersonal retail chains, they think of Wal-Mart. These are the reasons why Wal-Mart is hated, and, despite the corporate subsidies enjoyed by Wal-Mart and every other large corporation in a mixed economy, these are the reasons why Wal-Mart should be defended from its critics.

Giant Competition

2004-05-06T10:24:00.000-04:00

WM supercenters are a place for "one-stop-shopping", but much of the time people just want to go shopping for groceries--not everything. Giant food is trying to compete with WM by saving the customer time with more scanners and a return of baggers, years after it slashed wages, hours, and service:

The new checkout stations will reposition cashiers so that they look directly at shoppers when scanning products, Scher said. Giant calls them "side stations" and believes they will "make it easier for cashiers to interact with consumers," Scher said...

Grocery industry analysts and observers said Giant's efforts to hasten the checkout process appear designed to win over time-strapped consumers, who consistently rank long supermarket lines as their biggest complaint.

"These are definitely steps in the right direction," Jim Hertel, senior vice president of Willard Bishop Consulting Ltd., said of the self-checkout and price-scanning technology. "Nobody wants to spend a lot of time in a grocery store..."

Both Hertel and Doyle cheered the return of the baggers.

Giant began phasing out grocery baggers about 10 years ago. It asked cashiers to take their place, assuming they could easily stuff groceries into bags after scanning them at the register. But at a store's busiest shopping times, Giant officials said, bottlenecks form, creating long lines.

"People notice the registers more than any other department," Matthews said. "We want to speed people through."

Newspaper & Activist vs. WM

2004-05-06T09:34:00.000-04:00

The Daily Journal (NJ) runs a piece about an anti-WM activist trying to organize opposition. The reporter tries to make him sound like the lone voice of reason.:

INELAND -- William Hipkins is itching to take on the world's largest retailer and he wants to know if there are other like-minded citizens in the city.

Opposed to Wal-Mart's proposal to build a 147,000-square-foot store at Landis Avenue and Delsea Drive, Hipkins claims the company destroys small businesses, offers low wages and funnels profits out of communities.

"Wal-Mart is ruining this country," said Hipkins, 37, of Vineland. "They come in and they undercut everybody. ... The city is not looking at the big picture. They are looking at the money."

The city Planning Board will consider and possibly vote on the proposal May 12, a month after Wal-Mart submitted design plans. On Monday, a board subcommittee reviewed the application and offered no criticism or opposition....

He is trying to get people organized in time for Monday's City Council meeting and the May 12 Planning Board meeting. He plans to distribute packets of information detailing Wal-Mart's history to Mayor Perry Barse, City Council and the Planning Board.

The reporter did not ask Mr. Hipkins to substantiate his claims, nor did she ask from whom he obtained his "information".

Usual Delays in Approving Big-City WM

2004-05-06T09:25:00.000-04:00

Considering the years-long delays WM finds in many cities, I find nothing special in it having to wait another three weeks for a vote on a zoning change (rr).

Four council members, two African-Americans and two whites, used a parliamentary maneuver to delay action on the projects, which have strong backing from aldermen in the predominantly black wards where the stores would be located.

Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, has no stores in the city. But Wednesday's setback likely will be temporary, said Ald. William J.P. Banks (36th), chairman of the council's Zoning Committee. Banks said he would force final decisions at the May 26 council meeting, adding that he expects passage of the proposals.

Stephen Kinzer of The New York Times also gets in a few choice words:

The setbacks in Chicago and Inglewood reflect the increasing difficulty Wal-Mart is facing as it tries to push in to more urban markets.

But Mr. Kinzer is silent on WMs successes, even though the rest of his article is powerful and balanced. He even talks to knowledgeable and nonpartisan sources.

Some retail experts doubt, however, that Wal-Mart would make concessions in Chicago that it has refused to make elsewhere.

"Wal-Mart has a lot of power," said Kenneth Thompson, a professor of management at DePaul University. "It would be very hard for a few aldermen or community figures to negotiate with a company that's this tough. And what do they do if Wal-Mart says no? Once the store is open, they can hardly close it down."

He also notes that big labor us ready to put all its resources on WM.

Wal-Mart's uniquely powerful role in the American retail economy and its reputation for vigorously fighting unions, has attracted increasing attention from labor leaders. One of them, John Wilhelm, a member of the A.F.L.-C.I.O. Executive Council, said on a visit to Chicago this week that he had asked John Sweeney, the A.F.L.-C.I.O. president, to make Wal-Mart the central focus of the American labor movement.

"After the 2004 elections are over, we should make this our main project," Mr. Wilhelm said. "No one union can organize Wal-Mart. We need to face this in a comprehensive way."

This should be quite a spectacle.

Bryn Mawr College Peace Action

2004-05-05T16:50:00.000-04:00

Over 40 faculty members of Bryn Mawr opposed the war in Iraq, and thought that Richard Perle's vision of a post-Baathist Iraq looked something like this:

Failed Challenge to Goodyear WM

2004-05-05T08:17:00.000-04:00

The group threatening to sue WM for its plans to build a Supercenter had to give up, after local businessmen reneged on their promise to bankroll legal action:

Diane Burnett, chairman of Goodyear Residents for Responsible Economic Growth, said lack of financial resources and legal assistance left her no choice.

"Until the middle of April, I had verbal commitments from local businesses and organizations for financial help with legal fees, but those commitments were withdrawn at the last moment," Burnett wrote in a one-page statement announcing the end of the battle. "I had contemplated representing the case myself but lack the legal expertise and ability required for a complicated legal battle."

Burnett sued the city in February after Goodyear officials rejected petition signatures seeking to force the Wal-Mart issue onto the ballot this fall. City Attorney James Oeser said that the council's approval of a site plan and development agreement for Wal-Mart were not legislative actions and thus were not subject to a referendum.

Zoning rules are very powerful tools; but they seem to wind up in the hands of one's enemies as often as they wind up in the hands of one's allies.

WalMart Responds to Community Concerns

2004-05-05T08:10:00.000-04:00

Yet another data point showing that WM changes its plans to meet local residents' demands:

CENTERVILLE — With a 100-person crowd looking on, representatives from Wal-Mart presented their case for the proposed Wal-Mart Supercenter before the Centerville Planning Commission at Centerville Elementary School Wednesday night.

Robin Salvagio, vice president of CLC associates, the engineering firm for the proposed Wal-Mart, said they had been reviewing the many public comments the city has received — two two-inch binders full — and would modify the site plan based on the comments.

The public comment period had ended the night before.

“We anticipate changes,” Salvagio said, “but we won’t submit them until all revisions are complete...”

In addition, Salvagio noted changes made to the site — based on public comment — to mitigate impacts to the nearby Country Cottages. These include a greater-than-necessary setback, an 8-foot decorative wall and special lighting that won’t shine into the nearby property.

“We have not provided the minimum,” she argued, “we have provided more.”

Then there's the traffic issue:

Presenting with Salvagio was Dr. Joseph Perrin, a traffic engineer with A-Trans Engineering. Perrin argued that many of the streets likely to be impacted are operating below capacity, and that the proposed Wal-Mart would not push traffic into a dangerous condition.

“Many say Parrish Lane is too busy,” Perrin said. “Parrish Lane does have more traffic than most Centerville residents are accustomed to because of the recent Market Place development. But from a traffic engineering aspect, the roadway is operating at acceptable levels of service.”

He said data show the road is operating at 60 percent capacity, and that the Wal-Mart would use an additional 6 percent of that capacity. Perrin also said that numbers given during the public comment period about extra traffic — an extra 15,000 cars daily — were greatly exaggerated.

“The actual store will bring in an additional 4,300 cars per day,” he said. And with the restaurants and gas station on the site operating, he said the numbers show a total of 5,500 extra cars per day.

There are some people who want WM to demonstrate the impossible:

Centerville Citizens First’s George Fisher said Wal-Mart never argued that their development was necessary.

“She (Salvagio) conveniently skipped that part,” Fisher said.

How are they supposed to meet that burden?

WM Money Transfers

2004-05-05T08:00:00.000-04:00

According to a new press release, WM is lowering the price of wiring money to Mexico to $10:

Wal-Mart just made it more affordable for customers to send money to Mexico to honor their mothers and loved ones this Mother's Day...

Through our relationship with MoneyGram®, customers in the United States can send funds to Mexico for a flat fee of $9.46 for all amounts up to $500 with a competitive exchange rate. This new every day low price will save customers more than 40% in transfer fees compared to the previous Wal-Mart price just in time for Mother's Day.

Customers visiting their local Wal-Mart in preparation for Mother's Day will see just how easy, convenient and affordable it is to show their Moms how much they care. With a visit to the Service Desk, money can be sent to Mexico in just a few minutes, and family members can pick it up in Mexico at their local Wal-Mart, Bodega Aurrera, Superama, Suburbia, or at many other convenient MoneyGram® locations. Additionally, senders will receive a complimentary three-minute phone call to notify family members that the money is on the way. Family members who pick up their money at Wal-Mart, Bodega Aurrera, Superama and Suburbia locations in Mexico from now through June 3 will also receive a 40-peso in-store certificate.

Almost one-third of the Hispanics living in the U.S. send money to their families residing in their country of origin. The most important time for sending money to Mexico is around Mother's Day. MoneyGram® money transfers are also available for Latin America and the Caribbean. Transfer fees for these countries vary, but are also available at the Service Desk at an every day low price.

I have no idea if these rates are competitive with other wire services, but I'm glad to see WM using its global reach in this way.

Dan Drezner on WM in Chicago

2004-05-04T21:17:00.000-04:00

Reflecting on the latest Jesse Jackson vs. WM story in the Chicago Tribune, Dan offers his personal opinion:

As a fellow South Sider, let me just second Krystal's sentiments there. This is not a case where Wal-Mart would put "mom & pop stores" out of business, since there are appallingly few retail options in these neighborhoods.

Protest WM on Memorial Day

2004-05-04T13:36:00.000-04:00

Anti-WM activists are planning to use Memorial Day for their own purposes:

National Wal-Mart Protest & Boycott Kick-Off
Memorial Day 2004 - May 31st
All Day, Across America

More than 200 organizations will be kicking off a Wal-Mart boycott with a national protest at Wal-Mart across all 50 states on Memorial Day 2004, (Monday, May 31st). We would like to invite you and/or your organization to participate in this collaborative effort.

I must note that Memorial Day is meant to honor those who have died in military service defending the United States (and the Confederacy), not to protest commercial activities.

Hillary on WM Board

2004-05-04T13:26:00.000-04:00

From 1986 to 1992, while her husband was Governor of Arkansas, Hillary Clinton was on the Wal-Mart Board of Directors. Note that this factoid is on the wiki for Wal-Mart, but not on the wiki for HRC.

Now you may read the post below.

Cheneys Visits WM HQ

2004-05-04T10:23:00.000-04:00

Let's be clear about this. WM sides with Bush in the coming election, which makes it no surprise that Vice President Dick Cheney and his wife would vist Bentonville, Arkansas:

While lashing out at Bush's likely Democratic opponent, Sen. John Kerry, Cheney urged 1,000 cheering Wal-Mart employees to vote in November for "the confident, steady, disciplined leadership of George W. Bush....

[Gov. Mike] Huckabee said Wal-Mart employees who were bused in to hear the speech appreciated Cheney's message because Kerry had been criticizing Wal-Mart for underpricing smaller retailers and suppliers.

"It's unprecedented for a candidate to attack — by name — a company that brings hundreds of thousands of jobs to Americans, high-quality products to working-class consumers and an unmatched charitable spirit," Huckabee said. "It's an elitist, snobbish attitude."

What did Cheney say about Kerry?

Speaking to Wal-Mart employees at a Bentonville distribution center, Vice President Dick Cheney spent five minutes of a 15-minute speech Monday calling U.S. Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., one of the Senate's most consistent pro-tax votes.

Kerry, the Democratic presidential candidate, in March called Wal-Mart Stores Inc.'s health benefits to employees "disgraceful."...

Cheney praised the Bentonville-based retail chain, saying that "the only employer of a bigger size is the one I work for," referring to the federal government.

"This is one of our nation's best companies," Cheney told a cheering crowd of about 700 employees. He reminded the crowd that former President Bush, the president's father, had given company founder Sam Walton the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest decoration awarded to civilians by the federal government.

"Free enterprise, lower taxes and fiscal discipline from Washington" is what the American economy needs, the vice president said.

As a personal matter, I'm all for lower taxes and fiscal discipline. Anybody know of a Presidential candidate that is serious about both?

Enlist at WM

2004-05-03T21:05:00.000-04:00

Via Fark we find that the U.S. Navy is enlisting at WM:

Military enlistment numbers haven't fluctuated since the United States went to war in Iraq, but the attitudes of the latest recruits certainly have....

On Sunday, she greeted shoppers at the Bellevue Wal-Mart Supercenter as they passed a Navy recruiting booth....

Navy recruiters say the quality of recruits is much higher than in previous years. More are finishing high school and have a clean criminal and drug history, Holmes said.

More than 100 people stopped by the booth Sunday to mingle with recruiters and ride the Navy's F/A-18 flight simulator.

BusinessWeek: WM Not Bad For Cities

2004-05-03T13:04:00.000-04:00

In short, Wal-Mart came in -- and nothing bad happened.

Opening a Wal-Mart in neighborhoods underserved by retailers should be a no-brainer.

That's the conclusion that Robert McNatt of BusinessWeek comes to after looking at the effects of a new WM in South Central. He tries to give a fuller picture of the impact of WM on small urban businesses. It's mostly a review and update piece--for those readers following the controversy--but he does tie up things nicely.

Mr. McNatt tires to balance the good and the bad in a way that WM opponents won't like: the good is the dynamic positive economic impact WM has in poor urban centers; the bad is that the economic impact could be even greater.

"I think there was a point in the company's history when we were less sensitive to local needs, but we have gotten better," says Robert S. McAdam, Wal-Mart's vice-president for state and local government relations. Many observers would argue that it could do a whole lot more.

As if those "many observers" don't have their own agendas, and don't desire to shift stockholder wealth into their own pockets.

Also, in my opinion, Mr. McNatt takes too many journalistic shortcuts: first, he insists that WM called a vote in Inglewood because it wanted to avoid zoning laws. As I've written before, the evidence suggest that WM and the City Council were playing a game. The city council was changing the rules, and WM wouldn't back down. The City Council even enacted rules to block WM entirely. They were cancelled after a legal threat, and WM wanted to avoid any more delays. Also, WM actually had a detailed plan that met the current rules. Can anyone cite which local laws that the failed WM in Inglewood did not meet?

Second, he chides WM for not "working with communities," when he actually means working to appease opponents by changing WM into a CostCo clone--regardless of the reliability, education, and quality differences in the workforce of each. He calls for better urban store design and a higher wage structure, disregarding WM's recent willingness to do the former (taking into account how recent most urban entry has been), and ignoring the price consequences of the latter.

Question to WM employees: have you tried to get a job at a CostCo or other retailer with higher wages? Is that easy or difficult?

A Few Quick Links

2004-05-03T06:59:00.000-04:00

Sorry for not posting yesterday. I was busy--shopping at Target. They have a full line of Meguiar's Gold Class car care products. Excellent quality. My local WM had seemingly random junk.

The Motley Fool reviews WM's balance sheet, including a factoid ALP readers probably don't know about--WM's debt:

You usually want to see little or no debt. Between 2003 and 2004, Wal- Mart's total debt dropped 5 percent, from $21.4 billion to $20.4 billion. The drop is good, but that's no small amount of debt.

Foodproductiondaily.com has a series of articles on RFID; some argue that WM is not taking the most cost-effective strategy...

The Journal-News discusses WMs internet strategy. It also shows a fiesty Netflix, undaunted by the WM challenge:

When Wal-Mart began its online store in 2000, its entrance generated some fear among Web retailers. Today, the attitude is more complacent.

Wal-Mart's DVD service is $18.76 a month for unlimited rentals with three movies out at a time. Rival Netflix charges $19.95 with a $2 price hike on the horizon.

Even so, Wal-Mart has had virtually no impact on Netflix's market share, Netflix spokeswoman Lynn Brinton said.

"We have and still retain more than 90 percent of the market. This hasn't changed since they entered our space," Brinton said. "I think you'll hear from us what I suspect you'd hear from most of the other online brands Wal-Mart's tried to compete with: While they're formidable, to put it mildly, in the brick and mortar world, they've never established much of a brand or presence online."

Finally, WM Canada will be selling wine in its stores:

The in-store shops will carry only Canadian wine at the low- to mid-price range, from $7.97 to close to $30 a bottle, he said...

"Our objective is always to be the lowest price on the market," he said. "We think this initiative will increase demand for Canadian wine . . . We are always looking at new things to test and try to see what customers will respond to..."

The grocery offerings are becoming stiffer competition for Toronto-based Loblaw Cos. Ltd. and other supermarket chains, which are scrambling to strengthen their operations in a bid to keep Wal-Mart's supercentres, with their huge choice of groceries, out of Canada.

In Canada, they're worried that WM will increase grocery choice?

Wal-Mart in the desert; and a new SuperCenter

2004-05-01T17:39:00.000-04:00

Today's front-page news in the local paper is about the planned opening of a SuperCenter two years from now. The town is a small place out in the desert, 80 miles or so from the next nearest Wal-Mart or Target or other major department store. There is already a 100,000 sq ft Wal-Mart here, and it is one of the major economic/shopping centers of the town. It's where residents go for their basics other than groceries. (The town has a large Safeway, a Raley's, and, for those who work at the Naval Air Station, a Navy Commissary.) Pretty much, people are excited that they will have another choice and anticipate lower prices, which will please their families. The main negative thing I have heard so far is that it's further from the center of town, so the drive will be longer, and it may impact traffic going in and out of town. (It will be about two miles up the road from the current Wal-Mart, which will be replaced.) Right now, the town's Safeway benefits enormously from being right next to the Wal-Mart in the same strip mall. I imagine they are worried, though they have two years to decide what to do.

I've mentioned before, I hate shopping at Wal-Mart (you know, the clutter, the lighting, the sometimes-shoddy goods) but if I lived here full time, or in many places like it, it makes a huge difference to your quality of life that you can easily get the same variety of goods at the same prices as you'd get in other places. Contrast this with gas prices in this town, which are 10 or so cents higher than in Reno (which is itself a geographically isolated market for gasoline refiners). Most groceries here cost a slight bit more than back in Reno, and there is a smaller selection of things like produce, fresh meats, and fresh fish. I imagine that a SuperCenter, with Wal-Mart's tight supply chain and high turnover, would improve the freshness of such items they carry, but I wonder if they would at all increase the variety, or if they just wouldn't bother.

Updated Yet Again: Rutland City's Wal-Mart denies it is experiencing growing pains

2004-05-01T14:39:00.000-04:00

Rutland City, the second largest city located in Vermont, was surprised to learn that Wal-Mart was thinking of possibly either moving or expanding its downtown store, after a local WM official spoke of such at a recent

city Community Development Committee meeting Thursday.

later the exact same WM official

said her comments at the meeting represented her own opinions and not the official plans of Wal-Mart.

A spokeswoman from Wal-Mart corporate headquarters in Bentonville, Ark., confirmed that Wal-Mart has no plans to leave or expand at the plaza.

"We have no plans for a superstore and we're very happy at the location," said spokeswoman Mia Masten. "We're fine with the store and we have no plans to go anywhere."

read the entire article, published in the Rutland Herald: Wal-Mart insists store staying put.

*update #1*

as it relates to the above item in general terms, below is information which may be of interest to those whom are not yet aware of it.

Vermont's Act 250

Vermont pioneered a cooperative approach to large-scale development on a statewide level in 1970 with Act 250, which arose in response to the arrival of Vermont's first interstate highway in the late 1960s. Residents feared that the highway would lead to rapid, uncontrolled growth and ultimately the destruction of the state's rural character and picturesque towns.

Act 250 requires developments of regional impact to obtain a land use permit from the one of the state's District Environmental Commissions. In most cases, commercial developments require Act 250 review when they encompass ten or more acres of land, a threshold substantially higher than under Cape Cod's rules. Act 250 approval depends on meeting several conditions that focus on the project's environmental and economic impact. Decisions by the state's nine District Environmental Commissions may be appealed to the state Environmental Board and ultimately the Vermont Supreme Court. Members of both the district commissions and the state board are appointed by the governor.

In addition to the law's environmental criteria concerning water and air pollution, energy conservation, and soil erosion, Act 250 specifies that developments must not place unreasonable fiscal burdens on the ability of local governments to provide education and other services, must not exhaust the town's ability to accommodate growth, and must be consistent with local land use policies. Act 250 discourages scattered development by requiring a project to be contiguous to existing settlements unless the tax revenue generated by the development exceeds the additional cost of public services required by the project. Act 250 also considers a development's impact on scenic and historic sites.

Act 250 has limited the number of large-scale retailers in Vermont. The state was the last U.S. frontier for Wal-Mart, which built its first store there in 1995. Vermont now has four Wal-Mart stores, but as a result of Act 250, three of these are about half the size of a typical Wal-Mart and were located in existing buildings. In Bennington, Wal-Mart opened a 52,000 square foot store in a former Woolworth's building, and, in Rutland, a 75,000 square foot store was located downtown. Most recently, Wal-Mart opened a 66,000 square foot store in Berlin. The store occupies a building that previously housed another department store.

More:

* Vermont's State Environmental Board

The New Rules Project
http://www.newrules.org/

*update #2*

the fourth WM in Vermont, only generally mentioned above, is located in Williston.

Williston is part of Chittenden County, Vermont's most densely polpulated county and home to Burlington, the state's largest city.

what I found online indicates yet another new WM, this one 150,000 sq ft, may possibly be on the way into St. Albans., which is in addition to the four mentioned above.

lying just South of the Canadian border, St. Albans is located in the upper Northwestern part of the state, in Franklin County -- a northern neighbor to Chittenden County.

came across a January 2004 article article published in the St. Albans. Messenger about the new WM: City takes ring-side seat for Wal-Mart

By LEON THOMPSON
Messenger Staff Writer

ST. ALBANS CITY -- As developers prepare to seek permits for a large Wal-Mart store in St. Albans Town, aldermen here have assigned the city manager to be involved in future discussions about the project.

On Jan. 12, the city council voted unanimously to appoint Brian Searles as the city's representative in future Wal-Mart conversations.

Mayor Peter DesLauriers said town officials were receptive to his request that the city be party to future talks about building a 150,000-square-foot Wal-Mart -- slated to be the largest in Vermont -- on U.S. 7-North, across from the Interstate 89 access road.

[...]

In late December, Gov. Jim Douglas joined project officials, lawmakers and business leaders in announcing Wal-Mart's intent to build a store on the same site originally proposed in the early 1990s.

The state environmental board rejected that first proposal, and the Vermont Supreme Court upheld its ruling, thus shutting down the mega-retailer's first bid for a Vermont store.

The new Wal-Mart would employ about 300 people -- more than 70 percent of them full-time -- and offer a vision center, pharmacy, snack bar, garden center and possibly a gas station. It will not sell groceries.

The building would be 35,000 square feet larger than the Williston Wal-Mart -- which cannot expand because of land constraints -- and sit about 1,000 feet off Route 7.

J.L. Davis is buying the 107.5-acre parcel from the St. Albans Group, a mix of local businessman and developers who owned the property since 1986. Wal-Mart will be J.L. Davis' tenant.

J.L. Davis wants to subdivide the land into three lots: 71 acres for Wal-Mart, a 10-acre plot and a 4 1/2-acre parcel.

Vermont's other Wal-Mart stores are in Bennington (51,000 square feet), Berlin (74,500 square feet) and Rutland (76,100 square feet).

read the entire article, here.

plus this recent follow-up article: The next Tafts Corner?

Wal-Mart, big boxers pose St. Albans boon and major challenges

By LEE J. KAHRS
Messenger Staff Writer

ST. ALBANS TOWN -- When St. Albans Town Administrator Dan Lindley took the job in 2002, little did he know he would be negotiating the kind of growth now foreseen.

Within the next two years, the northern growth center of the town could be transformed. Wal-Mart is seeking a permit to build a 150,000-square-foot "big box" store just north of Price Chopper, and a T.J. Maxx store is coming to the Highgate Plaza by this fall.

Now, there is a rumor that a Lowe's, or Home Depot may build a 150,000-square-foot "big box" on 40 acres south of the proposed Wal-Mart.

Also proposed within the growth center is expansion of Franklin Park West, and on the south side of town, a major addition to the St. Albans Town Industrial Park. There also are numerous housing developments planned, including a 40-unit project at Fairfax Road and Route 104.

Just since last fall, a Wendy's restaurant, and a Merchant's Bank branch opened on the access road to Price Chopper. A three- store retail building behind them is in the final stage of construction. A Blockbuster's and a locally owned clothing store are already planned there.

Across U.S. 7-North, within Franklin Park West, a new Peoples Trust Company multi-story building also opened this year.

In reaction to this kind of activity, the town is looking to hire a full-time planner to aid and negotiate the future of town development.

The image of St. Albans Town's north end becoming a version of the big box Mecca of Tafts Corners in Williston has some residents terrified; others welcome the growth with open arms.

[...]

read the entire follow-up article, here.

in addition, the Vermont Legislature has just recently made changes to Act 250.

information concerning this can be found at the following sources:

April 21, 2004
Rutland Herald - Barre-Montpelier Times Argus
Act 250 appeals process redrawn

By John Zicconi

VERMONT PRESS BUREAU

MONTPELIER - House and Senate negotiators on Tuesday agreed for the first time in more than 30 years to make significant alterations to Act 250, the state's landmark environmental protection law.

The deal, which must still be ratified by the full House and Senate, dissolves both the Vermont Environmental Board and the Vermont Water Resources Board. All environmental permit appeals beginning next February will instead be heard by an expanded environmental court.

The change removes oversight of all Act 250 and water-related issues from the two citizen panels and for the first time places permit appeals before an environmental court judge. The move was one of the Douglas' administration's top priorities, and represents a significant victory for the Republican governor in an election year.

Permit reform was also a top priority for Vermont business leaders, who predict the new system will both streamline permit review and bring greater predictability to its appeals process.

"This certainly is a big moment," said Rep. William Johnson, R-Canaan, who headed the House negotiating team that pushed expand the environmental court. "This Legislature is going where no one has ever gone before. We altered Act 250 law for the first time in 30 years, and in doing so we preserved the cornerstones of our environmental laws and did our best to make sure all Vermonters can participate in the system."

Douglas predicted the new appeals system would help spawn critical economic growth.

[...]

read the entire article, here.

the actual legislation making these changes to Vermont's Act 250 is House Bill 175 (H.0175): this particular Web page includes this bill's legislative history with links to the same as well as, at the very bottom of the page, links to the bill as introduced, as passed by the House and, then later, the Senate proposal of amendment. currently the page lists the bill as: Awaiting Governor's Action (Governor Jim Douglas, Official Website). if and when the bill is signed into law, it will be assigned an Act number and, then, the page will also list a link to the bill as enacted, at the bottom of the page.

*note*: made mostly minor changes to original post for the purposes of clarity of presentation; also added additional related information as well as links, indicated by *update #1*; in fact, I just added some more in yet another update - twice over in short order, indicated by *update #2*; edited and added language of final paragraph for the purposes of clarification and readability only: last updated on Saturday, May 1, 2004 at 11:59 PM [EDT].

Canadian Union Rips WM

2004-05-01T08:39:00.000-04:00

WM representatives rarely speak at all about unions; when they do, they argue that unions are not desirable for WM employees, which is a debatable point.

Union representatives frequently speak about WM; when they do, they don't just argue that WM employees would be better off with a union--they insist that WM is an uncaring monster:

TORONTO, April 29 /CNW/ - The leader of the union spearheading the effort
to organize Wal-Mart workers in Canada has described the latest statements from a Wal-Mart Canada spokesperson as "a page out of George Orwell's novel 1984 and more proof that Wal-Mart is as dedicated to everyday, low ethics as
they are to low prices," according to Michael J. Fraser, the national director of UFCW Canada (United Food and Commercial Workers Canada).

Fraser was reacting to a newspaper report published earlier this week in which Wal-Mart Canada spokesperson Andrew Pelletier was quoted as saying "Wal-Mart is an exemplary company with respect to working conditions."

"It's nothing but Orwellian doublespeak. They take the truth and turn it inside out," charged Fraser....

"This company has no shame," says Fraser. "They exploit their own workers and at the same time have driven hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs overseas where their sweatshop suppliers pay their workers less than a dollar an hour. Do they consider those working conditions exemplary too?"

If your objective is to unionize WM, this type of talk may not be the best means to do so. This was not a news story, but a press release from the union itself. Why not add a few facts--like the difficulty that American manufacturers are having finding competent employees--along with the accusations of manufacturing mass job exodus from North America? Perhaps the reason manufacturing jobs are leaving is not WMs desire to impoverish the masses, but service industries' giving higher wages than manufacturers for the same level of competence...

Updated: New Co-Blogger Intro: Morgan W. Brown

2004-04-30T12:21:00.000-04:00

just came across ALP this morning, thanks to a blog post by Jonathon on his Grumpy "OLD" Man blog.

while browsing through the archive of previous ALP blog posts, I came across Kevin Brancato's Wednesday, April 14, 2004 post that asked readers of ALP if they were interested in blogging about WM? the post states that Always Low Prices is actively looking for cobloggers.

not being able to resist, I e-mailed Kevin about my interest in blogging on the ALP blog and, here I am. that was certainly quick and rather painless.

am a 48-year-old, divorced, white male, struggling writer and activist, whom happens to be living homeless in Montpelier, Vermont. an old news article, from 2000, concerning some of my activism is available for reading here.

for the benefit of those whom might be interested in knowing: have lived homeless off and on over the previous thirty years, yet have only been homeless for a certain portion of those years of course, not the entire thirty. usually it was more off than on and, then, happening here and there maybe for a week, a month or sometimes for a year or so. except for my latest experience, which has last since July of 1997, going on nearly seven years now.

have experienced homelessness in several of its forms: e.g., on the street, sometimes roaming around or even hitching the country in order to keep moving, tenting out or even sleeping in the woods without any protection whatsoever, sleeping in cars and sometimes in hallways, stayed at homeless shelters -- though I no longer an doing the shelter scene since 1991, couch surfing (i.e., doubling up with someone who invites me in for one or more overnights). you get the idea.

my first experience with homeless was when I was 17-years-old, which I wrote last year and is posted on the Valencia Community College Course in the Humanities Website, here.

this time around most of it time under a roof so-to-speak; i.e., couch surfing from place to place; though I may end up tenting out once again very soon.

*update #3*: for additional information, perspective and insight concerning these and related matters, please check out: An Eye Opening Homeless Experience in Montpelier, Vermont; The Homeless Guy and, Crystal Evans: the thoughts and opinions of a homeless girl [recently housed, Crystal is now formerly homeless].

my online access is mostly via public access computers.

while I do so somewhat reluctantly for various reasons, as certain Wal-Mart (WM) practices cause major struggles of conscience for me, the fact is that I do sometime shop at WM out of pure necessity; though I do not apologize for it either, nor do I actually feel guilty doing so. however, if I could afford to shop elsewhere, I would; but I cannot so easily afford that luxury like some people are able to.

*update #2*: for example, the sturdy tent, quality sleeping bag and many other -- new condition -- outdoor survival gear items I needed to acquire without really having enough money to do so, were only affordable for me at WM.

it was also much easier too boot, as most everything I needed was there; instead of being forced to shop around for them, whether in looking for the best deal available on the exact same type of item or due to a store not having everything on hand that was needed. this saved me precious energy as well as time, both of which were in short supply at the time too.

these items were bought about five or so years ago, I cannot remember when exactly, but I had nowhere to stay and had to sleep outdoors. this gear made it possible, or least better, for me to camp outdoors with, so I had someplace to sleep and live. these same items are at the ready at a place where some very kind and understanding friends of mine allow me to store them as well as some of my other stuff (clothes and the like), which I have access to anytime I need to get to them.

it seems to be a catch 22.

if I did not shop at WM, I would have to go without certain items that are actually needed for survival, including clothing items and footwear (or else going around either wearing badly ragged clothes and footwear or otherwise having to go around naked and barefoot); at least when I can manage to afford them -- which is not too afford, even at WM. yet if I shop at WM, I am going against some of my strong convictions and at what cost.

the fact is that many of the things I happen to buy at WM are the same exact things sold at some of the more local stores (if they are even available there at all), made at the very same off-shore low or no wage places WM gets them from, but the local stores hike up the prices for their lions share.

buying local is not always truly buying local of course. in addition, some of these local shops do not always practice being a good or generous neighbors in various ways either. in certain cases, some so-called locals do not always provide livable or even wages much above minimum wage and no health insurance either. so buying local does not translate into an improve locally, except for the snotty locals who think they are better than their local have not's.

do not get me wrong though, I am not defending WM, but am merely pointing out certain observations and hypocrisies by the merchant trade in general, whatever size they may be or where they may be located or where the money really goes. of course each of them has their set of pat excuse as to why they cannot do better by their workers or the community, etc. yet I do harbor deep concerns over WM's labor practices and have seen their impact hit home close by, hurting people I know and care about.

however, that said, I have had my own up close and personal experiences with some of these very same practices in the past before by others in the merchant and other trades or industry, long before I ever knew or heard anything about WM.

yes, I think WM needs to be taken to task for what they do and also be set as an example; but if people think what they are doing is wrong, it should be clearly and repeatedly pointed out that they are not alone in some of what they do that has such a bad impact on so many people and workers as well as their communities, who each and all end up paying the price for their practices.

WM is not the first to do may of the things they do, they are merely the latest, though not necessarily the worse either, just possibly one of the biggest maybe.

am simply sharing some of my own thinking, experiences and observations concerning these matters so readers may be able to better clue into who the person behind this particular (and future) post(s) is. of course you can check out my blog as well: i.e., Norsehorse's Home Turf.

*update #1*: as time, energy and online allows me to, though I may not always choose to respond either directly or at all, I will try to keep up with any comments that may get posted to my blog posts and, while this is not a promise (or a threat either - smile) that it will happen, I may even get around to blogging another separate post in response to certain comments, suggestions or questions posed.

additionally, though I cannot promise to answer each e-mail either in a timely fashion or possibly ever, I can be reached at:

morganbrown
[at]
gmail [dot] com

unless otherwise requested by the sender to not share what they wrote, the contents of email I receive regarding either my ALP posts or WM in general may possibly be shared and answered within future blog posts contributed to this blog by myself.

in closing, due to the circumstances and limitations of the online access I have to work with, I may have to update my posts at time; editing for the purposes of clarification and readability or, on occasion, correcting information I posted. sometimes I will also update posts in order to provide additional information or links of related interest concerning the subject of a particular post. if I do so, every attempt will be made to post a notice within the post to indicate that it has been updated and, at the bottom, briefly what has been updated and why.

thank you for reading.

*note*: added another paragraph, as marked by *update #1*; another 5 paragraphs elsewhere, as marked by *update #2*; and yet another paragraph marked by *update #3 -- each as afterthoughts. in addition, within the rest of my initial post, I made several mostly minor edits for the purposes of clarification and readability only; added a tailing sentence referencing an old article and placing a link to it in the fourth paragraph of the post; just noticed a minor typo, nothing big, but could not resist correcting it. (me a perfectionst? heck no. hey, if I were, I would be getting everything done right the first time around! [wink & grin]): last updated on Saturday, May 1, 2004 at 10:49 PM [EDT].

RFID Comes to Dallas WM

2004-04-30T09:22:00.000-04:00

WM leads by a mile in the race for radio frequency inventory tracking:

Wal-Mart Stores and a number of its suppliers are using a Dallas distribution center as the starting point for a technology that's targeted to one day replace the bar code.

The radio frequency information (RFID) tags provide automatic tracking of pallets and cases of goods. Starting Friday, eight suppliers are to participate, using 21 products to be tracked. Wal-Mart said Thursday that it will have more than 100 suppliers using the tags by January....

This is NOT just another case of WM abusing its position to force technology on unwilling little suppliers!

Hogan said Target and Albertsons are taking on the technology, but Wal-Mart is pushing it most aggressively to its suppliers. Wal-Mart says the technology will help it keep costs low, which it can pass on to its shoppers.

David said the hope is that RFID tags will catch on more quickly than the dozen or so years it took barcodes to become common. The executives said driving the cost of tags to below 5 cents each will make them affordable and that the cost will be driven down as use of the tags grows.

"It's really about getting to this critical mass juncture so we can learn and roll faster," David said.

The executives said there are still elements of the system under development, such as finding a mechanical method of putting tags on products rather than applying them by hand. There is some inertia in that tag manufacturers are waiting for greater demand but that demand won't come until industry standards are refined.

Regardless, Dillman said Wal-Mart is pressing suppliers to get on board.

"We believe in it," she said.

A more business process view can be found in this article:

Participating Suppliers

The eight manufacturers participating in the first phase of the trial are The Gillette Company (NYSE: G - News), HP (NYSE, Nasdaq: HPQ - News), Johnson & Johnson, Kimberly-Clark (NYSE: KMB - News), Kraft Foods (NYSE: KFT - News), Nestle Purina PetCare Company, The Procter & Gamble Company (NYSE: PG - News) and Unilever (NYSE: UN - News, UL - News).

"We are grateful to these companies for their commitment to improving the supply-chain process," Dillman said. "It isn't easy being a pioneer. It takes time, it takes resources and it takes vision. But that's how progress is made and these eight companies are at the forefront of revolutionizing the way we all do business.

"Our other partners are making progress as well," she continued. "We'll be bringing additional suppliers into this trial in the weeks ahead. That's possible because companies are seriously exploring what this technology can do for them above and beyond anything they are doing to address our goal -- something we have advocated from the beginning."

"As an early adopter of RFID in our own operations, we can attest to the tremendous advantage it affords businesses and their customers," said Dick Lampman, HP senior vice president, Research and director, HP Labs. "We believe RFID will help retailers, manufacturers and other users reduce supply chain costs while speeding the flow of merchandise from the factory, through the distribution center and to the retail store, ultimately providing customers with better product availability."

The big boys are taking all the risks.

Don't Leave Your Wheelchair With the Greeter

2004-04-30T09:14:00.000-04:00

or it might be stolen by an elderly couple as they leave the store. WM has loaned the woman a temporary replacement.

WM Lays Off Workers

2004-04-30T09:12:00.000-04:00

35 of the about 400 workers in Somerset Township's WM were laid off in March and April, due to the store not performing as well as was expected. 7 of those were rehired at other WM's.

How common is this at WM and elsewhere? I have little data--but I know that as a retail practice, it is very common--even Nordstrom does this.

WM Receives Little Opposition

2004-04-30T09:03:00.000-04:00

I tend to think that the process of building of a new WM is usually uneventful. It is only with the recent drumming up of WM hysteria--also creating an expectation of difficulties--will a newspaper report that Ontario, Ohio had Little Fire at WM Talks:

Konya spoke at a special meeting for residents to express opinions about the proposed rezoning of land to allow a Wal-Mart superstore.

Seven others also spoke, four in favor of the rezoning and three opposed.

Peggy Toney said she had nothing against the retail giant, but felt the city was moving too fast. She suggested waiting for more impact studies.

"I'm worried about increased traffic affecting me even though I don't live real close. I think we're putting the cart before the horse on this matter," she said....

"I live right across the street from (the land in question) and I'm not opposed to the rezoning. Wal-Mart has done a lot to address the concerns of residents, and I appreciate that. I think they're a good neighbor...."

The hearing was presided over by at-large council member Ken Bender, acting as president pro temp. Bender said he was not surprised so few people were opposed to the superstore.

"I've heard very, very little opposition from the residents," he said.

Here are the minutes of a standard Ontario City Council meeting. Snooze.

Guest Post: Alex Danchanko

2004-04-30T08:52:00.000-04:00

Alex is 18 years old, and lives in Johnstown, PA. I would like to thank him for the major interest he has shown in discussing WM with all of us on ALP, and for the endless interaction in the comments. He has guest posted previously.

From reading this blog and discussing WM issues with other commenters, I have learned two things:

1. Most anti-WM statements are unfairly biased toward other businesses, and come from a desire to artificially boost competition. However, free trade seems to be the best regulator in this department. The result of free trade is the "natural selection" of businesses, in which the best ones survive. This ensures that we have the most successful businesses to deal with when we shop. In addition, employment issues are up to the local managers' supervision, so blame should not be placed on the entire WM chain. Besides, the best way to defeat a capitalist is with your wallet.

2. Many anti-WM arguments, mine included, are too quick to point out the failures of the local economy and use WM as a scapegoat. WM's completely legal practices should not be interrupted just because somebody misses its competitors. I have come to the conclusion that the economy is far too complicated to blame all disasters on WM, and that the attention one can draw would be beneficial. Personally, I neglected to consider that the loss of the steel industry is a more likely cause of Johnstown's economic decline. The new, expanded Super WM could help to return jobs and business that have been lost.

* Also, whomever used the term "commie" to describe an anti-WM position first may have been quick to judge, and it solved nothing, but I think it was an accurate reaction. By preventing a WM from opening by law, government is becoming involved in supply and demand, an element of a command economy, often associated with communism.

Guest Post: Sterling Wright

2004-04-29T14:25:00.000-04:00

In a previous post, Sterling (who works for WM) defended WM against charges of wrongdoing. In this off-the-cuff post, he defends WM's move into Chicago:

Wal-Mart's move into Chicago should be a very interesting subject for your readers. We did a demo store out in LA on Crenshaw. However, we have opted to go with the neighborhood format instead of the three tiered model we developed.

A lot of Chicago politicians fought us. Why did they fight? It is worth mentioning something about the blighted sections of urban neighborhoods. Chaotic streets with abandoned buildings, gang violence, and uncouth streetwalkers do not occupy the worst neighborhoods. The worst neighborhoods are empty. The streets are silent and lifeless. This is because commerce is absent.

Wal-Mart brings commerce. Far from being dangerous, if storefronts border the streets, and people are busy shopping, the sidewalks are the safest place to be. The key to successful city neighborhoods is vibrant street life.

Vibrant street life is not something that can be designed. It occurs in urban areas when the people have businesses, entertainment, and friends to go to. Few areas in many urban settings are completely without business and money. One of the things I notice about struggling neighborhoods in urban settings is that there are some nice cars around, and some people are dressed pretty well, but there are relatively few businesses. For whatever reason, there is not enough vibrant commerce occurring.

Wal-Mart's move into the Chicago will create an environment of safety in the near future. Remember, hardened criminals hate commerce. It brings cops, private security, and lots of people, which equals lots of attention.

"The Business of America," President Coolidge once remarked, "is business." So, why do local politicians like those in California or Chicago fight Wal-Mart? When was the the last time you heard about gang violence at Wal-Mart? Or a brutual assault. These incidents are rare when Wal-Mart is your neighborhood.

Another Way to Stop WM

2004-04-29T14:13:00.000-04:00

Here's an ingenious move to counter WM. The owners of a strip mall in Crystal River, FL set up an apartment in a vacant storefront required to be folded into the city in order to build a WM supercenter. Apparently, setting up residence will give them veto power over annexation:

Even with the brown slippers by the bed and the pill bottle on the nightstand, it's hard to see this strip mall as a home.

The neighbors include a title company, a beauty shop and the JMJ Oriental Food Mart. Traffic whizzes by 100 feet away on U.S. 19.

For this, Rodger and Renee McPheeters left their $345,000 waterfront home on Kings Bay.

The strip mall is part of 500 acres the city of Crystal River annexed this week, a first step in ushering in a new Wal-Mart Supercenter. City leaders hoped to annex the land without a vote....

Rodger McPheeters, 73, announced at the April 12 council meeting that he and his wife had moved into the strip mall as live-in managers.

After getting a certificate of occupancy from the county, they dragged in a queen-size bed, two wooden night stands and some lawn chairs, barely filling the 2,000-square-foot room.

The city suspected the couple had a motive for the relocation: impeding the annexation plan. So, on six consecutive days or evenings it sent a Crystal River police officer to investigate whether the McPheeterses were sleeping in their new home. In his log, the officer said he never saw them at the strip mall. He took pictures.

But he frequently saw lights on and cars in the driveway at the couple's waterfront home.

The veto power is formidable and clear:

Their opposition could put a wrench in the city's annexation plans, because state law says if registered voters living in the proposed annexation area are against it, city leaders must reconfigure the annexation map so those voters are not included.

The WM in Crystal River has been a long time coming. Sprawl-Busters notes a vote in October of 2003 that turned down the last plan. More:

For three years [since 2000], RealtiCorp has struggled to find a suitable location for the store. The company owns property along U.S. 19 north of Ozello Trail; and last year it selected a parcel just south of West Penn Drive, where the wetlands aren't as plentiful.

WM has had a hard time convincing a Catholic Church diocese to sell a needed sliver of land, even though the parishioners now see WM development as inevitable.

WM Debate at George Mason University

2004-04-29T09:38:00.000-04:00

The Broadside, the student daily at GMU, recently had an exchange by two students, neither of whom I know. The first piece, written by Nick Zinzer, a Broadside Columnist attacks WM for labor abuse:

Wal-Mart’s history is burdened with low wages, union busting and defiance of U.S. labor laws. Past actions highlight the contemptible methods the retailer uses to squash any attempt at union representation and their blatant disregard for labor rights.

Wal-Mart costs American taxpayers millions of dollars every year. State and federal aid goes to Wal-Mart employees annually through social spending. Since the company pays workers so little, employees are forced to accept public housing and food stamps. A report presented by Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.) estimates that taxpayers have to fork over $420,750 every year for a typical Wal-Mart store employing 200 people....

Aside from rampant domestic abuse, Wal-Mart is detrimental to America's image abroad. The retail giant imports products that exploit indigenous workers from developing countries and pays them poverty wages...

True patriotism means keeping jobs at home and providing employees with a sustainable wage. Wal-Mart generates more than enough income to do both...

The company apparently feels it is exempt from U.S. laws. Last October, more than 300 undocumented workers that Wal-Mart paid through a contractor to clean their stores were arrested. Federal officials involved with the investigation said that the undocumented workers were paid as little as $2 a day in some cases and were not given health insurance.

Sound familiar? You and I have read about these charges many times before, and they are snaking their way through college newspapers.

In case you haven't read the report by George Miller's staff ("WAL-MART: HIGH PRICES FOR AMERICAN WORKERS"), here's a link. In my professional opinion, the report is not sound social science, but will be trumpted as such to no end. (Mr. Miller ought to be ashamed).

Also, if you read the newspaper accounts of the illegal immigrant cleaners, you'd know that unnamed federal sources declared there was allegedly one case of one worker being paid $2. Also, how is it that workers in (not from) developing countries are made worse by WM exploiting them? Other than coercion from foreign governments, how can WM take better opportunities away from them?

The second article, by economics major Ryan Mariner, attacks Zinzer and other WM critics:

I have encountered many articles and op-ed pieces that claim big business exploits workers by not paying them a "living" wage. The vast majority of these articles are based upon falsehoods that have unfortunately been accepted by the general public as fact. Nick Zinzer’s op-ed piece "Wal-Mart Exploits Employees" is one such piece.

One of Zinzer’s underlying conclusions is that Wal-Mart needs to pay its employees more. Yet he does not back up this idea with any sound economic logic...

Government intervention into free markets has done more to lower the standard of living then low wages ever will. For instance, government restrictions on imports raise the cost of goods for all Americans. Ironically, this is also a point Zinzer refers to as being "true patriotism." The irony is painfully obvious. Less government regulation, and not artificially raised wages, will help these low-income people afford more goods.

Admirable as it is for an undergraduate economics major to get involved in such dabates, I find Mr. Mariner's refutation rather weak.

Query: Does a reliance on proven fact and tested logic leave economists at a disadvantage when arguing against non-economists who use emotive terms like "rampant domestic abuse", "expoit", and "contemptible"? What if Mr. Mariner were to call Mr. Zinzer a greedy union pimp who wants consumers and low-skilled American workers to suffer so his pals can get $1.50 more an hour? What if he were to call Mr. Zinzer an xenophobe who wants to keep foreigners as low-skilled and as poor as possible? What if he were to call unions vicious protection rackets? What if here were to imply that Mr. Zinzer is a liar and absolutely clueless? Would that be more effective in the debate over WM?

Sadly, yes.

WM Sucks Forum

2004-04-28T11:23:00.000-04:00

Until today, I had never visited walmartsucks.com. I thought it would be a standard hate site, but it's far more intruiging than that. It is actually a forum populated mostly by former and current WM employees who want to gripe or boast about WM, its customers, other employees, and everything else. There's much to be harvested from this forum, including the dumbest questions customers have asked WM employees. (Warning, rather crude language).

WM Talks to Communities: April 2004

2004-04-28T10:07:00.000-04:00

Many sincere critics see WM as unwilling to talk to local governments or local non-government groups; they believe that WM is rarely willing to modify plans to meet the legal and extra-legal demands of residents. But this is bunk. In fact, WM meets with concerned citizens and local governments so frequently that I find it almost worthless to link to stories about WM's activities. Here are three examples, all from a Google News search of "WalMart".

For instance, in Florida, we find WM in North Pinellas county not only discussing traffic issues and the size of the planned buffer between the store and a nearby residental neighborhood, but also the finance of a boardwalk along the adjacent wetlands area.

In Utah, the Davis County Clipper reports that the average WM wage in Utah is $9.87 per hour. This information was released by WM in a series of ongoing meetings with concerned local residents that seem to be stretching late into the night.

In Chillicothe City, Missouri, WM is discussing appropriate landscaping around the store perimeter but resisting landscape diamonds throughout the parking lot.

Also note that, contrary to the insistence of some commentators, WM seems not to have run out of rural and suburban areas in which to place its stores.

Guest Post: Frederick Ochsenhirt

2004-04-28T06:54:00.000-04:00

On A Bluegrass Blog, Frederick Ochsenhirt finds ALP and tries to understand WM hatred. The following is a reprint of his post:

Wal-Mart Weblog

A group of bloggers, including Kevin Brancato of Truck and Barter, has started a weblog dedicated to all things Wal-Mart. I saw it via Virginia Postrel's weblog, and was eventually led to this post on Catallarchy discussing an Esquire article (subscribers only), which notes that, popular media accounts to the contrary (which imply that Everybody Hates Wal-Mart), Wal-Mart is, in fact, wildly popular. This got me thinking about Wal-Mart again. Why do they inspire such vitriol from those who could just choose not to shop there? I see a few reasons that aren't all that connected to Wal-Mart itself:

Elitism: It's undeniable, at least to me, that a significant percentage of the Wal-Mart boycotters are put off by the places Wal-Mart locates and the people who shop there. It's the blue state elites vs. the red state consumers. Overgeneralized, sure, but those that do all their shopping at quirky boutiques or Pottery Barn and Williams-Sonoma, for that matter, are unlikely to have all that much sympathy for someone who wants to save money on merchandise from Wal-Mart in rural Arkansas. They see Wal-Mart expansion as a way for "those people" to invade their cloistered world. Wan't proof? Why hate Wal-Mart but not Best Buy or another bix box store that sells to a higher-end market? We don't call them limousine liberals for nothing. Of course, the elites see themselves as protecting the little people from themselves, which leads us to...

Labor activists and fellow travelers: You won't get rich working at Wal-Mart. You won't get free health insurance. You probably can't support a family on a Wal-Mart salary. Of course, you can't do any of those things working for another company in the discount retail space, either, nor frankly should you be able to. A realistic assessment of the relative contribution of these jobs to the American economy should suggest as much, but nobody wants to admit that some jobs are just less valuable than others. Wal-Mart does provide health insurance, and I don't see why they should be expected to do it for free. Vastly increasing Wal-Mart's operating costs would do little to help its employees (many of whom would lose their jobs as Wal-Mart's costs increased), and would certainly harm many who are able to live the way they do only by saving money at Wal-Mart. That's never stopped those who believe that capitalist enterprises are pots of free money waiting for the taking by The People. Similar in many ways to...

Urban Planning Fantasists: Like the labor activists who believe you can conjure up jobs paying $40,000 with free health care for Wal-Mart employees, some Wal-Mart haters think you can wish away half a century's experience with flight to the suburbs. This group sees the success of Wal-Mart as both contribututor to and beneficiary of suburban "sprawl." They argue that Wal-Mart could not succeed but for government subsidies to roads and other infrastructure, tax give-backs, construction of homes further and further away from the cities by shifting costs to existing residents, and so forth. I don't have statistics, but I'd guess that most governments offering explicit subsidies to Wal-Mart do so believing that they'll get more than they give through increased job growth and tax revenue. The other "subsidies" are inherent in the system, and don't have much to do with Wal-Mart specifically. I have long believed, however, that even if you limited the subsidies, you'd still have sprawl. People moved from the cities for a reason: they want to avoid crowding, crime, congestion, bad schools; they want to gain larger homes with lawns to play in, they want good schools for their kids and the recreation opportunities that go with suburban life. Many, many people simply don't see urban life as something to be praised, and gladly accept suburban sprawl as a bearable burden, if not an asset.

Downtown Defenders, or Blinded by the Haze
of History: This is another class of fantasists, who see Wal-Mart as a threat to the mom and pop stores of a vibrant downtown. They're fantasists because the downtowns they praise don't in any large measure, actually exist. Downtowns have been dying for a long time, threatened not so much by Wal-Mart as by population shifts from the cities to the suburbs. In addition, many of the areas served by Wal-Mart are suffering from economic shifts and dislocation of workers from 19th and mid-20th century industries to a 21st century economy. The downtowns that have flourished are those that have filled market niches, filled with retailers that serve markets not served by big box merchandisers (and which are not threatened by Wal-Mart in any event). Other downtowns have shifted from a retail focus to other areas of economic activity. The idea that if Wal-Mart went away tomorrow, small downtowns would thrive is silly. It may be true that a general merchandiser can't compete from downtown on price, but there are many other businesses and ways to differentiate one's market offering.

NIMBYs: Never discount the power of NIMBYs and BANANAs. This isn't so much an attack on Wal-Mart as a wish that land not currently used for productive economic activity remain thus evermore, at no cost to those that benefit from the open space. Wal-Mart's just a convenient target, but ultimately this seems to be a free rider problem, although many NIMBYs also fall into categories listed above.

There are many other issues related to Wal-Mart, of course, and Wal-Mart certainly doesn't deserve unqualified praise (I wouldn't call them a Randian hero, for example). Real economic analysis has been sorely lacking, and it's nice to see the blog as a central repository.

Decaying Body Found in Car at Wal-Mart...

2004-04-28T00:35:00.000-04:00

Reports of a foul odor emanating from a car in a Wal-Mart parking lot prompted police to investigate.

The Flagler County Sheriff's Office is investigating a suspicious death after a body was discovered Tuesday afternoon in a parked car at the Wal-Mart Supercenter in Palm Coast.

Maybe if Wal-Mart paid decent wages to attract qualified security, its parking lot wouldn't become a dumping ground for criminals. (See? Anything can become a source of vitriol with the proper pretext.)

---------
Updated

Some WM employees are decent, hard-working people. Some are dirty rats.

2004-04-27T19:23:00.000-04:00

Be careful what you shop for at Wal-Mart. If the cashiers, in all of their worldy wisdom, decide that you might use those products to do something illegal, they just might call the cops:

Women charged after shopping for meth supplies at Wal-Mart

Now, these people may be guilty, but all too often this sort of thing happens to innocent customers who are the victims of overzealous chain store employees.

It's especially common in the photo processing department, where customers have had to deal with the cops and/or the FBI after employees found "suspicious" naked photos of the people's own infants and toddlers or, as in the case of one individual I know, photos of innocent objects that looked to the employee like "bomb parts."

I suppose we can only expect this sort of thing to become more common as the federal government encourages all to become better snitches on our neighbors. Wal-Mart gets no praise from me when it goes along with government schemes like this.

Meijer fights back

2004-04-27T15:16:00.000-04:00

Grocery chain Meijer is essentially 'under siege' in a few Michigan markets with the opening of a new Wal-Mart supercenter nearby. However, instead of merely relying on price cutting as a defense, they have a strategy in place.

By fall, consumers should see several interior enhancements meant to make shopping sense.

For instance, customers have always complained about having to walk clear to the back of the stores to visit the pharmacy. To remedy the inconvenience, the drugs department will move to the front of Meijer.

Meijer also plans on grouping "like" departments to compliment each other, so that shoppers aren't having to walk around the store in search of items.

This is an interesting example, because not only do they call out for support from politically powerful unions (which they employ from), but they also have a plan in place - 'smart' remodeling. This is an interesting idea, since while Wal-mart concentrates on price and store location, an attempt at department combination is unusual - in fact, retailers often rely on the need to move around the store quickly.

This could mean a great deal of difference - should consumers respond to this, it could be duplicated, but the key factor is the amount of time that the Meijer's chain can take advantage of this.

David Karjanen in Newsday

2004-04-27T14:09:00.000-04:00

The media tide against WM just keeps swelling. I have only so much time to discuss this opinion piece, every sentence of which needs to be dissected:

Wal-Mart has gained a reputation for destroying small-town main streets by putting other retailers out of business, and building sprawling stores that generate traffic and pollution.

Question to readers: Do you always trust everybody's opinion? I don't. Reputation is built from opinion. I would suggest to the author to tell us what small part of the world thinks WM has such a reputation; what he hears from a limited group of other people is not fact.

[I]t was citizens of the small Los Angeles County city of Inglewood who showed that the retailing Goliath can be defeated.

And it was the citizens of Contra Costa, by overturning a supercenter ban enacted by elitist legislators, that showed that people actually want Wal-Mart. We're not picking and choosing our anecdotes, are we?

[WM] spent over $1 million gathering signatures, advertising and engaging in other PR gambits to overturn a city council ruling and to exempt the project from any further review.

The effort backfired. On April 6, residents rejected Wal-Mart's initiative 7,049 to 4,575.

Are we supposed to get the impression that WM didn't want to work with the City Council? Isn't it true that the City Council had already stonewalled WM for over a year? Isn't it true that the 11,500 votes only represented 29% of the 40,000+ registered voters, and that in a town of over 100,000. 7,000 residents telling 93,000 where they can shop and work is not really a prime candidate of how democracy is supposed to work? Also, later on the author mentions, "despite proposing a development that may meet or exceed environmental and land-use criteria...." Why was the City Council trying to "review" the WM if it meet all the predetermined criteria? Because this debate is about issues outside the control of most city governments.

Why all the controversy? The main difference is scale: Wal-Mart dwarfs most competitors. But, it is often argued, Wal-Mart brings jobs and tax revenue. Right? Wrong.

The stores create jobs initially, but most studies show that the jobs generated are merely lower-paid replacements for ones lost due to the competition. Smart-growth advocates note that Wal-Mart's developments generate traffic, noise and further car-dependent land uses.

The difference is clearly vision and planning, not size. Also, up to Copernicus, most studies showed that the sun revolved around the earth. Correct studies showed the reverse to be true. What do the correct studies show about WM and job creation? That, on net, it creates jobs. Little is known about the pattern of changes in wages.

Cumulatively, these effects have ruined downtowns and undermined local economies. As a result, sales and property tax values can actually decline in a city as competing commercial space becomes vacant and blight develops.

The question is NOT about "can actually" happen but what has happened, and is likely to happen. Has WM caused blight in small towns across the US? Answer in the affirmative or negative, please. If in the affirmative, please come up with a source that documents which small towns have been so hard hit. I haven't seen studies showing this. Has anybody???

Overall, research on the company and communities is demonstrating that the municipal revenue and job creation often touted by company officials fail to meet expectations. Over time many communities have felt more harm than help after Wal-Mart came to town. So, can anyone blame the people of Inglewood for not embracing the nation's largest retailer with open arms?

That expectations are too high is probably true. But flowery language that "communities" feel anything is ridiculous. Are people who shop and work at WM worse off than before WM entered? Note that I am not asking whether small store owners are worse off; in most cases, they probably are. It's not small store owners don't matter; it's that they should not be given monopoly provider status by the rulings of a city council. With the restriction of WM, we have a case of concentrated benefits to small store owners, and a dispersion of costs (the savings not had by WM consumers). It's much more worthwhile for the small store owners to lobby local politicians--and show up at meetings--than it is for the consumer.

One solution is to have Wal-Mart and communities actually sit down at the table and attempt to have an open discussion about the issues. But if events in Inglewood are any indication, the company seems to be more intent on having its own way - regardless.

As chronicled on this blog, WM "sits down" all over the country with city governments. It tried to do so in Inglewood and Contra Costa. Just google news WalMart, and you will find a dozen cases of WM discussing planning issues with local governments. The author seems intent on having his own conclusion supported - regardless.

Best WM Headline of the Day

2004-04-27T13:20:00.000-04:00

Of all the news outlets, the Scotsman had the best headline for the WM sales release:

Sales Blow at Wal-Mart
The world’s biggest retailer, Wal-Mart Stores, said its April like-for-like sales were tracking near the low end of its four to six per cent target growth range.

Modified Disclaimer

2004-04-27T10:39:00.000-04:00

With the addition of Shawn McNaughton (who works in a WM store) and Angus McPhee (who works outside of, but with WM), ALP must change its dislaimer, which now reads: Those of us who work for WM admit it freely. I wonder if the unions who claim to have the "common worker's interest" at heart will be willing to listen calmly to people who like working for WM.

Two WM Critics

2004-04-27T06:57:00.000-04:00

Many bloggers have written on WM. It's about time we catch up with two of them.

In WalMart's way to the future, Larry Lessig finds that WM's 88 cent music download is overly restrictive in terms of service.

This is the real aim of the “war” against “piracy.” Focus the attention of the world on “pirates” and then “solve” that problem in a way that effectively removes all other creative rights for consumers. This is a total perversion of copyright law, as the late Professor Lyman Ray Patterson showed. The law, intended to regulate competitors, is now a tool for controlling consumers.

This is a VERY serious criticism of WM.

On the Industry Standard, Thomas Goetz unfolds WM's new PR strategy. However, he needs to back up his claims--WM wages are "poverty-level", WM has "artificial" market power, WM has "unfair leverage--with some data about the real world:

This seems to me a classic non sequitur. To translate: "If we paid our staff poverty-level wages, our customers would stop buying things here." Well, no: that's not true at all. Indeed, that's part of *why* WalMart has managed to get its prices so low - at times artificially low. Not by streamlining supply lines or managing their supplies better to meet demand, but by artificially imposing their will onto a market. Ie, they demand that Acme Widgets sell them widgets for 16 cents, even though it costs Acme 15 cents to just get them out the door. If Acme refuses, Walmart will move on to their competitor. So Acme caves, slashes its own employee wages, and Walmart gets its price. That's unfair leverage. And if part of that Low, Low Price comes because Walmart pays it's own employees so little, well, that's the story Walmart doesn't want to let get into the press.

Does he really think all WM-supplier relatiomships are like this? Why? I cannot take criticism--WM "imposing their will"--like this very seriously. It rings true to some people, but for those of us without an instinctive dislike of real-world markets, it sounds more like scare mongering. The classic Fast Company article showing WM's love-hate relationship with a few suppliers has apparently let some people feel justified in believing and stating whatever they want about ALL WM suppliers.

Guest Post: Shawn McNaughton

2004-04-26T14:01:00.000-04:00

This is an updated version of a rant on Shawn's own blog. You can see the original at his site at http://hitoma.com/blog/.)

I'm a Wal-Mart employee and, although it's merely while I get my I.S. Degree, it's not a bad job. Sure, it's not perfect, but what job is? It's actually kind of sad to see a decent place so mistreated.

Take this weblog, for example...

Admittedly, ALP purports to be about the best and worst of WM. This is a fair enough statement; the author even comments on the outrageous vitriol of one newspaper reporter. Yet from what I saw as I looked through the archives, the good news was rare and unimportant (a WM opens in Japan), while the worst was rampant (About how WM's health plan doesn't cover pre-existing conditions, what WM's responsibility is in health care, dress code firing over slightly disturbing religious attire, Wal-mart going up against Microsoft...). Let's examine the negatives:

WM helping Sun against Microsoft by offering an item for sale? Does that mean that by selling Pepsi supermarkets pounded the nails in Coca Cola's coffin? Not quite. And after recent events, doesn't Microsoft control Sun?

Dress code issues are not WM-specific. He wore a turban-style headdress, a priest's shirt, and many crosses. Whether or not this is directly required by his religion, doesn't a place of business have a right to assign a dress code to shape morale and help customers identify employees, especially when other retail chains and fast food joints have before them? Since many fast food chains fire employees for wearing non-uniform yet socially acceptable clothes, this isn't a big surprise. In fact, his argument could be reversed - if Wal-mart were to allow an employee to dress in that fashion, would it not be endorsing his religion? Wal-mart is the private sector, but because of scale it could be an issue.

Health care is a bit of a sticking point. I turned down the plan since I'm covered as a college student, but it's not too bad, unless you want a super-low deductible. And EVERY health plan has clauses against preexisting conditions. After all, if they regularly covered preexisting conditions, what is stopping someone with a condition - perhaps not even a terminal condition - from taking advantage of the ability to change plans?

It's just sad that Wal-mart is attacked for this junk and not for meaningful issues, which do exist but are primarily internal. Understaffing, promotion bias (extremely limited, but never avoidable), and other issues do exist, but they don't surface.

Thomas Sowell on WM

2004-04-26T10:51:00.000-04:00

While discussing the criminalizing of business in California, Thomas Sowell hits on WM and Jesse Jackson:

According to the Chronicle columnist, Wal-Mart was "trying to bully its way into another targeted community." Putting an issue to a vote is called "bullying" when business does it, and the community where it wants to locate is called a "target."

Among the other rhetorical flourishes of this indictment is that Wal-Mart tries to "crush the competition." What does such purple prose amount to? That some people prefer shopping at Wal-Mart rather than in competing stores, so that some of the latter may end up going out of business as a result.

In all this venting of spleen against Wal-Mart in the Chronicle column, there is no mention of the cynical role of community activists in depriving a low-income community of jobs and taxes. By flexing their muscle against Wal-Mart, Jesse Jackson et al have shown that people who want to locate businesses in minority communities have to get their OK -- and that OK will not come cheap.

The ability to extort money from big businesses is a major part of Jesse Jackson's operations. Obstruction and name-calling are the weapons and hard cash is the pay-off.

All this works only because of those who will believe race hustlers and those who will keep up a steady drumbeat of anti-business rhetoric. California has plenty of both, which may be why there are only one-sixth as many Wal-Marts per capita in California as in Oklahoma.

Don't Hold Back Your Anger

2004-04-26T09:37:00.000-04:00

In Wal Mart, Why To Stay Away the Chi Senshi (in the Vallejo News) pulls no punches--even the illegal ones. It is a hard-to-beat example of discourse built upon emotion and unverified belief. The author knows so little about WM, and hates it so much:

A few weeks ago, before the primary ballot in March, I had a job with ACORN, an independant organization that organizes rallies and marches for the common worker... The following is the truths of Wal Mart that I realized at this job.

Not only does Wal Mart want to open supercenters in California -- about 40 of them, that will be 3-4 football fields in size (approx 20 acres or more) --, they also are anti-abortion, pro-censorship, and filthy stinking liars....

There are people in this state that think Wal Mart will be a good thing for the state, that it's cheap prices will be helpful to the student or parent on a cheap budget. Maybe right now, because all that most people want is instant gratification, it's cheap prices are helpful, but when all other competition is out of the way, the prices are inflated horribly....

I pass over the comment about liars, as being a self-fisking, and wish to focus on the idea that WM inflates prices once it eliminates the competition. First, it does not kill all competition. Second, even in areas where it has put its major competitors out of business, it has never raised prices. Could it do so in the future? Sure, if it is willing to alienate all its customers, leave a clear opening for its competiion, and probably bankrupt itself.

Such price actions also clearly violate the Robinson-Patman Act. However, this act causes as much trouble as it pretends to solve, and is not a "solution" to anything. This is part of the reason it is no longer enforced literally:

passed by the U.S. Congress in 1936 to supplement the Clayton Antitrust Act. The act, advanced by Congressman Wright Patman, forbade any person or firm engaged in interstate commerce to discriminate in price to different purchasers of the same commodity when the effect would be to lessen competition or to create a monopoly. Sometimes called the Anti-Chain-Store Act, this act was directed at protecting the independent retailer from chain-store competition, but it was also strongly supported by wholesalers eager to prevent large chain stores from buying directly from the manufacturers for lower prices.

WM's enemies show their true colors.

2004-04-26T00:55:00.000-04:00

The jerks on the White Plains and New Rochelle, NY, city councils referenced in the article Mr. Brancato linked to below have some nerve:

White Plains officials were less adamant in their opposition to a Wal-Mart, but still expressed concern that it would not lure shoppers to the city. Rather, several said, it would duplicate a niche already filled by Sears, which moved to the city's Galleria mall in August, and Target, which opened in October across from the old Sears site.

"We certainly don't need to fill up downtown with discount stores," said Councilman Glen Hockley.

I'm sure it's all the same to Glen Hockley, but to say that Sears and Wal-Mart fill the same niche is absurd. This seems to be nothing more than a ploy to keep anyone below a certain income level out of Mr. Hockley's sight at all times.

And then there's this bit from Councilwoman Marianne Sussman of New Rochelle:

"They are not a business that I feel we could be proud of to have in town," Sussman said, "Both because of their employment practices and the nature of the retailer." She said she wanted a more upscale retailer.

So apparently Wal-Mart's "employment practices" are bad for unspecified reasons, yet it's okay for Marianne Sussman to force people with lower incomes to have less because of her personal preference for "upscale retailers."

What unmitigated evil.

Wanted: Free Access to Trade Publications

2004-04-25T14:36:00.000-04:00

In order to take my analysis of WM to the next level, I need the best data I can get my hands on. As an Almeda, CA councilman said last year, "I've got mounds of material, and there is a lot of data that I studied that was basically propaganda." However, good data and reports about WM are not tax-funded, and hence are not provided "free" like government macroeconomic data.

Anybody out there have industry reports like these they'd be willing to share with, or would like reviewed by, an economics Ph.D. candidate?

If so, please email kbrancat-at-gmu.edu.

I'll also renew the call for anybody who wants to send in a guest post, or become a blogger on ALP.

WM as Lynchpin to Economic Development

2004-04-25T11:21:00.000-04:00

Usually WM is castigated for allegedly gutting downtown areas. Sometimes many small businesses close when WM competes, but that's not the complete picture. Sometimes other businesses flock to the site of a new WM, seen as a goldmine in traffic--an anchor for stores, only not in a shopping mall. The Fairbanks Daily News-Miner provides an excellent summary of one such case:

Wal-Mart's arrival, coupled with its plans to expand to a 250,000-square-foot supercenter format to sell groceries within a couple of years, adds a new dynamic to Fairbanks' retail market.

Representatives from some of the city's other major businesses, such as Fred Meyer, Sears and Safeway, said they will have to rely on their niche markets to compete with a company both loved and loathed for its dedication to selling products cheaper than anyone else.

The other strategy for competitors appears to be taking advantage of Wal-Mart's business traffic, as evidenced by the slew of new construction scheduled for the area surrounding the retailer's site off the Johansen Expressway.

Fred Meyer officials said they plan to put out to bid this week a project for a new, 178,000-square-foot building with the same format as its Airport Way store. The new store will replace the College Road location, selling everything from clothes and electronics to groceries, said company spokeswoman Mary Lofton.

"If all goes well, we'll be breaking ground in May," she said.

Lowe's Home Improvement Warehouse has also submitted an application to build a 139,773-square-foot store in the area. First National Bank Alaska is adding its third Fairbanks branch next to Wal-Mart in an area that's seems poised to become the city's new retail core.

For now, Lofton said trying to quantify the impact of a Wal-Mart on the existing Fred Meyer stores is next to impossible.

"I can tell you that we have many, many communities where we compete with Wal-Mart," she said.

[Emphasis added.] Many people overestimate the accuracy of economic impact statements; "next to impossible" is not quite right, but is much closer to the truth than economic forecasters would like to admit.

The article also discusses other common issues of lower prices and lower wages:

As she unloaded a cart full of groceries into her car in the Fred Meyer West parking lot, Dina Kelly said she thinks Wal-Mart will give lower-income families a break.

"I'm a mother of three, so it's not like I want to go to Fred Meyer and pay $30 every time my son needs a pair of summer shorts," Kelly said.

Cutting costs

Wal-Mart's cost-saving culture is evident throughout its new Fairbanks location.

When shoppers start coming in at 8 a.m. Wednesday, they'll be greeted by a bare concrete sales floor. The store does not plan to add tile.

"It will save us a half a million dollars a year just on floor costs," said Erickson....

However, Fairbanksans seem more than willing to take a Wal-Mart job, which comes with a starting wage of $9 an hour or more, depending on experience and the position.

Erickson said the store received 2,200 applications to fill about 500 positions.

Last week, a Wal-Mart human resources worker sat at a table in the training room with a stack of Alaska driver's licenses, starting employee files while the new hires filled several rows of chairs and watched a video about the company's history.

The manager started at WM stocking toilet paper:

Erickson looks at his own employment record with Wal-Mart in evaluating the company's treatment of workers. A man who insists he's not smart, Erickson started in a store in Gillette, Wyo., "stocking toilet paper."

A manager saw he had potential and began mentoring him and telling him about the benefits of a Wal-Mart career.

"Wal-Mart's history just blew me away," he recalled.

Erickson eventually wound up as a manager at the Dimond Center Wal-Mart in Anchorage, then was offered the job of leading the new Fairbanks store.

Even a toilet paper stocker has opportunities at Wal-Mart, he said.

Earlier in the article is something I had not heard about WM before--some of them run out of stock soon after opening:

New Wal-Marts in other communities, Erickson said, have made the mistake of not being prepared to replace the goods sold in the initial onslaught of sales. He's determined not to let that happen in Fairbanks.

"I take that as a personal challenge," Erickson said.

WM Opposition Roundup

2004-04-24T10:59:00.000-04:00

Household Incomes in Westchester County, NY are some of the highest ever recorded in human history, which is why the city council believes another discount store is not needed. Here's the skinny: "We have one shot to get it right," [Councilman] Stowe said. "If we get the wrong store in there, then the entire downtown folds."

The Palm Springs, CA City Council is fine with the development of a new WM, but neighboring Cathedral City is worried about traffic. A WM spokesman claims "The Cathedral City [WM] is closing and they’re not happy about it." See also the Desert Sun's multipart special report that, "takes a look at what that will mean to Coachella Valley consumers, and retail and grocery competitors."

WTNH reports on a union/resident demonstration against WM in Hartford, Connecticut. It includes useful information, and an asshat response by an activist, who clearly doesn't know the meaning of "hourly":

"Please make sure that you abide by the living wage that was established in 1999," Johnson said. "Living wage without benefits is $11.55 an hour, and with benefits it's $9.54."

A spokesperson from Wal-Mart tells News Channel 8 the average wage for hourly associates in Connecticut is $10.92 an hour.

"Maybe they're factoring the CEO into that average," says Jon Green, Director of Connecticut Working Families, a coalition that pushes for economic justice.

Green says Wal-Mart doesn't help workers care for themselves or their families. "One of Wal-Mart worker who lives in the neighborhood told us she's been at Wal-Mart for three years as an associate, and her wages are now about $8.60 and hour."

He says that employee's children are covered by the state supported HUSKY health insurance. She could not afford the company coverage. According to the Wal-Mart spokesperson, their individual insurance is $15.25 every pay period. Family coverage is $66.25 per period.

What was the woman earning before she signed up to work for Wal-Mart? How were her children insured? How is she--or the taxpayers--worse off?

The Omaha World-Herald was surpised to find 76% of local businesses in Papillion supporting the entry of a WM supercenter:

Mallory said he was not convinced by opponents of the project who attacked the Wal-Mart corporation for a list of alleged sins, including union busting, paying subsistence wages and breaking labor laws.

"There were times during that meeting that I was starting to believe that Wal-Mart was responsible for the entire decline of Western civilization," Mallory said. "And I don't think that's the case."

Mallory said he respects the opinion of neighbors near the site, who say the 24-hour supercenter would lower their property values, bring trash and traffic to quiet neighborhoods, and endanger schoolchildren crossing streets.

But he said that 72nd Street is a major commercial corridor through the metro area and that its southern end is destined for commercial development.

In other news, a WM manager is spending a weekend on the roof as a fundraising event for Children's Miracle Network. They're hoping to raise $5000 by selling water balloons, which are to be used to try to hit the manager.

WM's Wages

2004-04-23T16:41:00.000-04:00

In October of 2003, BusinessWeek published Is Wal-Mart too Powerful?, which contains an enormous amount of useful information. It also follows the debate over the wages paid to WM workers:

America's largest private employer, is widely blamed for the sorry state of retail wages in America. On average, Wal-Mart sales clerks -- "associates" in company parlance -- pulled in $8.23 an hour, or $13,861 a year, in 2001, according to documents filed in a lawsuit pending against the company. At the time, the federal poverty line for a family of three was $14,630. Wal-Mart insists that it pays competitively, citing a privately commissioned survey that found that it "meets or exceeds" the total remuneration paid by rival retailers in 50 U.S. markets.

I am not going to debate here whether wages are too high or too low. Why should I? How can I? There is no room for debate, because there is no clear data. Which claim is true--that its wages are poverty level, or that they are competitive--or are both true?

We never want to look at just wages; we want to look at total compensation--wages+benefits+vacation etc. One benefit usually not included in the calculation of WM compensation is the 10% discount employees get by shopping at WM. How does that affect their total compensation compared to a union worker at a grocery store?

Wal-Mart Takes on Fringe Banking?

2004-04-23T15:37:00.000-04:00

The Press Enterprise reports (registration required) that:

Although there has been no announcement nor advertising, the megaretailer has begun cashing paychecks of up to $1,000 at many of its California stores for a $3 fee - far below what most corner check-cashing outlets charge.

It later continues:

Eagles, which is just a couple of blocks from Wal-Mart, charges 2 percent for paychecks up to $1,000 - that's $4 for a $200 check or $20 for a $1,000 check.

Check cashing outlets rely on the uneducated or the undisciplined for their revenue. Pretty deplorable. It's high time a big company like Wal-Mart put this industry into its crosshairs.

Incredibly, most of the article focuses on how the competition will hurt the check-cashing outlets. A single guarded quote from a consumer group rep suggests that Wal-Mart's move "may" be good for consumers.

WM Suppliers of the Year

2004-04-23T10:50:00.000-04:00

The buzz-generating Fast Company article that puts bitter ex-executives and failed WM suppliers in the spotlight can only be countered with far more numerous stories of success.

WM has awarded suppliers of the year honors to several companies--Tracfone in electronics and Applica in small appliances are among others that have not yet been released.

Some Union Imagery

2004-04-23T09:33:00.000-04:00

We know that unions want to take down WM badly, but that WM employees consistently vote against becoming unionized. I think its because most WM employees don't hate WM, while unions do, as evidenced by their propaganda:

If you owned, managed, or worked in WM, would you want to deal with a union that thinks your organization is a monster?

How Many WalMart Employees have Health Insurance?

2004-04-23T09:21:00.000-04:00

More than 90% of WM employees have health insurance. 10% do not.

That's 1,260,000 WM employees with insurance, 140,000 without.

(From page 23 of this study). Note that rougly half of these insured are insured outside the company plan--by themselves, their spouses, other jobs, universities, etc. "

Does anybody have comparable data for other large retail store chains?

Guest Post: Sterling Wright

2004-04-23T06:16:00.000-04:00

Sterling Wright, an employee of WM, ardently defends his company from charges of wrongdoing:

Wal-Mart is not in the practise of abusing labour laws, hiring illegals, or [offering a] low rate of pay and benefits. All employees of Wal-Mart are treated fairly. Any alleged abuses against Wal-Mart in the past were not a corporate decision. Rather, any violations made were errors on the part of individual associates. Moreover, no case has ever been brought against Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart is relentless, not ruthless.

American jobs are not being lost to foreign sweatshops. Many American jobs have been outsourced because of poor American productivity, complex laws that make no practical business sense, and because of intense competition.

It is important that American's recoganise that they vote with their pocket book. The only way to keep any consumer loyal is by offering the highest quality goods and services at the lowest possible price.

Wal-Mart does monitor any potential labour abuses by it suppliers. Thanks to jobs supplied directly and indirectly by Wal-Mart, China is one of the fastest growing economies in the world. Its middle class has grown by more than 3% in the past year. The value of the currency is stabilising and improving.

Yes, Wal-Mart exports 20% of all Chinese goods. And yes, the majority of these goods are consumed by working Americans. We are all part of a global economy.

The next target of Wal-Mart's insatiable greed? Your neighborhood Microsoft.

2004-04-22T23:04:00.000-04:00

If Microsoft's dominance in the operating system business declines, Wal-Mart may play an important role:

Sun says it has finalized its agreement with Microtel Computer Systems to sell machines loaded with Sun's Java Latest News about Java Desktop System on Walmart.com. And Sun is confident that its JDS version 2.0 will be another nibble toward its goal of taking a big bite out of Microsoft'sRelevant Products/Services from Microsoft Windows dominance.

Blimpie Xpress

2004-04-22T14:44:00.000-04:00

The Ocala Star-Banner (!) celebrates the opening of the first two Blimpie stores within WalMart:

The No. 3 sub chain behind segment leaders Subway and Quizno's returned to Marion County this week in an alliance with the No. 1 discount retailer that should put the eatery's new Xpress concept in about 150 Wal-Marts around the United States in the next two years....

Mears said Blimpie developed the new Xpress concept just for its Wal-Mart outlets. Because they'll be open more hours than the typical sub shop - 7 a.m.-11 p.m., seven days - these stores will serve breakfast, lunch, snacks and dinner.

"We have popcorn and freezies, something we don't normally sell," Mears said. "But they're items Wal-Mart's customers want. Same thing with pasta. We don't normally sell pasta dishes but we do here."

The Xpress fare also offers grilled panini subs, wraps and special low-carbohydrate selections.

One man was disappointed they don't sell french fries. As the #1 grocer, and in-store purveyors of fast-food, could WM somehow be found liable for American obesity? UPDATE: If the kids get to fat by eating at Blimpies, WM and others will sell them clothes that fit.

Setting Smiley Aflame

2004-04-22T12:16:00.000-04:00

Some art from Malathar:

WM fires man over "Attire"

2004-04-22T09:00:00.000-04:00

According to the San Antonio Express-News (registration required), WM fired a man because he persisted in an unusual manner of dress:

Daniel A. Lorenz regularly wore a collared shirt to work, but it clearly wasn't the type expected in the Wal-Mart Supercenter's dress code.

He says he was fired last week upon reporting for duty in his priest's shirt with Roman collar, an Arab headdress and six crosses.

Supervisors had warned Lorenz that his job was at risk over his appearance, which they said violated dress codes and upset customers and fellow workers, particularly Catholics.

Some Thoughts on WM and Health Insurance

2004-04-22T08:47:00.000-04:00

It is well known that no matter how much you pay some people, they refuse to buy health insurance (even when they can amply afford it). Simply, these people value health insurance less than other things. Studies have shown that massive increases in income or subsidies would be required before many of the uninsured would consider buying health insurance voluntarily (references available upon email request).

Now, we know that some of these people work at WM. Even if WM were to double wages, many of those who do not have health insurance on their own or with the company subsidy would still not buy it.

As a result many people want to implement a national rationing and payment system, compulsory for all US residents. Clearly, this would make some people better off and others worse off. Others believe that WM has a moral (to be made legal) obligation to pay directly for all of the healthcare costs of its workers (but not their housing, food, clothing, or entertainment)-i.e. to tell workers that a certain part of their incomes must be spent on health insurance or health care.

Let's say that WM wants to sustain both its high rate of profit and low prices. Then my question: is does WM have an obligation to reduce the direct wages paid to WM workers without insurance, and give them health insurance as company scrip? If we implement a national healthcare system, how would it be different from this scenario?

HIV? Wal-Mart's fault.

2004-04-22T00:00:00.000-04:00

This blogger berates Wal-Mart because they won't pay for an employee's HIV treatment:

So imagine my surprise when someone came into my office today who has a full-time job. She works 40 hours a week at Wal-Mart. Like many of their employees, she can't afford their health insurance plan. Even if she could, they wouldn't cover her HIV care because it's a pre-existing condition. It isn't even about paying for the drugs, which are expensive - she qualifies for the state AIDS Drug Assistance Program, which picks up all of her prescriptions for her. Wal-Mart won't pay for office visits to an HIV specialist, and they won't pay for the blood tests she needs to monitor her condition.

Now that's a sad story, of course, and the woman should be given credit for working rather than relying entirely upon the government dole.

But with the resentment toward Wal-Mart that follows from our author, you'd think Wal-Mart had given this woman AIDS. (They didn't.)

So why does Wal-Mart owe her payment for her treatments, in addition to her regular wages? And if I'm her co-worker, and I don't have HIV, why should she be paid more than me?

With this item, I really have to wonder if there is any ill in the world for which some people don't want to hold Wal-Mart responsible.

(Link via a Washington Monthly blog post, which also links to this very site.)

Big in Japan

2004-04-21T23:09:00.000-04:00

The first Wal-Mart Supercenter (aka Seiyu) has opened in Japan, and the locals love it:

Compared to old-style Japanese stores with a mishmash of merchandise crowding the shelves, the towering aisles here are filled with rows and rows of similar products - soda, sneakers, frying pans.

The American look is new to most Japanese. Bold signs that read "shoes" or "toys" hang from above to direct shoppers to the right aisles, and a moving walkway takes shoppers with their giant carts to a rooftop parking lot. A massive single-floor store like the Supercenter is so unusual that benches had to be placed in some spots to accommodate Japanese who complained they needed a rest.

Shoppers like Eri Hiraiwa can't get enough.

"It's great; the prices are affordable," the cosmetics company employee said, studying a knit top that sells for 997 yen, the equivalent of $9.24. "This would cost 2,000 yen ($20) in other stores, and I love it that it's cheaper than 1,000 yen ($10)."

The opening here had none of the public rancor that recently marked Wal-Mart's plans to expand into Chicago and Los Angeles... if nearby residents and business owners are unhappy, it's not evident.

That all sounds good, but what I want to know is, how come they get moving walkways, and can park on the roof? The Japanese get all the fun stuff.

A "progressive" analysis of Wal-Mart

2004-04-21T22:45:00.000-04:00

From The Capital Times, the "progressive" newspaper of Madison, Wisconsin:

Wal-Mart does have low prices. When we shop there, we think we're saving money - $3 on a lock here, $15 on a bike there. But low prices don't mean low costs. It's costing us jobs to shop at Wal-Mart.

Even if you don't work for a Wal-Mart supplier, you're affected by suppliers who send jobs abroad. When your customers lose their jobs to cheap foreign labor, they can't buy goods or services from you. Even if you're a government employee, that affects you. Unemployed customers won't be paying taxes that support your job.

So I learned two things from this article, which, incidentally, appeared in the "Business" section of this paper, and not on the op-ed page:

1. After people buy their cheap stuff at Wal-Mart, they won't think of anything else they might want, and no one else will think of anything else to sell to them, so there will just be no more jobs, ever, except for the few who are lucky enough to be employed at Wal-Mart.

2. American jobs, and therefore American people, are more important than foreign jobs and foreign people.

What progressive thinking!

WM in Esquire

2004-04-21T10:13:00.000-04:00

At Catallarchy, Micha Gertner points to an subscription-only article in Esquire by Ken Kurson:

EVERYBODY HATES WAL-MART. Recently, three business magazines ran "Wal-Mart is bad" stories. Union employees at three California supermarket chains launched strikes because of the effect Wal-Mart might have when it adds groceries to its West Coast repertoire. Stock analysts can't imagine how WMT could continue to grow—a third of them rate it a "hold" (analyst slang for "turd")—and rush to diss the company. And even the government is mad: The Feds recently raided Wal-Mart, looking for illegals. (Shockingly, they discovered a few mixed in among the 1.2 million employees.) How can a store visited by 138 million people each week be so damn . . . unpopular?

The answer, of course, is that it's not. In fact, it's wildly popular...

Micha has more of the article than the web site, and he adds that, "If one were looking for a shining example of a Randian protagonist, Wal-Mart is it. Wal-Mart is hated for no other reason than being so damn successful."

Blog about WM--or Send in a Post

2004-04-21T09:41:00.000-04:00

If you want to blog about WM in a serious way, or have a one-time post you want to share, email kbrancat-at-gmu.edu. Pro-WM, anti-WM and a-WM writers are welcome; let's just keep the cant and hyperbole to a minimum.

Guest Post: Alex Danchanko

2004-04-21T09:26:00.000-04:00

Alex Danchanko, a reader concerned that ALP is a little too pro-WM, sends in a post:

The store itself cannot find its place regarding customer service. You return something, it appears that at the employee's discretion, the item is either reshelved (though it's defective) or stocked in a back room.

Then there's the popular statement that they sell guns but regulate their media. This is invalid as it stands; Certain Republicans do this to the U.S. all the time. However, this is contradictory -- the very reason I find myself neither Republican nor pro-WM. Personal liberty = the right to bear arms + freedom of speech, nothing less.

Finally, having a stranglehold on the department store industry is killing local businesses and severely limiting (if not eliminating) further market entry. Since the introduction of WM into my community, the number of low-priced department stores has been cut in half, and the small businesses in the downtown area are dropping like flies. As WM prospers, my community is sinking deeper into a state of economic depression.

Guest Post: Russell Nelson

2004-04-21T09:20:00.000-04:00

The Angry Economist sends in an interesting short essay on WM and poor-selling goods:

The Trouble with Wal-Mart

The biggest trouble with Wal*Mart is that they don't stock things that don't sell well. While that may sound stupid to anybody who's ever been a buyer for a retail store, it makes sense to a customer. Try buying a Grade 8 bolt. The Wal*Mart hardware department simply does not stock them, while a real hardware store will. A Grade 8 bolt is one with special markings on its head which indicate that it is stronger than a Grade 5, which is stronger than Grade 2. If you need a Grade 8 bolt, neither a Grade 5 nor Grade 2 will suffice. And yet.... how often is a store going to need to sell a Grade 8 bolt? Not very.

A local hardware store will stock all three grades of bolts even though it costs a fair bit of money and floor space. In return, people come into the store and buy those items which move. The store makes more money on those items, loses less money on the Grade 8 bolts, and makes a profit. Wal*Mart comes into town, and only stocks the items that make money. The hardware store cannot compete on those terms since it needs those items to make its profit, and so it closes, and the Grade 8 bolts go back to the manufacturer.

"San Francisco should be big-box-free."

2004-04-20T15:39:00.000-04:00

San Francisco wants to use the permit system to give the city government control over the opening of all stores greater than 50,000 square feet, and to forbid the opening (any place except downtown) of any store larger than 120,000 square feet that sells nontaxable items (like groceries).

Everyone knows this is aimed at WM, even though it is not named in the bill.

The proposed bill will contain a real shift in control towards the Board of Supervisors and away from entering businesses, because it will give status quo interests--anybody who might be harmed by competition--greater weight than those who might benefit. The legislation will:

Require the Planning Commission to consider additional criteria when deciding whether to permit stores larger than 50,000 square feet, including market demand, effect on similar retail uses, shift in traffic patterns and the impact of the employees on city services.

The Planning Commission is not required to assess the costs and benefits, but to assess the costs only. Note that no applications for permits that large have been requested, although "Projects -- such as the Home Depot -- that are now in the planning pipeline are exempt from the proposed law."

Wizbang on WM

2004-04-20T15:08:00.000-04:00

Excellent take on the WM experience from Kevin Aylward:

My beef with Wal-Mart is that the stores I’ve been to in the Washington D.C. area look, and in some cases smell, awful. Suburbia has its advantages, and one of them is an abundance of choice. The contrast between a visit to Wal-Mart and a visit to Target is vivid. Target, even during the busy holiday season, is visually appealing and clean. Wal-Mart, on the other hand, has the feel of a concession line at a tractor pull.

Read the whole thing. My experience with WM in DC is similar.

The Economist on Wal-Mart

2004-04-20T11:03:00.000-04:00

The Economist has a special report on Wal-Mart in this week's issue. (I guess it's the cover story, though I don't get the print edition. For those with a subscription, it's also the subject of the lead editorial.)

It's a typical Economist story: nothing new, but an informative introductory article for those who don't know much about the company and its history, and entertaining even if you do. Many Americans also may not know much about Wal-Mart's foreign expansion:

…[In Germany,] Wal-Mart's entry was “nothing short of a fiasco”…expatriate managers suffered from a massive clash of cultures, which was not helped by their refusal to learn to speak German. The company has come to be seen as an unattractive one to work for…In part this is because of relatively low pay and an ultra-frugal policy on managers' business expenses.

This contrasts with Wal-Mart's much smoother expansion into Britain…

Overall the article views Wal-Mart positively, but also discusses the (political and market) forces that are acting against it.

Finding a WM Job

2004-04-20T09:14:00.000-04:00

Does anybody else see advertisement for jobs at WM and Sam's Club in the GoogleAds above? Apparently Snag a Job is an online jobs site specifically for hourly employment--part-time and full-time. However, I have no idea why WM would bother with this service. Just to check, I found that there are no WM jobs in my area, and I doubt that WM lists with them at all--since it usually attracts thousands of people for hundreds of jobs, as it did recently in Glendale, Arizona.

If you've ever worked at WM, could you leave a short comment on how you found the job?

UPDATE: If you want to find information about a job at WM--in the stores, warehouses, supply-chain, or in corporate--the best place to go is the official site. The best place find an hourly position at WM is to just go to the store or warehouse.

Jesse Jackson vs. WM

2004-04-20T07:24:00.000-04:00

The Chicago Tribune reports (rr) that Jesse Jackson is once again shouting sometimes bizarre, sometimes incoherent anti-WM slogans in his never-ending effort for publicity:

"It's Kool-Aid and cyanide," Jackson said Monday of the world's largest retailer. "The Kool-Aid is the cheap prices. The cyanide is the cheap wages. The cyanide is the cheap health benefits..."

"The Wal-Martization of the country is like a Trojan horse," Jackson said. "It's exciting on the outside, but on the inside is a machinery that destroys competition."

However, other--local--representatives of Chicago's black community see things differently:

"We are here to serve the people of this area, and they want Wal-Mart," said Ald. Emma Mitts, who supports building a Wal-Mart store in her 37th Ward on the West Side.

The two Wal-Mart proposals for Chicago would place new stores at old industrial sites....

Mayor Richard Daley reiterated his backing for the Wal-Mart proposals Monday.

The mayor noted that Target and other non-union retailers do business in Chicago.

"We have Wal-Marts all over the suburban area," Daley said. "That's something I can't understand. If they are all over the suburban area, why is someone objecting when they build one in the city?"

Aldi (Trader Joe's)

2004-04-19T12:43:00.000-04:00

Jack Ewing writes in BusinessWeek that Aldi is ~~coming to~~ expanding further in the US. You might say, who? And I'd answer, you'll find out:

Aldi follows a simple but devastating strategy. A typical Aldi has only about 700 products, compared with more than 20,000 at a traditional grocer such as Royal Ahold's (AHO ) Albert Heijn and as many as 150,000 at a Wal-Mart Supercenter... Almost everything on display is an Aldi-exclusive label such as Frisco Dent toothpaste (61 cents for a family-size tube) or Rio D'Oro orange juice (74 cents a liter) in Europe. The Aldi lineup even seems to be winning over U.S. shoppers. "They're not the brands I'm used to, but they're good. Nestlé has nothing on this," says retired schoolteacher Silvia Randall, holding up a package of LaMissa hot cocoa mix at an Aldi in Smyrna, Ga.

Because it sells so few products, Aldi can exert strong control over quality and price. The limited selection simplifies shipping and handling. A survey by consultants McKinsey & Co. found shoppers perceived little difference in quality, assortment, or service at Aldi, vs. traditional retailers, but they rated Aldi better on price. "We have a lot of respect for Aldi quality," says Wolfgang Gutberlet, CEO of Fulda, Germany-based tegut, which operates about 300 food stores in western Germany.

Aldi is owned by a trust controlled by the same group that owns Trader Joe's. Note that TJs history says nothing about this (the company acts like Joe still owns and operates the stores himself), but Yahoo is clear that TJs is owned by one of the most terrifying cost-cutters around:

Started by Joe Coulombe as a Los Angeles convenience store chain in 1958, the company was bought in 1979 by German billionaires Karl and Theo Albrecht, who also own the ALDI food chain.

So Aldi is already here! Given that TJ's owned by a corporate behemoth, why don't we see enormous resistance to Trader Joe's when they open up?

That's it--no more posts till tomorrow!

No WM in Wallkill

2004-04-19T12:01:00.000-04:00

WM has announced that it will not build a distribution center in Wallkill, NY. The company insists that it's an efficiency issue:

"Wal-Mart has increased the efficiency of our existing distribution center network. This allows us to effectively service our stores without the expense of this distribution center. With this in mind, we have re-evaluated our plans for a regional distribution center in Wallkill," said Rollin Ford, Executive Vice President of Logistics and Supply Chain. "We owe it to our customers and shareholders, many of whom are Wal-Mart associates, to continue to operate our business at the lowest expense levels possible."...

We remain committed to the state of New York and to expanding our presence in this market."

Wallkill is important because, as Al Norman noted, WM would have received tremendous a subsidy from local and state governments:

Both corporations are depending on taxpayer's welfare in The Empire Zone to put up their stores, in essence making some of their competitors pay for property, sales and payroll tax subsidies to put them out of business. Empire Zone status means a businesses can "operate on an almost 'tax-free' basis for up to 10 years."

The Governor of NY, George Pataki was excited about the facility, even as he admitted the subsidy:

Governor George E. Pataki today announced that Wal-Mart will invest $48.5 million and create 1,000 new jobs in New York State, as the nation's leading retailer moves forward with plans to construct a 1.2 million square foot distribution facility in Orange County. The construction of the facility is also expected to support 600 jobs in the construction and trade industries...

In consideration of its commitment to the New York State economy, Wal-Mart is eligible to apply for an $850,000 training grant and a $200,000 capital grant from Empire State Development. The retailer is also eligible for a $600,000 grant and a $400,000 ten-year interest free loan from the Department of Transportation's Industrial Access Program.

Personally, I am excited that WM did not take up New York State's offer, but I'm inclined to believe that WM took even more corporate pork from another region. That said, if residents of an area can vote for a city council (or vote directly) to exclude WM from their community, as the voting citizens of Inglewood did, how is it any less democratic for voters who want a WM to elect politicians to subsidize WM's entry?

Around the Blogosphere

2004-04-19T10:40:00.000-04:00

Standard Deviance notes the WM and KMart will be selling DVD players that edit offensive content.

Chez Marche Cafe is supporting a grass roots effort to counter WM in Waupaca, Wisconsin:

Saturday night we've got the Tom and Jenny McComb Quartet for the Out of the Box (OOB) fundraiser. OOB is working hard to protect our community from rampant growth and corporate exploitation, by asking for a two-year moratorium on Big Box development (that means WalMart), until we finish our Smart Growth planning process. They're (we're, I'm a member), asking for a reasonable planning period so that we can decide as a community whether or not, and under what circumstances, a big development can be good for the community. WalMart, however, doesn't play nice and so the group needs funds to hire a lawyer, if for no other reason than just to make sure all the i's get dotted and t's get crossed. Hence, the fundraiser. There'll be great music, plenty of food, and ice cold beer on tap. So stop on down, have some fun with us and help defend the local economy! I don't want to be a big drag or anything, but it's a vital issue so I hope we'll see you there. Admission is $10, beer is sold separately. Tickets can be purchased in advance at the Chez. Donations are welcomed.

Sounds like fun.

Meanwhile, Amy at Without music, life is a journey through a desert starts working at WM tomorrow:

I work tomorrow...that's right..you read right...I have a job....you want to guess where though?.....walmart......BALLLLSSS!!!! BUT if i get another BETTER job offer I will take that for sure!!!

Neil Armstrong at German for Beginners notes the NYTimes story on WM, and thinks WM is the result of economic evolution.

Meanwhile, Larry Thompson drives by WM in Texas:

Really, there is not much of anything until you get to Huntsville. Then, there is a prison and a Walmart. The Walmart is the blue one, by the way. The prison has better landscaping. And a fountain. I wonder why they need a fountain. Is it to torture the prisoners?

Two Quotes

2004-04-19T08:18:00.000-04:00

Researching WM is great fun--the quotes just keep on coming. Here's a story about the growth of WM in LA over the past decade:

With nine stores built and others in the works, Wal-Mart is saturating the eastern part of Los Angeles County.

Economic experts say Wal-Mart is making a big push in the area because city councils are desperate for tax money and want to redevelop seedy areas.

"They are literally carpeting the area with Wal-Marts, ' said Jack Kyser, the chief economist for the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp.

Another about resistance in Denver:

Nothing twists Mary Hendrick's innards quite like a Wal-Mart.

"Wal-Mart, uck, it just does something to you," says Hendrick, a northwest Denver resident.

Guest Post: Tim Hulsey

2004-04-19T08:09:00.000-04:00

Tim Hulsey of My Stupid Dog sends in a post he wrote two months ago. It is reprinted below, with the preamble cut.

Note: If you would like to guest post at ALP, or become a regular blogger, email kbrancat-at-gmu.edu. I stress that there is no litmus test; we welcome both pro and anti WM posts, as long as they are well reasoned:

In Defense of Wal-Mart

Granted, the targets of our local "indymedia" collective are a bit less grandiose, as is appropriate for the left wing in Charlottesville. Our leftists don't have so much to say about world peace; they'd rather rail against growth, roads, parkways, SUVs, industry, etc. But most of all, they're against Wal-Mart. You'd think leftists would approve of a place that enables even the poorest of the working poor to afford the things they need. But our leftists claim that instead of relieving poverty, Wal-Mart causes it. Wal-Mart, you see, does not kowtow to labor unions.

Well, "Ben," a former boyfriend of mine (I'm like the Marines in that I don't have "exes"), has seen firsthand what labor unions do. The department store where he works as a part-time cashier is "closed-shop," which means that if Ben wants to keep ringing the registers, he'd better fork over a good-sized chunk of his salary to the official labor union. He can't exactly spare this cash, but that never stops his union from taking it away. And even though the union is perfectly happy to take money from low-paid, part-time employees like Ben, it refuses to represent Ben's interests to management. He is paid a lower wage than full-time employees, he lacks benefits, and his union reduces his take-home pay even further. Worst of all, his union prevents part-time employees from rising into the ranks of full-time employees (let alone managers). In short, Ben's union makes him worse off than a part-time, non-union employee at Wal-Mart. So from his point of view, unionization is basically a fraud, a coercive scam that robs hard-earned cash from part-time employees and grants extra privileges to the relatively well-paid full-timers.

Gentle readers, I'm sure you must be quite surprised to learn that today's labor unions are frequently corrupt, and that they may prove counterproductive to the interests of low-paid workers. Who would have thought it -- other than the workers themselves, I mean?

So with Ben, his dead-end closed-shop job, and the corrupt labor union in mind, I placed this nostalgic piece praising "big box" stores in the comments section of Cvilleindymedia.org, to enlighten left-wing activists who frequent the site and don't know what Wal-Mart really stands for. I promise, gentle readers, to let you know when or if my post is taken down -- and to share any particularly outrageous comments it may provoke.

A Store for the People

I grew up in a small town in Arkansas, and I remember what the local Wal-Mart did to all our lives in the community.

Before Wal-Mart came, we couldn't buy very much locally, because the goods weren't available. Local stores were five-and-ten cent affairs; their irregular inventory and limited supplies offered us no assurance that we could get the things we wanted at a competitive price. Usually, we'd have to mail-order our purchases through Sears or Montgomery Ward catalogs, and sometimes those orders would take weeks to arrive.

Wal-Mart changed all that. Suddenly, we had access to a large, well-stocked emporium, full of items we could only get through a catalog before. Because Wal-Mart offered bargain prices, my parents found that they could make their meager teachers' salary go much further. Our community's standard of living rapidly improved, not just because Wal-Mart helped us to save money and buy more of the things we wanted, but also because it provided dozens of new jobs for our locality.

Those jobs were low-paying, at least at entry level. But local five-and-tens paid their starting employees even less than Wal-Mart, while making raises and promotions more difficult to come by. Because our town's five-and-ten cent stores were all "family-owned," their management positions were reserved for the owner's kith and kin. Employees who were not of the family always remained on the lowest rungs of the ladder, no matter how long or how well they worked for the owner. In contrast, Wal-Mart used merit rather than nepotism to fill its management positions. So these long-time retail workers quickly abandoned their old, dead-end jobs for upwardly mobile careers at Wal-Mart.

What's more, unlike many local businessmen who practiced discrimination on the QT, Wal-Mart served African-Americans and hired them. Only a short time before, our town had resisted integrating its public schools, but when Wal-Mart integrated our business life, nobody seemed to mind.

Wal-Mart made basic goods less expensive to obtain, brought jobs to our town, placed Black American workers side by side with Whites, and enabled its employees to work their way up the corporate ladder to a solid position and a good wage. In short, it changed our traditional way of life.

I don't have any grand conclusions to make about social justice, by the way. I just wanted to let you know what we're trying to put the kibosh on around here.

Any pro-union folks want to respond?

WM in the NYT

2004-04-17T19:07:00.000-04:00

I would have pointed out Steven Greenhouse's article in today's New York Times, but it doesn't say much more about the anti-WM conference that the BusinessWeek article by Wendy Zellner I already discussed. There is only one part of the article that seems extraordinarily absurd to me, and it's not the one that claims--without a source--that 1/3 of all WM employees have no health insurance. I take issue with the idea that WM sets the trend for wages in the US:

"In short, the company's management legislates for the rest of us key components of American social and industrial policy," Mr. Lichtenstein [history professor at the University of California] said.

Wal-Mart has created a very different model from General Motors, he added, noting that G.M. helped build the world's most affluent middle class by paying wages far above the average and by providing generous health and pension plans. Mr. Lichtenstein said G.M.'s wage pattern spurred other companies to raise compensation levels, while Wal-Mart's relatively low wages and benefits — its workers average less than $18,000 a year — were doing just the opposite.

I do not accept it as fact that WM "legislates" in any fashion. It is not a government. Neither does it set the trends in the entire economy. I do not belive that it sets the trends for the retail sector overall, although it may set trends for competing low-end businesses.

WM may be the largest private employer in US and Mexico, but that doesn't mean it sets national policies, or that dominates labor markets, or that other companies want a workforce that looks like WM's.

Just how dominant is WM in labor markets? Far less than the federal government. It employs 1.4 million people out of a national level of employment of about country's 130 million nonfarm employees. That's a little over 1%. Since there are about 22 million government employees in the US; shouldn't their payment practives "set the trend" for the private sector far more than WM, given that they compete directly with the private sector for employees in almost all labor markets?

Neighborhood Markets

2004-04-17T03:16:00.000-04:00

Kevin's post about the opposition to the Neighborhood Market store in Denver got me wondering: How many people even know what a WM Neighborhood Market store is like?

The only place I saw them was in Overland Park, KS, and they were brand-new there. There were two of them within a mile or two of each other. I did not go inside them, but I did drive in front and look in. (That is a warning as to the accuracy of the following impressions.) These stores are nothing like a regular Wal-Mart. They are small, pretty-looking buildings from the outside, slightly smaller than, say, a standard Safeway/Kroger/Albertson's store, with a smaller parking lot. (At least, it looks smaller.) The signage is attractive, and the front of the store is mostly glass, not concrete. It seemed that it would be a somewhat nicer place to shop than a Safeway, with low shelves and comfortable lighting. It looked like it would be a far nicer place than a Walgreen's, even given the larger size. Without actually being able to make out the goods, it looked a more like a Whole Foods Market than a standard grocery store. If I'm ever near one again, I will be sure to go in a pay closer attention.

I think if the Denver residents who opposed the store had actually seen these markets, they may have felt differently.

Excellent Primer on WM

2004-04-16T14:04:00.000-04:00

VikingPundit links to an article in the Economist about WM's growth potential, which they conclude is lower than in the past, not due to its already immense size, but due to more union and legal resistance in areas it has yet to penetrate deeply::

A force for good?

In the popular imagination, Wal-Mart ruthlessly exterminates the competition, especially local mom-and-pop retailers. Yet as Bain's Mr Rigby argues, Wal-Mart is more than just a destructive force. "Wal-Mart is good for retailing in the same way that any good predator is good for an ecology," says Mr Rigby. "Life works through struggle, and many retailers are better today because of Wal-Mart."

A number of retailers in America have gone up against Wal-Mart and survived--even thrived. They have deliberately avoided trying to do the same thing as Wal-Mart.

Later on it adds:

Indeed, in many cases manufacturers actually make more money selling through Wal-Mart than through other retailers.

See also VP's link to a Boston.com article filed from Wisconsin:

Democrats have vilified Wal-Mart as an icon of corporate greed for its reliance on cheap, foreign-made goods. Republicans have countered by pointing to satisfied shoppers like Lawrence.

Better a Vacant Lot

2004-04-16T13:36:00.000-04:00

There are many reasons why people hate WM: its censorship of magazines, ugly stores, poor quality merchandise, catering to sprawl, low wages, poor treatment of workers, high profits, its success, competition against small businesses ,etc. Community resistance to WM is made up of all these strands, and when one reason is knocked down, another is picked up. But a general belief is that WM is a net cost to a community.

In this vein, the Rocky Mountain News reports on local resistance to a WM Neighborhood Market in northwest Denver:

"If this proposal was from anyone else other than Wal-Mart, we would not be here in the midst of this controversy," [the WM representative] said.

The crowd applauded Perry's words but not his point: that a 40,000-square-foot Wal-Mart concentrating on grocery and pharmacy business was indeed different from its larger suburban Supercenter cousins, and would still be consistent with the assiduously planned urban neighborhood.

Wal-Mart is Wal-Mart is Wal- Mart, residents said, whether the store calls itself a "Neighborhood Market" or not....

As for the idea that only Wal-Mart can sustain the development project, longtime resident Linda Bevard said anything is preferable.

"A better legacy than a Wal-Mart would be a vacant lot," she said.

LAEDC Rep. Stunned that WM Creates Jobs

2004-04-16T13:17:00.000-04:00

The Emek Basker study (big PDF file) that shows an increase of 50 retail and a decrease of 20 wholesale jobs, on average, with each new WM surprises the head policy consultant at the LA Economic Development Corporation:

In January, a study by the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp. found an individual family could save $589 a year on groceries by shopping at a supercenter. Overall, shoppers could save $3.76 billion in a seven- county region of Southern California, according to the $65,000 report, which was commissioned by Wal-Mart.

Gregory Freeman, the LAEDC's director of policy consulting, said he was surprised by the Missouri report's findings new Wal-Mart stores could produce more jobs, not fewer.

"I think you'd have to be," Freeman said. "Part of the reason we agreed to do the study was it seemed like all you ever read about Wal-Mart was that they destroyed jobs."

WM Fights Back in Chicago

2004-04-16T13:11:00.000-04:00

Dave Newbart of the Chicago Sun-Times writes about WM's PR campaign. Remember, there's no more reason to believe WM is telling the truth than its opponents:

The strategy, the officials said in a meeting with the Chicago Sun-Times editorial board Thursday, is to finally respond to the voluminous attacks against Wal-Mart, many of which are inaccurate, they said. No more will the Arkansas-based retailing behemoth be content to satisfy customers while ignoring the press.

IMHO, WM opponents don't understand that the company hasn't really fought all that hard yet:

"We've been unfairly maligned,'' said B. John Bisio, Wal-Mart regional director of community affairs for the Midwest. "There is a real misrepresentation of the facts.''

Wal-Mart's bid to open two stores in Chicago has been strongly opposed by unions and some aldermen, who questioned Wal-Mart's treatment of workers and hostility toward unions....

Asked why Wal-Mart has opposed any unionizing of its American workers, Bisio said unions are not necessary because their Chicago area workers are paid, on average, $10.77 per hour.

He said union officials have unfairly targeted his company in an industry where there are few unions. "Wal-Mart has been painted into a corner by unions who want to organize Wal-Mart because it is 1.3 million-strong,'' he said.

Man Sues WM for False Arrest, Wins $250,000

2004-04-15T16:14:00.000-04:00

We learn from Sprawl-Busters that one Malcolm McComb III was falsely accused by WM and police and arrested for counterfeiting a $!00 bill:

A Pike County Circuit Court Jury awarded McComb damages, but it took McComb nearly five years to win his case. In April of 1999, McComb went to Wal-Mart to shop after cashing his paycheck at a local supermarket. He paid the checkout clerk with a $100 bill. The Wal-Mart "associate" called store officials over, and store employees called in the police. "The male officer told me to empty my pockets," McComb testified. "I emptied my pockets. He searched me and said I was under arrest for counterfeit money. It made me feel embarrassed and angry." McComb had to take off work the following day to visit the police station. He was told then that his bill was authentic, and the charges had been dropped.

Sprawl-Busters makes it sound like there was no reason to suspect Mr. McComb, who was abused by police and WM. Except that the reason he was accused was that the $100 bill was printed in 1950:

The challenged bill was a 1950 series, which explained why it appeared to be different from other bills and did not react well under testing, said McComb's attorney Ed Bean of McComb.

Police said they had changed their procedures because of the lawsuit.

Even more detailed and to the point:

It lacked the words "In God We Trust," a special identification strip and a watermark. Also, a special pen indicated it was phony as well.

So if Sprawl-Busters was even-handed and fair in its treatment of WM, it would have indicated that WM's actions--and those of the police, while clearly wrong after-the-fact, were made on good faith. Calling in the police when all the standard tests showed the bill a fake is a reasonable action that many other propreitors would also have taken.

However, large chain stores pay dearly for proven false arrest claims; we can rest assured that WM will not make this costly mistake again.

WM does work with Communities

2004-04-15T15:48:00.000-04:00

It's often implied by anti-WM activists that WM won't budge an inch, but in Ozark, Missouri, the town found WM more than willing to modify its design to meet the aesthetic requirements of local government:

"It's warmer, it has more rooms, and it has grown back to the way a department store should look," Spells said.

"It doesn't look like a discount store. It looks more like Target."

The Ozark Supercenter, like many other newer Wal-Mart stores across the nation, reflects an effort by the corporation to add more allure and prestige to the world's biggest discount chain....

Rather than the signature blue-gray box design, the Ozark Supercenter was built with concrete blocks in an earthy tone to create a brick look on the outside.

Inside, the store features wooden floors in its clothing department. And, as in many newer stores, skylights throughout the ceiling let in more natural light to the Ozark store, brightening up the entire retail space....

Merchandise -- from towels to soaps to cucumbers to tires -- are arranged neatly on shelves.

And clutter is nowhere to be seen....

Some of the changes come from regulations of local planning and zoning commissions, Weber said, but Wal-Mart has been willing to comply.

Ozark Mayor Donna McQuay pushed for the brick look for the Supercenter, and she said Wal-Mart officials quickly accepted the idea.

Also see the sidebar, which points to about an actual academic study of WM:

Emek Basker, an MU assistant professor of economics, came to this conclusion after examining employment data from 1,749 counties and 2,383 Wal-Mart stores across the country between 1977 and 1998.

His study shows an average of 50 new retail jobs are created in counties that have Wal-Mart stores while 20 wholesale jobs are lost.

Guest Post: Tracy Saboe on WM

2004-04-15T15:41:00.000-04:00

On Mises Blog, Tracy Saboe made the following comment, which ALP was been given permission to reproduce:

For the most part, Wal-Mart is a good company.

It makes customers happy, that's what companies are suppose to do.

When costs get cut, sometimes wages go down -- but the buying power of those wages go up. I.E., real wages go up.

I don't fault Wal-Mart for their hiring and firing practices, or for how much they pay. It's their business. They can do what they want with it. I'm not one of those liberals who goes around screaming "it's not fair" just because a company needs to downsize. I tell them, "Life isn't fair. Get over it."

Actually one thing that I've learned after discovering libertarian thought and more specifically Austrian Economics that's made me a better person is just how much of a good thing it is that life isn't fair. If it were, we'd have a very stagnant society. It's the unfairness and the inequalities in life that make trade possible in the first place. If everything were perfectly fair -- there'd be no reason to trade -- nothing to look up or forward too, and hence no reason and hence no way to better ourselves. For how can one better oneself if one has no way to know being better is possible, and even if on a hunch tried, is inherently incapable of knowing which various ways of betterment might be possible. One needs to see others better then one's self, in order for such thoughts to even be
possible.

However. On the more sinister side, Wal-Mart is beginning to bed more and more with Federal, State, and Local governments now.

It receives numerous subsidies from the US government to invest in foreign Countries. Through the Market Access Act, the Import Export Bank, and others, our Tax Dollars are being used to subsidize Wal-Marts losses in foreign countries. These are the same programs that FDR used to subsidize the Communism in Russia with our tax dollars. They haven't been abolished yet, after all these years. Another thing is that Wal-Mart uses local governments in a lot of places to steal property for it through Eminent Domain laws. Eminent Domain is government thievery in and of itself, but this is far worse. Local governments will condemn a place, and then only be required to compensate the owners for a fraction of the value, and then give the property to Wal-Mart. Not to mention the subsidizing to its grocery section in the form of food stamps. (See my own personal parting of ways with Wal-Mart in Walmart, Little Debbies, and Food Stamps .)

But these actions are no different from any other big corporation large enough to have political insiders. In many ways Wal-Mart is forced to partake in these despicable acts of government thievery because, "everybody else is doing it" and if it doesn't, it'll go out of business. After all, it has to compete. They're just trying to figure out how to maximize profit -- a noble goal to be sure.

The real problem is a government that does not respect private property rights anymore.

If you would like to make a one-time post to ALP, or to join ALP, please email me at kbrancat@gmu.edu

What a Community Wants

2004-04-15T11:46:00.000-04:00

As J.H.Huebert rightly pointed out in his comments to this post, one cannot infer "what a community wants" unless every individual in the community wants it. Even if you consider that stance extreme, you must admit that what the community wants cannot be deduced solely from the existence of organizations formed by a small subset of community members.

In fact, for nearly all communities, there is no generally accepted way--by members of the community or outsiders--to determine whether "the community" badly wants a Wal-Mart, or whether it is seriously resisting one. I am reminded of this confusion by the population of Rosemead, CA:

Two groups have formed to go head to head over the next few months.

Save Our Community, which opposes a Wal-Mart, was formed when the Wal-Mart idea was first floated two years ago. Since then, Save Our Community has gathered about 40 active members and boasts a mailing list of 250 residents, said L.C. Bevington, chair of the community group.

Members of Putting Rosemead in a Desirable Environment, or PRIDE, met for the first time last week with a Wal-Mart consultant to strategize in favor of the store.

BusinessWeek on WM

2004-04-15T06:58:00.000-04:00

Wendy Zellner of BW goes to a WM conference at UC Santa Barbara, and finds the same "litany" that one finds in the reports from major media outlets and anti-WM campaigns. But somehow, she is surprised at this; she shouldn't be if she did a Google News search for WM:

"There's no such thing as 'Wal-Mart studies,' but there's something going on here," says Lichtenstein. Historian Susan Strasser from the University of Delaware says when she mentioned her plans to attend the conference to friends and acquaintances, she was stunned at the level of interest it generated.

Not surprisingly, on this liberal college campus in a city obsessed with urban planning, those attending were a decidedly anti-Wal-Mart crowd. One of the panelists was a United Food & Commercial Workers researcher. Another was a lawyer involved in the massive sex-discrimination suit against Wal-Mart. Many of the academic participants acknowledged that they rarely, if ever, step foot in a Wal-Mart store, and few had ever visited Bentonville, Ark., the company's headquarters.

WM in Moscow

2004-04-14T19:04:00.000-04:00

The Moscow Times reports that several consultants in Moscow claim that WM's next international expansion will be into Russia:

Since 1991 the company has moved into Germany, Japan, South Korea, Argentina, Brazil, Puerto Rico, the United Kingdom, China, Canada and Mexico.

Where Wal-Mart goes next is a closely guarded secret, but the company does give clues. In January, CEO Lee Scott named China, Russia and India as prime candidates for future expansion. And although, as Scott said, China is the only country where the company could "replicate" what it has done in America, it doesn't represent a new market.

Understanding and adapting to culture is part of the key to a making profit:

n addition to solving logistics issues, the Wal-Mart advance team is likely looking at cultural peculiarities that might affect their strategy, retail analysts say. In Germany, for example, Wal-Mart failed to pick up on certain social nuances -- such as not recognizing that most Germans weren't used to other people bagging their groceries. Partly for this reason, the company has struggled to turn a profit since its entered the country nearly a decade ago.

What Actually Happened in Inglewood?

2004-04-14T17:01:00.000-04:00

The newspapers buzzed when WM's initiative in Inglewood, CA failed. But I don't think their reporting brought to light just why WM tried to avoid the city council. Here's what I posted on David Sucher's excellent City Comforts blog in response:

Is this case the rule, or the exception?

Also, I dislike the standard media theme that WM wanted to exempt itself from all local standards. Why would WM want to exempt itself, when its detailed plan already met all those standards?!

Mr. Kanelos, the Wal-Mart official, said that the 71-page initiative spells out the project in minute detail, including building materials, traffic flows, landscaping and even plumbing fixtures. Each of these provisions "meets or exceeds every local and state building and environmental requirement," he said.

What WM really wanted was to avoid the politicians who control the permit system.

Inglewood city officials and Wal-Mart have been sparring for more than a year. Initially, the City Council tried to keep Wal-Mart from moving in by adopting an emergency ordinance in October 2002 that barred construction of retail stores larger than 155,000 square feet that sell more than 20,000 nontaxable items, such as food and drugs. Supercenters run about 200,000 square feet.

Within a month, the council withdrew the ordinance after Wal-Mart threatened to sue.

The failure of the initiative revealed the worst that social democracy has to offer.

Interested in Blogging about WM?

2004-04-14T14:51:00.000-04:00

Always Low Prices is actively looking for cobloggers.

If you would like to blog the controversy surrounding the world's largest corporation, send me an email at kbrancat-at-gmu.edu.

There are no editorial restrictions or requirements to blog at ALP, save decency and my personal liability, and the desire to post at least monthly.

And yes, we welcome bloggers who dislike WM, but only if they do so out of logic, reason, and experience--not out of hype.

Netflix Doesn't Fear WM

2004-04-14T13:07:00.000-04:00

Reed Hastings of Netflix:

Question: Your biggest competitor for online movie rentals has been Wal-Mart Stores Inc. How serious has the challenge been?

Answer: Wal-Mart entered the market two years ago, and there was a big ballyhoo about how Netflix isn't going to survive. Back then we had 400,000 subscribers. Now we have almost 2 million. In Wal-Mart's case, great company; how've they done online? Not very well. So the fact that we're beating Wal-Mart is not really testament to how great we are. It's because Wal-Mart.com is completely clueless.

The only company in DVD rental that we fear is Amazon. We have 24 [distribution] plants; they only have five. We send out about 3 million packages a week, which is higher volume than all of Amazon worldwide.

Hat Tip: Craig Newmark

Steven Malanga on campaigns against Wal-Mart

2004-04-14T01:52:00.000-04:00

In City Journal, Steven Malanga has an article about how anti-Wal-Mart campaigners are becoming more organized:

It is [Wal-Mart's] grocery departments that are at the heart of the battle. They represent a grave new threat to unionized food stores. Though unions have been unable to organize the discount industry—Wal-Mart competitors like Target and Kohl’s are also nonunion—they have been much more successful in supermarket chains, so when Wal-Mart began pulverizing the grocery competition with its low prices and vast selection, it threatened union gains…

In response to this success, a coalition of more than 30 unions and left-wing activist groups organized a national day of protest in October 2002, urging shoppers to boycott the company as a “Merchant of Shame.” The boycott campaign got no results, but the coalition’s legislative battles are another story. California, where Wal-Mart has only one super center but wants to open 40 or so, is currently the main front in the war…

But the real isn't job losses; it is union wages…

The article is very pro-Wal-Mart. I am also and generally agree with the article. But there is one thing I would like to know more about. Malanga makes the point that Wal-Mart is “embracing a fundamental redefinition of health insurance as protection from catastrophic illnesses that can financially ruin employees, rather than a benefit meant to pay for every health-care bill.” While I do think that the country would be better off if insurance was considered this way (or better yet, if it were purchased by individuals rather than their employers), I have questions about the degree to which employees benefit from the cost savings, and about the eligibility of employees to receive coverage. Still, it's a free market, and if workers in Los Angeles didn't like the pay and benefits at Wal-Mart, they don't have to work there.

Craig Newmark on WM

2004-04-13T09:52:00.000-04:00

The always interesting Craig Newmark notes two views of WM:

Earl Ofari Hutchinson concedes that Wal-Mart ". . . promise[s] to bankroll private development in economically depressed areas without asking for a dime of taxpayer dollars, thereby creating thousands of new jobs . . ." But Mr. Hutchinson vigorously opposes Wal-Mart's effort to locate stores in those depressed areas because it has ". . . a well-documented record of labor and environmental abuses, and a much-deserved reputation for corporate arrogance . . ."

Excuse me, but isn't just about the biggest labor abuse not having a job? Isn't the opposite of environmental abuse doing business in run-down, inner-city areas that other businesses won't go near?

When in Doubt, Sue WM

2004-04-13T09:27:00.000-04:00

Walter Olson has his usual cornucopia of links, this time regarding the rapidly expanding practice of suing WM.

WM as "Zero Sum Game"

2004-04-12T15:03:00.000-04:00

This article, which is an excellent introduction to the forces arrayed against WM, quotes economist Kenneth Stone:

[A] growing body of economic impact research contradicts the developers' rosy win-win scenarios. Kenneth Stone, an economics professor at Iowa State University, has tallied 53 types of businesses with which Wal-Mart competes, and has tracked a startling swath of destruction.

Stone pioneered research on the Wal-Mart factor in Iowa cities with populations of 5,000 to 40,000, tracking sales from as early as 1983, and more recently examined the Supercenter onslaught in Mississippi. In his 1997 study, "Impact of the Wal-Mart Phenomenon on Rural Communities," Stone found that between 1983 and 1996, the average Iowan spend 42% more in "department stores," (qualified as "primarily" mass merchants) than in 1983. In men's clothing stores alone, consumer spending eroded by 59% in the same period, resulting in the shuttering of 60% of these businesses. And, though host communities did see some general growth in transactions overall in the years after Wal-Mart's arrival, 10 years later, host towns lost an average of 4% of total sales, some towns of less than 5,000 losing half their retail trade. And, due to the magnet effect of Wal-mart, sales transactions in neighboring towns declined 15 percent.

"Obviously, there's a zero-sum game involved here," says Stone. "If you plop down a 200,000 sq. ft. Supercenter someplace like Ankeny, Iowa (population 27,000), and are expecting your average $75-80 million a year in sales, that money doesn't come out of thin air. It comes from somewhere else."

This is either completely irresponsible economics, or inexcusable reporting. Stating that host towns and neighbors losing total sales volume is somehow a net cost to the area is completely unfounded. The implication is that the loss of small businesses means quantity sold has decreased. But instead, the net sales volume is down because WM--and other big box--prices are far lower than small-town merchants, overcompensating the increase in quantity sold due to price reductions. [Economists would state that demand was inelastic].

Discriminating Between Big Boxes

2004-04-12T12:45:00.000-04:00

The Sports Economist notes that some cities are very picky about their big boxes:

Meanwhile, in Fort Worth, Texas, local politicians are pitching a $40 million dollar subsidy to lure a Cabelas Sporting Goods Superstore to their city. This brings to mind the Mississippi subsidies for a Bass Pro Superstore/baseball stadium project discussed a few posts below. There is a precedent here, and it does not bode well for taxpayers.

Regardless, it's a mysterious process that bans one flavor of superstore, and grants another millions in subsidies. What a country!

My introduction to this blog; your introduction to me; my feelings about Wal-Mart

2004-04-11T01:51:00.000-04:00

Hi. I'm a new co-blogger on this blog. I'll try to find my niche here, but I'll start out posting about a couple of topics: the shopping experience at Wal-Mart (in comparison to other stores); and the cultural effect Wal-Mart stores have on the communities around them.

First, a little background on my position on Wal-Mart:

I do respect Wal-Mart, and I think that America is clearly better because of it. I think that most campaigns against Wal-Mart are wrong, although I do sympathize with some of the smaller local merchants in some communities who are unable to compete against them.

But I really dislike shopping there. Wal-Mart stores are cluttered, with stuff piled up in narrow aisles. It's hard to find items that you're looking for. The lighting is bad, partly because the shelves are too high. They're noisy. The displays are unattractive. They're not as bad as K-marts go to be, but they're far worse than any Target.

And then I suppose I'm a bit of a snob, but some of what they sell really is really crappy. If I were buying basic dishes and kitchenware, or something like a lamp, I would not go to Wal-Mart. I would much much rather spend the extra 35 cents or whatever at Target. On the other hand, I would first go to Wal-Mart for basic automotive supplies or lightbulbs. While there, I might pick up commodities like detergent, or nationally-branded stuff like toothpaste, and maybe items like greeting cards and toys.

At any rate, that's how I felt when I lived in the environs of major cities where there was a vast selection of big-box stores (Target, Best Buy, Bed Bath & Beyond, etc.,), major malls, speciality retailers, departments stores. I felt differently about it when I lived in an urban downtown, and again differently when I visit family in a small town way out in the Nevada desert. That's all I'll say for the intro, but I'll post more about this later.

Sears Grand

2004-04-10T11:20:00.000-04:00

Who can possibly compete with WM Supercenters? Sears is willing to try:

Sears has a game plan -- it's called Sears Grand. The new store concept is freestanding stores away from the malls.

The stores are larger, ranging between 150,000 and more than 200,000 square feet in selling space, larger than the current selling space at its existing stores of between 90,000 and 95,000 square feet...

Sears Grand will also sell additional products such as milk, cookies and soda, beauty and health-care products, DVDs and greeting cards....

George Whalin, retail consultant and president of Retail Management, agrees. "Sears wants to be Wal-Mart so bad they can taste it, although the company hasn't had great success with innovation," he said...

Unlike a Wal-Mart supercenter, which sells fresh food, dairy and meat, the food assortment at Sears Grand is expected to be limited mostly to dry foods like chips and other snacks.

Nevertheless, Wal-Mart said it is taking notice of Sears' latest venture. "We're always looking over our shoulder and watching our competition," said Tom Williams, spokesman for Wal-Mart.

They're starting slowly:

Sears launched the Grand concept at its first pilot store in West Jordan, Utah last year. Three more pilot stores will join the Sears Grand family in similarly burgeoning areas including Las Vegas July 31, southern California, Oct. 31 and Austin, Texas, sometime in 2005.

Goldman Sachs has its doubts about the overall impact of the Grand concept on Sears bottom line:

Sears won't reap any benefit from the strategy in the near term. “For now, with about 870 legacy stores, Sears’ fortunes are securely tied to the mall,” where sales have been weaker than other department store chains, Mr. Strachan said in his report.

Earlier this month Sears Chairman and CEO Alan Lacy acknowledged tough competition from off-mall retailers, and forecast weak 2004 growth as Sears continues to revamp stores and improve merchandise selection.

Hide the kids, here comes Wal-Mart

2004-04-10T11:10:00.000-04:00

Good professional satire should be funny--playing, teasing, and dancing around the clear truth. But Andrew Lisa deomstrates the converse--satire is stale and dry when based on lies:

Vineland's soul will soon be sold to the devil of merchandising...

What's so bad about a second Wal-Mart, you wonder?...

Wal-Mart has made a fortune... by taking nice, cozy little towns, milking them for all they're worth, and leaving an empty, lifeless shell in its wake.

It's easy to let the lure of convenience and low prices distract you from the fact that you're signing your neighborhood's death warrant...

[I]t will suck from your town every ounce of character, originality and local enterprise that it ever had.

Remember that downtown revitalization you've been reading so much about?

Good luck with that.

I'm sure outside businesses will just be lining up to set up shop a stone's throw away from the very store that ran them out of the last town they were in.

And I have three words for you business owners who run a shop that has had local roots for a generation or three: See you later....

The good news is a few dozen crummy, minimum-wage jobs will be coming to town. The bad news is they'll all be going to illegal Eastern European immigrants named Vladi....

Not only could you die and decompose in the aisle without a single one of the zombies who work there stopping to help you, but the checkout process is like a Russian bread line.

Palestinians experience shorter waits and friendlier help at Israeli checkpoints.

WM's Impact on Downtowns: Millville

2004-04-10T06:11:00.000-04:00

In WM, Threat or Windfall?, Lisa Grzyboski does a good job of showing WM's impact on downtown Millville, New Jersey. More importantly, she frames the story around the opportunities this represents for local communities and honest retailers who compete with WM in the marketplace through superior service--not in the political arena through superior deception:

Business at the High Street shop started declining as malls and discount department stores entered the area. When Wal-Mart rolled into Millville in the mid-1990s, the writing was on the wall -- Steelman just couldn't compete.

"I couldn't buy the cameras for what the mass merchandisers were selling them for," Wettstein said. So he reacted by changing his store's focus....

While Steelman and some other downtown businesses survived the onslaught of discount retailers, others didn't, ultimately clearing the way for a renaissance driven by the city's new Glasstown Arts District....

Redevelopment isn't just about filling up vacant land and storefronts, but about doing it creatively and making sure it's a long-term solution....

Millville has such a plan in place. The results have been so positive that the city is actively recruiting big-box stores without fear of what that might do to downtown, said Don Ayers, Millville's economic development director.

"Our downtown now has done what it should do, which is find its own niche," he said. "Therefore, it's not in direct competition with big-box retailers."

More national chains mean more sales tax revenue for Millville, which also has a UEZ [Urban Enterprise Zone]. A substantial amount of UEZ revenue goes right into the Glasstown Arts District, and a good deal of that money is coming from Wal-Mart, the city's largest UEZ contributor.

"Wal-Mart is very important to the entire city of Millville," said Marianne Lods, the Arts District coordinator, noting its tax dollars are largely responsible for funding Arts District loans, facade improvement grants and marketing campaigns. "I don't see it at all as a detriment."

Besides, she said, there's always going to be a segment of the population that prefers unique or unusual stores and personal service.

Richard Hill offered a perfect example Thursday morning when he pulled up to Howell Hardware at 26 E. Main St. in his wheelchair and rapped on the store's front door.

The Millville shop's owner, Greg Erber, looked up from shelves he was stocking, walked to the door, asked Hill what he wanted and got him the 20-pound bag of potting soil he requested. Hill, a regular customer, stayed outside the entire time.

When Erber started working at the hardware store 33 years ago, he quickly learned about customer service -- and kept those same principles when he took over the business in 1981. When someone asks where to find an item, you drop what you're doing to help them, Erber said. When the store doesn't have a product, you locate it in the catalog and ask the customer if they would like to order it, he added.

"I would say service is our biggest thing," said Jon Erber, the owner's son. "You can't get good service at those other places."

Always Low Prices--Always.

Always Low Prices has Moved!

Some WM Opposition

Bomb Threat Against WM

Micha Gertner Strikes Again

Giant Competition

Newspaper & Activist vs. WM

Usual Delays in Approving Big-City WM

Bryn Mawr College Peace Action

Failed Challenge to Goodyear WM

WalMart Responds to Community Concerns

WM Money Transfers

Dan Drezner on WM in Chicago

Protest WM on Memorial Day

Hillary on WM Board

Cheneys Visits WM HQ

Enlist at WM

BusinessWeek: WM Not Bad For Cities

A Few Quick Links

Wal-Mart in the desert; and a new SuperCenter

*Updated Yet Again*: Rutland City's Wal-Mart denies it is experiencing growing pains

Canadian Union Rips WM

*Updated*: New Co-Blogger Intro: Morgan W. Brown

RFID Comes to Dallas WM

Don't Leave Your Wheelchair With the Greeter

WM Lays Off Workers

WM Receives Little Opposition

Guest Post: Alex Danchanko

Guest Post: Sterling Wright

Another Way to Stop WM

WM Debate at George Mason University

WM Sucks Forum

WM Talks to Communities: April 2004

Guest Post: Frederick Ochsenhirt

Wal-Mart Weblog

Decaying Body Found in Car at Wal-Mart...

Some WM employees are decent, hard-working people. Some are dirty rats.

Meijer fights back

David Karjanen in Newsday

Best WM Headline of the Day

Modified Disclaimer

Two WM Critics

Guest Post: Shawn McNaughton

Thomas Sowell on WM

Don't Hold Back Your Anger

WM's enemies show their true colors.

Wanted: Free Access to Trade Publications

WM as Lynchpin to Economic Development

WM Opposition Roundup

WM's Wages

Wal-Mart Takes on Fringe Banking?

WM Suppliers of the Year

Some Union Imagery

How Many WalMart Employees have Health Insurance?

Guest Post: Sterling Wright

The next target of Wal-Mart's insatiable greed? Your neighborhood Microsoft.

Blimpie Xpress

Setting Smiley Aflame

WM fires man over "Attire"

Some Thoughts on WM and Health Insurance

HIV? Wal-Mart's fault.

Big in Japan

A "progressive" analysis of Wal-Mart

WM in Esquire

Blog about WM--or Send in a Post

Guest Post: Alex Danchanko

Guest Post: Russell Nelson

"San Francisco should be big-box-free."

Wizbang on WM

The Economist on Wal-Mart

Finding a WM Job

Jesse Jackson vs. WM

Aldi (Trader Joe's)

No WM in Wallkill

Around the Blogosphere

Two Quotes

Guest Post: Tim Hulsey

WM in the NYT

Neighborhood Markets

Excellent Primer on WM

Updated Yet Again: Rutland City's Wal-Mart denies it is experiencing growing pains

Updated: New Co-Blogger Intro: Morgan W. Brown