DEAR EDITOR:
In response to Wal-Mart representative Amy Hill’s whitewash of
her employer in the Oct. 20 Dispatch, I suggest that readers check
out the Oct. 6 issue of Business Week
–the bible of corporate America.
DEAR EDITOR:
In response to Wal-Mart representative Amy Hill’s whitewash of her employer in the Oct. 20 Dispatch, I suggest that readers check out the Oct. 6 issue of Business Week –the bible of corporate America.
Ms. Hill claims that the proposed Wal-Mart Supercenter will produce needed revenue for the City of Gilroy. But according to Business Week, “a series of studies have debunked the notion that a new big-box store boosts employment and property tax receipts. The net increases are minimal as the new big-box stores merely capture sales from existing businesses in the area …”
Jobs: Ms. Hill claims that Wal-Mart workers are a happy group. But according to Business Week “in 2001, (Wal-Mart’s) sales clerks made less, on average, than the federal poverty level.” As to the rest of its labor relations, according to Business Week, ” It’s a ticking time bomb,’ says one executive at a big Wal-Mart supplier.” The company faces nearly 40 lawsuits charging it with forcing employees to work overtime without pay and a sex-discrimination case that could rank as the largest civil rights class action ever.”
Yes indeed, those must be some extremely happy workers, just singin’ and dancin’ out there in the cotton fields – oops, sorry, wrong century!
Effect on retail food businesses: Wal-Mart’s huge market share “comes at the expense of established competitors … which pay their workers 30 percent more on average than Wal-Mart … For every new Supercenter that Wal-Mart opens, two supermarkets will close.”
Business Week notes that 30 supermarkets have closed since 1997, when Wal-Mart began its saturation in Oklahoma City.
There’s so much more to say, and no doubt, in the final weeks of this campaign; and as the new City Council moves to act on the proposed Supercenter, we’ll all get the chance to chime in. But readers should note that blatant inaccuracies and falsehoods in Ms. Hill’s letter. It’s a typical example of Wal-Mart’s “big lie” technique. Wal-Mart believes that the hicks in Gilroy believe anything if you say it often enough.
Business Week concludes – “Wal-Mart’s methods of squeezing out those low prices paying salaries below the poverty line, building superstores that crush mom-and-pop stores, and pushing manufacturers to the wall for savings are generating a backlash.”
Maybe in Gilroy, too.
I am a lifetime Gilroy resident, and a proud staff member of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, ALF-CIO.
Lenny Ortega, Gilroy
Submitted Thursday, Oct. 23
