DEAR EDITOR:
Go to the Internet and type in
”
Wal-Mart
”
for a search and see what you get. Here are just a couple of
things I found out from the INDEPENDENT online about why you should
wipe that smiling yellow face off your shopping list.
DEAR EDITOR:
Go to the Internet and type in “Wal-Mart” for a search and see what you get. Here are just a couple of things I found out from the INDEPENDENT online about why you should wipe that smiling yellow face off your shopping list.
Do you really think that Wal-Mart is that good?
Wal-Mart cultivates an aw-shucks, we’re-just-folks-from-Arkansas image of neighborly small-town shopkeepers trying to sell stuff cheaply to you and yours. Behind its soft homespun ads, however, is what one union leader calls “this devouring beast” of a corporation that ruthlessly stomps on workers, neighborhoods, competitors and suppliers.
Wal-Mart and the Waltons got to the top the old-fashioned way – by roughing people up. The corporate ethos emanating from the Bentonville headquarters dictates two guiding principles for all managers: Extract the very last penny possible from human toil, and squeeze the last dime from every supplier.
Wal-Mart is an unrepentant and recidivist violator of employee rights, drawing repeated convictions, fines, and the ire of judges from coast to coast. For example, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has had to file more suits against the Bentonville billionaire’s club for cases of disability discrimination than any other corporation. A top EEOC lawyer told Business Week, “I have never seen this kind of blatant disregard for the law.”
By slashing its retail prices way below cost when it enters a community, Wal-Mart can crush our groceries, pharmacies, hardware stores, and other retailers, then raise its prices once it has monopoly control over the market.
But, say apologists for these big-box megastores, at least they’re creating jobs. Wrong. By crushing local businesses, this giant eliminates three decent jobs for every two Wal-Mart jobs that it creates – and a store full of part-time, poorly paid employees hardly builds the family wealth necessary to sustain a community’s middle-class living standard.
David Rosas, Gilroy
Submitted Monday, Jan. 19 to ed****@****ic.com
