Wal-mart — VOICES for REASON

In recent lectures on the incessant pressure group warfare over land rights in America, I’ve highlighted the legal hurdles that Walmart faces everywhere it tries to expand. Walmart’s low prices and non-unionized workforce pose big competitive challenges to high-price mom and pop stores as well as labor unions. Our legal system encourages such groups, as well as nearby landowners, to exert pressure on state regulators and courts to deny Walmart the zoning and development permits it needs to expand.

As far as I knew, however, other large chain stores typically refrained from trying to block Walmart’s expansion through local political pressure. Boy, was I wrong. According to this article in The Wall Street Journal, Walmart’s competitors are sometimes hiring outside consultants adept at “black arts” to block new Walmart projects, while disguising the true opponents’ identities.

In Mundelein, Illinois, near Chicago, a grocery store chain called Jewel-Osco became alarmed when a developer announced plans for a shopping center anchored by a 200,000-square-foot Walmart supercenter with a full grocery store inside. (Walmart is now the nation’s largest purveyor of groceries.) Jewel-Osco turned to the ironically named Saint Consulting Group for help. Saint appointed a project manager who, per company policy, adopted an assumed name. This manager then contacted landowners near the Walmart site and complained—falsely—about how construction of a Walmart had driven down the price of his parents’ home and ruined their planned retirement. Suitably riled up, neighbors climbed on the anti-Walmart bandwagon. Read the rest of this entry »

Bruce Springsteen apologized for agreeing to market a new greatest hits album exclusively through Wal-Mart. Why? Because he’s embarrassed by the giant retailer’s “labor history.” Translation: Wal-Mart’s wages and benefits are high enough to attract capable workers, while being low enough to generate profits for shareholders. Oh, yes—the company also doesn’t welcome labor unions.

Message to the Boss: save your pity for somebody who needs it. The regular people who apply for jobs at Wal-Mart are not helpless victims—they are sovereign individuals who benefit from their employment contracts, just as you benefited from your record deal. Just check out this entertaining and insightful story by a senior writer at Wired magazine who applied for an entry-level job to see for himself if the union-sponsored gripe sites were telling the truth about Wal-Mart’s lowest-paid employees:

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