[W]ork is more than a paycheck. It’s dignity. It’s respect. It’s about whether you can look your children in the eye and say: we’re going to be OK.

– Joe Biden, August 27, 2008.

Do you work for Walmart? If so, does Walmart respect you? Come on, be honest with yourself. Do you know that you’re going to be OK?

How do you really feel about Walmart? Here’s your chance to express your true feelings — pro and con — about the world’s largest retailer. Write whatever you like in the comments section and engage your fellow readers in the conversation.

Jeff Hess: Have Coffee Will Write.

From Wal-Mart Watch, discussing a Financial Times article about Walmart’s new Marketside stores:

Marketside’s small format isn’t the only thing that distinguishes the pilot program from other Wal-Mart stores. Marketsides have completely independent design elements and don’t mention the word “Wal-Mart.”

[Emphasis added.]

Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t Walmart spending millions of dollars so that whenever Americans hear the name of the company we’ll think of sunshine, happiness and fluffy white bunnies? I guess that re-branding thing isn’t working out too well otherwise they wouldn’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.

NPR has a piece up about Walmart and local food which makes an excellent point:

[T]he retailer’s definition of what constitutes locally grown doesn’t match the one promoted by many in the so-called local food movement.

Does it matter that Walmart isn’t catering to a bunch of foodies? Yes, if you care about what you eat:

On a Saturday morning at a weekly farmers market in Sacramento, Calif., farmer Patrick Hoover is ladling blueberries into small plastic boxes and offering samples. He drove less than 50 miles, from his 40 acres up in the foothills, to sell them. And that’s what most locavores — the fans of locally grown food — describe as “real local food.” Hoover says selling to Wal-Mart doesn’t really appeal to him.

Wal-Mart says anything grown in the same state is local food.

“The quality, I have. I don’t do any markets like that, just because my stuff is picked ripe, and the only shelf I want it on is between here and the customer at home,” Hoover says. “And sitting in any retail store is just not good for my produce.”

But farmers who sell at local markets acknowledge their products are usually more expensive than what’s stocked in the stores. The price difference is partly due to the additional labor involved. Many of Wal-Mart’s local producers are large-scale farmers that can supply in bulk, which generally means cheaper prices.

They’re being too nice to Walmart by not explaining the counterargument well enough. Sustainable Table offers a really good explanation as to why moving business to local large scale farmers misses the whole point of the local food movement:

Small, local farms tend to be run by farmers who live on their land and work hard to preserve it. Buying local means you can talk directly to the farmer growing your food and find out what they do and how they do it. Do they grow their food organically? If they’re not certified organic, ask them why. Many small farms, even if they haven’t taken the certification step, still utilize sustainable or organic farming methods that help protect the air, soil and water.

Notice the emphasis on scale rather than just location. Here’s more:

Local foods from small farms usually undergo minimal processing, are produced in relatively small quantities, and are distributed within a few dozen miles of where they originate. Food produced on industrial farms, however, is distributed throughout the country and world, creating the potential for disease-carrying food from a single factory farm to spread rapidly throughout the entire country. The 2006 E coli outbreak is a good example of this, as contaminated spinach from a single region in California managed to sicken people in 26 states.

Under Walmart’s system, food from giant industrial farms in California can be sold as local. Technically it is, but that’s why you have to care as much about how your food is produced as from where it comes from if you really want to eat well.

Readers with memories that go back a month or two know we’ve been over this issue before in this space. Indeed, we actually have Wal-Mart sustainability guru Rand Waddoups’ response to this criticism of Walmart definition of local:

On the local definition, I have to tell you we thought a lot about this one. We have been wrestling with this definition for a year now, and finally landed on what customers told us they understood the best…state. Is it perfect, no, but it is the best we have found to help customers understand and buy better b/c of that understanding.

The best way to help customers understand the local food movement would have been to explain its principles to them. However, if Walmart’s customers really understood those principles, they wouldn’t shop at Walmart. Local food is at Wamart because it helps Walmart, not its customers nor the environment.

In short, local food is a marketing gimmick; one of a long line of marketing gimmicks at Walmart.

There is a cynical point of view in the business world that the way you get rich is by spending, and risking, other people’s money. That’s a scheme that Walmart has long adhered to and the money it likes to spend most is our tax dollars.

Some call this corporate welfare; others call it socialized capitalism.

From Charlotte, North Carolina’s WCNC:

A proposal to demolish a nearly vacant shopping center and clear the way for a Wal-Mart store prompted questions Monday on the use of tax dollars to help the world’s largest retailer.

The 155,000 square-foot store would be built on the site of the Amity Gardens shopping center, a strip mall with only one business still operating, on E. Independence Boulevard, near Albemarle Road.

Charlotte’s city council Monday received an overview of the project, which has been in the works for more than three years.

Councilman Michael Barnes expressed concern over a proposed $500,000 economic development grant from the city to the project’s developer, Charlotte-based Faison Enterprises.

“I have a good deal of heartburn helping the world’s largest retailer build a store,” Barnes said.

I feel Councilman Barnes’ heartburn for two reasons.

First, Walmart isn’t getting a loan, not even a low-interest loan; it’s getting a grant, a flat out gift of $500,000 that it will never, ever have to return to the public treasury.

Second, not only will Charlotte never see a check for $500,000 from Walmart, it is not even likely to see a return in the form of property or sales taxes from the new store.

Why not? It’s simple math. The backers — read despoilers who want their money up front so they can get out of town with it — claim that the store will generate $114,000 in annual property tax payments. But what the backers aren’t saying is that Charlotte’s local economy is a closed system with a finite amount of money in it.

The Walmart store very well may cut that yearly check for $114,000 — although the company’s record on taxes is not all that friendly — but dollars spent at Walmart will be dollars not spent at other area businesses. Those businesses that are locally owned and which support the closed economic system by spending the money at other local businesses keep the economy alive.

Businesses like Walmart suck the money out of a local economy and send it out of state (to Arkansas) and out of the country (to China).

The result is a closure of local businesses that no longer pay property taxes or sales taxes and the net long-term result is a reduction, not increase, in the tax base.

Of course, by the time that happens, the politicians have all moved on to other jobs and the backers to other projects.

And Walmart banks another government handout.

Jeff Hess: Have Coffee Will Write.

Monday is Labor Day, a day dedicated to the social and economic achievements of American workers. It constitutes a yearly national tribute to the contributions workers have made to the strength, prosperity, and well-being of our country.

Yeah. Right.

Labor Day is one more Monday holiday where public employees, bankers and very few others get a chance for one last long weekend at the end of summer.

If you’re an actual private sector worker, specially if you work in retail, it’s just another day of labor.

Former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich offers An Ode To Labor Day and reminds us that workers don’t have a lot to celebrate.

Labor Day ought not to be a day to bask in the glory of past victories. Labor Day ought to be a day when workers consider how far from the summit they really are.

Or as Reich more plainly puts it:

Labor Day should remind us how many shitty jobs still exist.

Jeff Hess: Have Coffee Will Write.

There are two classes in society, one incessantly striving to obtain the labor of the other class for as little as possible, and to obtain the largest amount or number of hours; and the members of the other class being, as individuals utterly helpless in a contest with their employers, naturally resort to combinations to improve their conditions, and in fact, they are forced by the conditions which surround them to organize for self-protection.

- Samuel Gompers, 1883.

I can’t believe this was in the Wall Street Journal:

Karl Marx…offers a helpful work philosophy where traditional fonts of conservative wisdom fail. Marx saw humans as naturally creative: “free conscious activity constitutes the species-character of man.” Furthermore, humans want to craft loveliness: “Man . . . produces in accordance with the laws of beauty.”

What Marx opposed were working conditions that stultify the mind while divorcing the laborer from a final, satisfying product. Marx railed against work that goes against man’s “essential being,” such that he “does not confirm himself in his work, but denies himself, feels miserable and not happy, does not develop free mental and physical energy, but mortifies his flesh and ruins his mind.”

Perhaps this explains why Uncle Bob keeps writing so many comments for this blog on his phone during working hours.

Jeff Hess: Have Coffee Will Write.

Since Robert won’t blog the Employee Free Choice post at Daily Kos that he himself cites, I will. This is Miss Laura:

The main components of the Employee Free Choice Act include requiring certification of a union once a majority of employees in a workplace have signed up for the union. As laws are currently enforced, after a majority of employees have requested a union, employers can force an election. This may sound democratic enough, but in fact it allows employers to use their power over workers to campaign against the union, often harassing and firing union supporters in the process…

To put this in further context, under the system we have now 30% of employers illegally fire workers during union organization drives; 23% of workers in majority sign-up elections, the kind the EFCA would allow, “report management coercion to oppose the union”; and 46% report similar coercion in what Wal-Mart and their allies would like you to call “secret ballot” elections.

The point here should be clear (especially after I’ve made it in this space many times before): It’s the status quo that’s undemocratic because Wal-Mart and its workers do not go into an election in a comparable position. Employers can intimidate employees because they have power over them, specifically the power to fire them. Unions have no power over Wal-Mart employees. The intimidation is going on NOW and it’s not the unions that do the intimidating.

Why is this so hard for some people to understand?

Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, a likely Democratic presidential candidate in 2008, delivered a 15-minute, blistering attack to warm applause from Democrats and union organizers here on Wednesday. But Mr. Biden’s main target was not Republicans in Washington, or even his prospective presidential rivals.

It was Wal-Mart, the nation’s largest private employer…

“My problem with Wal-Mart is that I don’t see any indication that they care about the fate of middle-class people,” Mr. Biden said, standing on the sweltering rooftop of the State Historical Society building here. “They talk about paying them $10 an hour. That’s true. How can you live a middle-class life on that?”

– “Eye on Election, Democrats Run as Wal-Mart Foe,” New York Times, August 17, 2006.

It looks like the reason that Walmart reacted so quickly and so positively in the Puerto Rico milk case is that the corporation has been there before, in Wisconsin; and it cost Walmart a whopping $15,000 in fines (can Walmart write non-payroll checks that small?)

From Al Norman:

In 1998, a pharmacist in West Bend, Wisconsin charged that Wal-Mart was selling milk below cost, in violation of a Wisconsin state law. In September of 2000, state officials filed a formal complaint against Wal-Mart, charging that the company sold milk, butter, cigarettes, laundry detergent and other items below cost in West Bend, Racine, Beloit, Tomah and Oshkosh, Wisconsin. “There’s no way they could be buying it that cheap and turning a profit,” the pharmacist said.

But of course, Walmart was interested in turning a profit, like the pharmacist, on other merchandise. But unlike Walmart, the pharmacist couldn’t afford to undercut the competition. And Walmart’s illegal loss leaders could have driven the pharmacy out of business.

The West Bend pharmacist said that when Wal-Mart opened one block from her pharmacy, she had to remove the milk cooler in her store, because sales fell by 80%. This caused her to lose “cross-traffic” sales for other items in her store.

Norman goes on to list many other examples of how Walmart has been nailed for such shenanigans.

At least 17 states have below-cost pricing laws, but as in the Wisconsin case, you have to show that the pricing has been done to unfairly take business away from competitors. Such cases are not easy to prove, and often take years–and a large bankroll— to investigate.

Fair competition is predicated on a diverse marketplace with many players. As more and more market share falls into the hands of a few large players, the diversity in the marketplace disappears, which has a negative impact on prices, and ultimately on consumers.

Fair competition is a little like History; unless we pay close attention, fair competition is what the winner says it is.

Jeff Hess: Have Coffee Will Write.

The back slapping, high fives and even, dare I suggest, the fist bumps have subsided after a Canadian judge handed Walmart a defeat in the company’s continued war on unions. Now workers and unions have to decide what to do next.

From the Montreal Gazette:

“Right now, the U.S. economy is in bad shape: low-wage jobs, mothers struggling to provide medical coverage for their children. This gives hope for people who just want to make an honest day’s living.” [said LaShon Smith-Campbell, a union delegate from Ohio.]

Union members from both sides of the border said the [United Food and Commercial Workers]’s strategy was to push its accreditation drives in Canada where labour laws are stronger.

“I think we felt we had a better opportunity to organize a store in Canada,” said Andrea Zinder, a union delegate from California. “This is a real message to Canadian and U.S. workers.”

And why are labor laws stronger in Canada than they are in the United States? Because of a tiny little piece of paper that Canadian workers have and American workers don’t: the signing card.

Union efforts have been especially aggressive in Quebec, one of four Canadian provinces that have card-based certification - a process that allows workers to unionize by signing cards without holding an actual vote.

“We have limited resources, so we decided we were going to put our resources in the places where we had the best chance of success,” [UFCW Canada president Wayne] Hanley said. “The mere fact that we have card-based certification in Quebec is a luxury that they don’t have in the U.S. and we don’t have in other provinces.”

I do think Hanley mispoke there; card-based certification is no luxury.

Here’s to the arrival of that vital tool in the United States in 2009.

Jeff Hess: Have Coffee Will Write.

This is my first greatest hits post, devoted to the guy who’s now $6.75 million richer, Tom Coughln. Here’s me from July 19, 2005:

[H]ow dumb is Wal-Mart? Is Tom Coughlin some kind of crooked financial genius? After all, this is a company that can track the number of Pop Tarts stores will need after a hurricane hits, yet it can’t tell that one of its directors is robbing it blind for over ten years? Seriously, even assuming everything Wal-Mart says is true, there is something really rotten in Bentonville. Their distribution system is so great that it makes Tom Friedman calls it one of the ten forces that flattened the world, but its internal accounting is so bad it makes Halliburtion look frugal? People need to demand answers here.

Here’s me from August 21, 2005:

Wal-Mart claims they began investigating Coughlin in October 2004. Yet two Wal-Mart foundations donate money to build a library named after him in February 2005? Doesn’t anybody smell a rat here?

And as an added bonus, here’s a link from the Washington Post I got out of an old diary of mine that’s worth revisiting now:

Jared Bowen, a former Wal-Mart vice president, said he was fired for blowing the whistle on Thomas M. Coughlin, who was ousted from Wal-Mart’s board after allegedly misusing up to $500,000 in corporate funds.

Wal-Mart countered that Bowen participated in the very activities he challenged. Bowen “raised the issues months after he became aware of them, out of fear that his own misconduct was about to be discovered,” said Marty Heires, a company spokesman.

The company also released documents it said show that Bowen submitted a forged college transcript with an inflated grade point average — giving himself a 3.5, versus the 2.1 on an official version — when applying for a job at Wal-Mart’s headquarters. Bowen’s attorney acknowledged that there was a discrepancy.

Jared Bowen didn’t steal from the company, but he got squat. Wonder why?

How important might you imagine it to be for an island nation to carefully protect its local agriculture? I’d rate it pretty high because imports can be disrupted in any number of ways. The Commonwealth of Puerto Rico thinks the same way.

To protect its local dairy farmers, the Commonwealth set a floor on the retail price of milk at $1.82 per quart. That’s $7.28 per gallon. Walmart was selling its Great Value brand at $1.46 per quart or $5.84 per gallon in Puerto Rico.

The government told Walmart to stop. Walmart stopped, issued a statement that it didn’t know and that it is committed to following all local laws.

Good boy, Walmart. Move along, move along.

But the story bugs me because one of at lest two phenomenon were taking place here.

Either Walmart is so insular and self absorbed that it can’t imagine anyone objecting to cheap plastic crap from China and no one at the company bothered to take a look at local laws; or

Walmart is so big and arrogant that it decided that local dairy farmers be damned, it was after market share and it wasn’t going to let a silly price floor law get in its way.

Now I’m sure there are other possibilities — for instance, perhaps Walmart is managed my skull-gnawing congenital idiots — but I really do think the choice comes down to one of the first two.

Personally, I vote for No. 1

You?

Jeff Hess: Have Coffee Will Write.