Wal Mart.....

Netscape is doing an article on an anti-Wal-Mart speaker. Since I myself work retail at the undisclosed location and employeer I find a great amount of interest in this article. Since I am not sure of Netscape's policy on archiving I will print the article in its entirity along with my commentary. Since the article is three pages. I will probably take three post to comment.

On The Cover/Top Stories Giant Slayer Elizabeth MacDonald, 09.06.04

Albert Norman has made a minicareer out of blocking Wal-Mart. He has evidently had some success. It's like a tent revival meeting. As mosquitoes buzz by in the summer heat, 120 townspeople nod "Yeses" and "Amens" from their beach chairs amid the peas and string beans at Hudak Farm in Swanton, Vt."The Raging Grannies," a troupe of older women wearing crocheted shawls, takes to the microphone to belt out anti-Wal-Mart ditties, one to the tune of "Clementine."

Found our Main Street,
Found our Main Street,
Boarded up and gone to hell,
All the townsfolk shop at Wal-Mart,
Now we've got no local stores.

I like it when townspeople organize for anything. It is sad that only older people do it but I always get a good feeling when people are politically active. The ditty though is kinda lame.

Then Albert Norman, a 57-year-old visitor from Massachusetts, seizes the microphone and exhorts the attendees to either stop the megachain's plans to build a store of 147,500 square feet right next door in St. Albans Town, twice the retail space of its entire downtown, or get Wal-Mart to cut the building down to size. The new store would sit a half-mile from the farm, across the street from a rusty drive-in movie theater in a bucolic state where not even the capital city has a McDonald's or a Starbucks. "Don't make St. Albans look like the New Jersey Turnpike," Norman rants as three red roosters stroll by. "Don't turn the Green Mountain State into the Black Asphalt State." After noting that another Wal-Mart sits 20 miles away (it's actually 35 miles), Norman pressures the attendees to write letters to the editors of newspapers, start petitions and make appeals to their zoning board.

Hmm, this guy starts off sounding a bit like Michael Moore. Bending the truth a bit to fit his needs, or not looking facts up at all. Not good.

"Wal-Mart is the end of competition in St. Albans. When you wind up with a Microsoft or Enron, you end up with no free market," he raves. "You have the power to cut Wal-Mart down to size."

Not a lover of big business. I am neutral on BB (generally speaking) because at times they do great stuff, like supporting very innovative products, but at the same time they do stuff no one person on their own can do. Like the monopoly the media has and what stories get covered and which ones are for naught. It is a two-edged sword.

This business of fighting businesses is more than a grassroots movement. For Norman, whose day job is running Mass Home Care, a nonprofit network in Burlington, Mass. that helps senior citizens remain in their homes, the anti-Wal-Mart crusade is a business. He gets up to $3,000 for his speeches, which he delivers 36 times a year, money paid by merchants, concerned townspeople and unions. He has plenty of allies, including the United Food & Commercial Workers union, frightened competitors from small retailers to big chains and environmental groups.

This is one of those things that seems kinda funny to read. So he makes money off of fighting wal mart? I kinda see it as: If the people want cheaper lower quality products, they shop Wal Mart, if they want more expensive products, they go somewhere else. If a group of people want to spend money so a guy can follow his dream to pick on Wal Mart they have the same right. But the guy who does the speaking still comes off as a Moron.

Norman gets results. He says in the last decade he has helped towns from Charlevoix, Mich. to Hood River, Ore. to Eureka, Calif. beat back 180 Wal-Marts (and 70 other big-box stores). Now Norman is taking his consulting work abroad. He has so far confronted Wal-Mart in Ireland and Barbados. In Swanton, the Bentonville, Ark. megachain has a serious battle on its hands. In an unusual move,

He must be a more effective speaker in person than in writing then. I'm glad communities are finally standing up to corporations. But is it for the right reason and right timing? Or are they too late? (I'll go into a bit more detail at the end of my rant.)

the National Trust for Historic Preservation has included the entire state of Vermont on its 2004 annual list of America's most endangered historic places. Paul Bruhn, executive director of the Preservation Trust of Vermont, says while he supports smaller Wal-Mart stores, the four existing Wal-Marts in the state were enough to threaten Vermont's picturesque villages and bucolic way of life.

A whole state declared a historic marker?! I wonder how the government governs land use. That seems more scary than a Super Center.

Wal-Mart, Norman says, encourages sprawl, drives neighborhood stores into bankruptcy and "blands down" America by morphing towns once known for their regional élan into miles of windowless, concrete walls and parking lots.

I kinda agree with him here. They do move in, take out as much money as they can. (Which, incidently, all goes back to Arkansas.) And then when profits go low they leave an empty hulking eyesore in their wake.

He quails: "America has been invaded by Wal-Martians, they have successfully colonized the United States and planted their flag in ten other nations." The bigger the target, the more the lawsuits.

I'm a fan of metaphors and all,(go Zen M.!); but Wal Martians? That's a bit far.

No surprise that Wal-Mart has 5,000 lawsuits of one sort or another pending against it, many of which are in-store accident claims. Another could be the largest class action in history, filed on behalf of six women workers, in a class that could grow to 1.6 million women employees. The suit charges the chain with sexual discrimination. Wal-Mart says the suit is without merit and that it does not represent the experience most women have when they work there.

This one is kinda funny. It looks like they are airing out all of W.M.'s dirty laundry in any way to get a change of public opinion on Wal Mart. From the stuff I've heard and read, the case with female employees could be valid. A lot of females work in Wal Mart and very few become management. But other factors could contribute to this. Women get pregnant and are more likely to stay at home afterwards. Women are more likely to have college so they use it as a stepping stone to a more specialised career. Men are more ambitious and power hungry and are more likely to aim for management in larger numbers. So I'm neutral on this. Wal Mart's new policy on this is to take a certain percentage of women who apply for management training and make them managers. This could be good and bad. Quota systems generally yield lower quality candidates and how would you yourself like to know you got your job because of a publicity trial and not by your merits?

To be continued.....