The dark side of Wal-Mart

It seems like just about every city and town has a Wal-Mart. Wal-Marts here, Wal-Marts there, Wal-Marts everywhere. If you think about it, you can get pretty much everything you need at Wal-Mart, without ever having to step foot in another store. \nWal-Mart is extremely popular, primarily because of its low prices. But, there is a dark side to America's largest retailer. \nWal-Mart's low prices come at, well, a very high price to communities and workers. Wal-Mart is the nation's largest retailer, with more than 1-million workers according to The New York Times, and it has some of the worst labor practices in the nation.\nIn its 3,300 stores, none of its 1-million workers belong to a union. But, there are plenty of non-union stores that are fine to workers. Wal-Mart, however, pays wages well below those of its competitors and has been accused of forcing workers to work off the clock to avoid paying them overtime.\nA Nov. 8 article by The New York Times reported that because of Wal-Mart's extremely low wages, union stores such as Kroger are demanding decreases in pay of their workers. They simply can't keep up with Wal-Mart's low wages (and, consequently, Wal-Mart's low prices).\nHow is it possible, then, that a company which pays its workers so little and has more than 1-million employees has been able to remain 100 percent union-free? The answer is that Wal-Mart has several policies in place for staying non-union. First, according to the same Times article, it distributes to managers "The Manager's Toolbox to Remaining Union Free," which tells managers to "be constantly alert for efforts by a union to organize your associates." If managers sense union activity, they can call a hotline and labor specialists from corporate headquarters will hop on a plane to stop a union in its tracks.\nThere has been one union success story in Wal-Mart, though. Workers in a Texas meat department successfully unionized. Two weeks later, Wal-Mart fired its butchers. What a coincidence. \nBut, not only does Wal-Mart hurt its own workers with low wages, it also seeks to buy everything it possibly can from overseas, where labor is dirt cheap and environmental standards are minimal. All in the name of lower prices. According to Wal-Mart Watch (an admittedly biased source), 80 percent of Wal-Mart tagged garments are imports, compared to the national average of 55 percent. \nThis concoction of paying workers low wages and importing as many products as possible undoubtedly keeps prices low. In fact, prices are so low that companies who act ethically towards their employees are often unable to compete with Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart comes to towns and builds cookie cutter "superstores" that sell products at drastically lower prices than small businesses can. In doing this, it takes away many of the unique aspects of a town and replaces them with the same superstore you can see in any other town in America.\nFor these reasons, I urge you not to give your business to Wal-Mart. I'm not making this argument as a union crusader. Rather, I believe Wal-Mart needs unions because it is abusing the rights of workers and forcing stores that pay their workers reasonable wages -- such as Kroger -- to treat their workers poorly, too.\nBy shopping at Wal-Mart, you are getting low prices. You are also shopping at a store that forces companies who respect workers to cut jobs. And that high paying job might have one day been yours. No, you're not getting just low prices; you're getting a lot more than you bargained for.