“Hi welcome to Wal-Mart,” says the greeter. You smile back politely in acknowledgement before you quickly enter the store. You have to shop. You have to find the best deals. You fill your cart with disposable razors, diapers for the baby, socks, batteries, dog biscuits, skim milk, chocolate candies, white bread, gum, mayonnaise, chunk cheese, your favorite magazine, and a few impulse buys with prices too good to pass up. It was just a quick visit today. You make your way to the register and the cashier rings up your items and tells you the total damage to your wallet. You smile to yourself knowing you saved a bundle of time and money. Wal-Mart is your one stop shop. You leave the store with bags in hand, only to find a chanting mob outside the store: volunteers for the union. They yell out many of Wal-Mart’s faults: its discrimination towards women, its dismal health care benefits, and its barely livable wages. You wonder how much of this is true. You’ve heard these anti-arguments before, but look at how much money Wal-Mart saves you. Is it really as bad the union says? Is Wal-Mart some dark empire, or the chosen target for some of the many problems American consumerism has created? Has the company been singled out unfairly?
Within fifty years Wal-Mart has grown from a few stores in Arkansas to a multibillion-dollar corporation that spans the entire United States and many countries around the globe. Sam Walton opened the first Wal-Mart in 1962 to save the customer money, which is the Wal-Mart motto. Expanding rapidly nationally and internationally, Wal-Mart consists of more than 6,200 facilities and 1.6 million employees worldwide. Wal-Mart affects millions of lives on a daily basis: over 138 million global customers visit the store each week (Wal-Mart Facts). With numbers like these it’s obvious how influential Wal-Mart is both nationally and internationally. Wal-Mart saves its shoppers money with every shopping experience. But many critics dislike the methods Wal-Mart does to save its consumers money.
While so many vilify Wal-Mart for its sins, few look at the big picture: if Wal-Mart were to disappear off the face of the earth, other companies like it would still pay minimum wage to save you and me money. What about Target or Kmart? Wal-Mart is not an evil, all consuming empire but a product of its times. American culture made stores like Wal-Mart possible; it is the consumerist culture that epitomizes America. It is the need, the demand for more stuff, and our desire for material wealth that fills our closets, our drawers, and our garages. As consumers we want the new, the flashy, and we want it now for a discount price. While I have over simplified American consumerism and made it sound like the only factor, which it is not, consumerism is definitely a large contributor to big retail chains. Wal-Mart, along with other big business stores like it, fulfill the desire for stuff and save the consumer millions. In fact, Wal-Mart saves its customers about $16 billion a year, writes Harvard business professor Pankaj Ghemawat and business consultant Ken Mark (Ghemawat and Mark 572). But in order to pass on these savings to the consumer, Wal-Mart associates receive what many believe to be sub par healthcare coverage and salaries. Critics also charge that Wal-Mart destroys local businesses and communities. In addition to unfairly targeting Wal-Mart, many overlook the company’s openness to criticism and willingness to change.
According to freelance writer Liza Featherstone, Wal-Mart is as bad as the unions proclaim the corporation to be. Featherstone strongly criticizes Wal-Mart in her 2005 article “Down and Out in Discount America.” Wal-Mart’s obsession with saving the customer money, she argues, has a price. Its employees largely pay for that price in the form of low wages. According to Featherstone, the average Wal-Mart worker makes just over $8 an hour (about $15,000 a year). She cites Al Zack, former vice president for strategic programs of United Food and Commercial Worker, who claims Wal-Mart “needs to create more poverty to grow” (566). Featherstone creates a comparison between Wal-Mart and Henry Ford. Where Ford paid his employees plenty so they could buy Ford cars, Wal-Mart does the opposite. Wal-Mart’s low wages help to keep poverty going, Featherstone reasons, thus allowing Wal-Mart to grow. The low wages also keep them from being able to shop anywhere else but at Wal-Mart. She claims Wal-Mart uses welfare to supplement its low paycheck, citing that Wal-Mart encourages its workers to apply for federal assistance. So it is the taxpayers’ dollars that help Wal-Mart associates get by (Featherstone 566, 569-570). But, unfortunately, these are realities in retail. And Wal-Mart is not alone. It is the price that some must pay so that American consumers can enjoy discount prices. Minimum wage helps to make these discount prices possible.
Today, the average American Wal-Mart employee makes close to $11 an hour (around $21,000 a year). This may not seem like much, but it is above the poverty line. Currently, Wal-Mart’s pay is four dollars higher than the federal minimum wage. Even when Featherstone’s article was up to date in 2005, Wal-Mart was still several dollars above the federal minimum wage (Wal-Mart Facts). I have held a part-time job at Price Chopper, a northeast grocery store chain, for five years, and I have yet to make $9 an hour. It is how the retail world works. To keep prices low for the customer, companies pay minimum wage, cut worker hours, and offer minimum healthcare. “The fact is,” writes Robert Reich, former secretary of labor for President Bill Clinton, “today’s economy offers us a Faustian bargain: it can give consumers deals largely because it hammers workers…” (564).
Besides Wal-Mart’s low pay, people criticize the company’s healthcare. The plan is said to be too expensive for the average Wal-Mart employee to afford. Thus, many reason few Wal-Mart associates have insurance. However, this is not the case. Wal-Mart reported that as of this year, 92.7 percent of its employees had health insurance, a two percent increase from last year. In fact, the national average of uninsured workers nationwide is significantly higher than the number of Wal-Mart employees that lack coverage. The U.S. Census Bureau recently announced 17.7 percent of Americans do not have healthcare, versus the 7.3 percent of Wal-Mart’s workers who lack coverage. Wal-Mart’s insurance includes medical and dental benefits but not eye care. But what it is short of, the company is trying to make up for. This year Wal-Mart partnered with 1-800 CONTACTS in an effort to “help drive down healthcare costs.” The long-term agreement will bring contact lenses to Wal-Mart customers at lower costs. The two companies estimate this partnership could save consumers $400 million in the next three years. And because many of Wal-Mart’s employees are also Wal-Mart customers, they will also be able to partake in this benefit (employees can even use their Wal-Mart discount, which will help to save them even more money). Wal-Mart also offers and continues to expand its $4 prescription plan. “Our $4 prescription program is proof that Wal-Mart is committed to meeting America’s healthcare challenges,” says Dr. John Agwunobi, senior vice president and president for Wal-Mart’s professional services division (Wal-Mart Facts).
Wal-Mart is also believed to be the sole cause for running small family businesses into the ground. Freelance writer Floyd McKay reasons local downtowns become ghost towns when big-box retailers such as Wal-Mart move in. He writes, “Wal-Mart is like a neutron bomb, sucking life out of small towns, leaving buildings without the essence of civic life” (563). Critics like McKay state mom and pop stores cannot compete with Wal-Mart’s discount prices, forcing the small businesses to close for good.
However, business columnist Steve Maich counters that Wal-Mart actually boosts local economy rather than destroying it. Maich cites Carol Foote’s experience with Wal-Mart as an example of how the company helped her town. In 2000 Foote helped to organize bringing a Wal-Mart to her hometown, Miramichi. Critics warned Foote and other Wal-Mart supporters that it would ruin local businesses. However, Foote suspected Wal-Mart would invigorate local businesses just as it had done throughout Canada (her native country). She turned out to be right. In 2002, Ryerson University completed a major study of Wal-Mart’s impact on small retailers. What they found was the opening of big- box retailers like Wal-Mart was an economic boon for the whole area: attracting other retailers and driving up sales at nearby stores. The study concluded, “It is difficult to make the case that a Wal-Mart store actually puts other retailers out of business” (576). Two years later, a survey conducted by Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce found that of the 1,800 small businesses that participated in its study, the vast majority claimed Wal-Mart had little or no impact on them. “And while critics portray [Wal-Mart] as the work of a ravenous invading force,” writes Maich, “the truth is most communities reached out to Wal-Mart and embraced it” (575). Communities such as Miramichi. Foote says Wal-Mart has created dozens of jobs for her hometown and “brought new life to the town’s small commercial district” (Maich 574-576).
Like anything manmade, Wal-Mart has its defects. I am not saying Wal-Mart is blameless. I am saying Wal-Mart is not the only corporation at fault. Furthermore, the company knows it has flaws and is responding to them. Some of their responses include $4 prescriptions and the company’s partnership with 1-800 CONTACTS. Wal-Mart is also committed to saving the environment. The company has helped to permanently conserve 395,000 acres of land for critical wildlife habitats. Wal-Mart has also opened two experimental super-centers built out of recycled materials; vegetable and motor oils heat the stores. The two stores are dedicated to sustainability and will lead the way in finding methods to apply environmental practices to other Wal-Mart facilities (Wal-Mart Facts). Wal-Mart is adapting and in ways that other companies are not. It is this openness to change that proves Wal-Mart is concerned about more things than making a quick buck. Many people often deem change too scary or too risky. Yet Wal-Mart takes such risks and creates good reforms that benefit millions of lives each and every day. While Wal-Mart is far from perfect, it is not the evil empire many critics have made it out to be.
Works Cited
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York: Pearson Longman, 2007. 571-573.
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Floyd, McKay. "Wal-Mart Nation: The Race to the Bottom." Writing Arguments: A Rhetoric with
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