Although it is America’s largest retailer (and growing fast in other nations), Wal-Mart is a legendarily shitty employer. A list detailing their sweatshop-y, discriminatory and just plain revolting treatment of their employees—many barely making a living wage—would take me hours to assemble. If you’re interested, Wikipedia has a thorough compilation of Wal-Mart’s many sins, the epic lawsuits and the hundreds of millions of dollars of settlements that resulted.
So I was thrilled when I read yesterday that a gender discrimination suit against Wal-Mart, filed in 2001, was certified as class-action by the US Court of Appeals (Ninth Circuit—holla!) This allows attorneys go after Wal-Mart for punitive damages, back pay and other compensation on behalf of not just the six original plaintiffs, but over a million women who’ve been employed by Wal-Mart.
Wal-Mart has been dragging this case up the judicial food chain for years now specifically to prevent this. The suit was ruled class-action in 2004, when a US District judge wrote:
[The female plaintiffs] present largely uncontested descriptive statistics which show that women working at Wal-Mart stores are paid less than men in every region, that pay disparities exist in most job categories, that the salary gap widens over time, that women take longer to enter management positions, and that the higher one looks in the organization the lower the percentage of women.
Yesterday one of the plaintiff’s attorneys told the New York Times:
“Wal-Mart tries to project an improved image as a good corporate citizen,” said Brad Seligman, “No amount of P.R. is going to work until it addresses the claims of its female employees.”
I stopped shopping at Wal-Mart years ago, even though it occasionally meant driving out of my way. Fortunately, I now live in one of the few places on earth—New York City—that has withstood the Wal-Mart juggernaut, so spending my money elsewhere isn’t that difficult. (We still don’t have Wal-Mart because our local labor unions are very powerful, and politicians here need union votes more than they want Wal-Mart money.) I hope these women, their lawyers, and the courts jack up Wal-Mart’s shit in truly epic fashion. Wal-Mart’s always thrown its size and weight around in order to intimidate everyone from suppliers to union organizers and dissident employees—but with a class-action suit of this magnitude and hundreds of millions of dollars on the line, they’ve finally met their match.
I live in the midwest and I don’t find avoiding Walmart all that difficult. However I do wonder, is Walmart really so unique in these practices? I mean, maybe they are worse than most but what about say, Target? It troubles me.
I hear ya, bluebears.
The solution? Shop at CostCo.
http://www.alternet.org/story/19014
Here’s an even more extensive breakdown of why to shop at CostCo:
http://www.seattlepi.com/business/166680_costco29.html
In addition to being a good employer, their products are WAY better than Wal-Mart’s.
thank Becky. We talk about getting a Coscto membership all the time, that finally pushed me over the edge.
I avoid Wal-Mart whenever I can, but I still find myself going there when I can’t get somewhere else or can’t find something somewhere else. I expect I spend less than $100 there a year. Frankly, Wal-Mart has needed this dope slap for a long time.
When I lived in CA I had a friend who was a part of the lawsuit concerning overtime pay for managers, and they won that one. I’ve also had friends who worked at Target, and from what I’ve seen Target is much better in terms of how they treat their employees, including the pay issue. But on some other fronts they’re not much better. It looks like they’re trying to improve on the environmental impact issue, but their interactions with vendors leave a lot to be desired (with that much purchasing power you can really trample people). So Target is somewhat better when you live in the land of severely limited choices…
I grew up thinking NOBODY would ever replace Sears Roebuck. And Montgomery Wards. And IBM for computers. Everybody gets replaced, and Wal-Mart will be taken down eventually, they are a supertanker in a more nimble world. Before Wal-Mart there was a place, believe it or not, called K-Mart ….
CostCo is the best! I love shopping there. Their chocolate chip cookies…mmm.
I have never in my life shopped at a Wal-Mart, believe it or not. I hope they get smacked waaaaay down on this one. But Target…that is a guilty pleasure. They tend to have good basics in terms of clothing and housewares. Where can I go to avoid shopping there for the basics? I’m going to have my first apartment to furnish in the fall! Where to shop?
Go plaintiffs!
Like baraqiel, I have never spend a dime in a Walmart and I never intend to. To me, the Walmart question is fraught with privilege problems. Those of us who are educated and have done the research know to avoid shopping there. But if you’re poor, don’t have time to research or don’t live near Costco or another alternative, Walmart may be your only viable choice. It’s nice if you can afford to stand on your principles and pay a little more if need be (which I can, and do). But if the choice is spending another $10 a week to feed and equip your family, or stand on your principles and do without, I can’t bring myself to demand that women do the latter.
I like Costco, but they don’t have everything that Target has. And I’m still pissed off at Target for letting its pharmacists humiliate women by refusing to sell them Plan B. However, if they go through with their plans to build a store in the city where I live, I may have to change my mind.
Awesome! Thanks for sharing this. I stopped shopping there years ago, too. I’m lucky enough to live in an area with alternatives.
Thank you Ninth Circuit!
I am proud that I never shop at Wal-Mart. And you’re right becky, it certainly makes it much easier to avoid living in NYC. That said, when I was in upstate NY in college, where I was surrounded by big box stores, I still couldn’t bring myself to shop there and tried to avoid the other big box stores as much as possible as well.
I just finished reading Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture. Have any of you read it? I highly, highly recommend it. What struck me was the how strong the correlation was between poor quality products and the poor treatment of employees. Naturally, Wal-Mart is the prime example of this trend. The author held up Costco and Wegman’s as examples of stores that sell decent quality products and treat their employees well.
@MM: But if you’re poor, don’t have time to research or don’t live near Costco or another alternative, Walmart may be your only viable choice.
Very true. And Wal-Mart knows it, and they use that reality to exploit the shit out of everyone they come in contact with, including the very people who shop there because they don’t have better options or more money. Wal-Mart is capitalism at its worst.
You’re completely right about the privilege issue, too. So many people are forced by simple economics to work at Wal-Mart or to shop there. I don’t judge them at all for doing so, but I think it makes it that much more important that those of us who do have options choose not to shop there.
My mom <3s WalMart, and every time I go home, for Xmas or whatever, we end up there while running errands (since her town has the "Super" version, with both grocery and standard discount department store elements), and I end up saying something about the decimation of local vendors, labor abuses, or union-busting, and it gets REEALLLLLY awkward. Mom's not wealthy, not by a long shot, but she could afford to make another choice. And doesn’t.
@PhDork: The same was true of my grandparents, who lived across the highway from a massive Wal-Mart in Roanoke, VA. They could have gone to the Target that was 5 minutes away. But they didn’t. Made me nuts.
No Wal-Marts in DC either. And since I don’t have a car, they have basically ceased to exist in my world.
@Becky and MM: thanks for pointing out the privelege inherent in a Wal-Mart boycott. I have at points in my life lived in areas of the South where Wal-Mart was quite literally my only option because of a combo of location and economics. The chain is particularly pervasive here in the deep south, especially in rural areas. Whenever issues like this come up, the privelege of being urban is often overlooked, so I appreciate you guys pointing it out.
Also of note: the chain is so all-encompassing here that they’ve even managed to keep Costco out of the market by flooding s with their own brand of mega-store, Sam’s.
Ugh. I was never much of a Walmart shopper but ditched them completely once read the article comparing their practices to Costco’s. I’m a huge CoscoTrader Joe’s fan. I’m moving to an area with a Walmart but no Costcos. (Fortunately, there is a Wegman’s there.) Anyone know how BJ’s Warehouse stores stack up on the Walmart-Costco continuum?
@annimal: BJs is much smaller than Wal-Mart and so it doesn’t have a long history of strong-arming suppliers and pushing other stores out of business the way Wal-Mart does. They just don’t have the clout.
I know BJs has had some problems with the DoL for not paying employee overtime and they have gotten bad publicity for hiring non-union labor. But if given the choice, I would rather spend my money at BJs than at Wal-Mart.
Frankly, I think you’re ALWAYS better off avoiding Wal-Mart. You can be confident that EVERYONE is more ethical than Wal-Mart—they are in a league unto themselves when it comes to bad labor practices.
One of my proudest moments was when my sister-in-law was taking our (at the time) 10 year old niece to Wal-Mart while they were visiting over the holidays and my niece spent the trip there repeating my “Wal-Mart is the root of all evil” speech. Unfortunately that was almost six years ago and I’m still fighting an uphill battle getting my family (who could totally afford it) to shop elsewhere.
My MIL (and her sister) in particular love Wal-Mart and it drives me nuts that they buy stuff for us there all the time. I’ve made my views known and they know I won’t shop there but while I’m willing to lecture my own mother I’m not going to initiate conflict with my MIL. Sometimes my MIL even fibs and tells me she got something at Target but I know she didn’t because it’s a Wal-Mart brand or she accidentally left the tag on.
Wal-Mart bashing definitely raises class issues because it appears to always come from educated, urban and privileged liberals. Frankly, I also think some of the Wal-Mart hate is based on the tacky people that shop there. I mean, who hasn’t snickered at “peopleofwalmart.com” on occasion?
@charlemagneinsweats:
Wal-Mart bashing definitely raises class issues because it appears to always come from educated, urban and privileged liberals.
I really disagree with that. The biggest bashers of Wal-Mart—bar none—are labor unions, almost always the folks at the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, whose 1.3 million members work in groceries, meatpacking and poultry factories, food processing and manufacturing, and retail stores. They are not educated urban elitists by any stretch of the imagination. Nor are the women who are suing Wal-Mart in this class-action or the many, many people who have run grass-roots campaigns protesting Wal-Mart’s labor practices or their presence in rural and suburban communities.
And while I am an educated urban liberal, I’m not bashing Wal-Mart because of some snobbery directed at the people who shop and work there. I speak out against Wal-Mart because Wal-Mart treats working-class people like shit and exploits their economic vulnerability in pursuit of profit. It would be much more of a “class issue” if I just turned away and said, “Well, that doesn’t involve me because I don’t need to work or shop at Wal-Mart.”
Frankly, I also think some of the Wal-Mart hate is based on the tacky people that shop there. I mean, who hasn’t snickered at “peopleofwalmart.com” on occasion? Speak for yourself. And I think your use of “tacky” to describe Wal-Mart customers is pretty questionable.
“I speak out against Wal-Mart because Wal-Mart treats working-class people like shit and exploits their economic vulnerability in pursuit of profit.” The irony is that the very people you seek to protect from Wal-Mart are the ones who shop there the most–the working poor. A family barely making ends meet can save an extra 100 or 200 bucks a month by shopping at Walmart as opposed to some other grocery store.
Can we at least acknowledge that there is some liberal snobbery aimed at your typical Red State, NASCAR lovin’ mullet rockin’ Walmart customer? You’ve NEVER heard this kind of contempt from your peers expressed at the people who shop at Walmart?
The irony is that the very people you seek to protect from Wal-Mart are the ones who shop there the most–the working poor.
Exactly. Businesses exploit the shit out of their consumer base, and none does it better than Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart operates by driving other local stores out of business—especially family-owned ones—and uses the lack of competition to ensure that their working class customers have no other place to shop (or, in many cases, work). They then use that leverage against suppliers, and drive down prices on manufactured goods and agricultural products, which helps put more working-class people out of a job. It’s a cycle, and it’s a vicious one. Do you really think Wal-Mart’s helping working-class people by doing that?
there is some liberal snobbery aimed at your typical Red State, NASCAR lovin’ mullet rockin’ Walmart customer? You’ve NEVER heard this kind of contempt from your peers expressed at the people who shop at Walmart?
In the wider culture, sure. But not in my peer group and not on this site. BTW, I grew up in the Red State South. My peers (and family) include a lot of those Wal-Mart customers you seem so hell-bent on stereotyping. And just by sheer repetition, you seem to be awfully invested in promoting those stereotypes yourself.
@charlemagneinsweats – The thing is, liking NASCAR is a relatively free choice. Yes, it’s certainly cultural and class divisions exist in terms of who watches what sports (although why that should be is unclear to me). But liking NASCAR doesn’t actually hurt anyone, carbon footprint concerns notwithstanding.
By contrast, Wal-Mart hurts a lot of people. It hurts the people who work for them, clearly, it hurts the people whose businesses it destroyed, but it also hurts the people who shop there. There exist stores that have their customers’ best interests at heart — Trader Joe’s*, for example, really does seem to care about the people giving them money. I’m sure some of that is marketing, but some of it also is apparent in how they respond to customer concerns. Wal-Mart very transparently cares much more about profit than about the wellbeing of its customers. If they can convince you to buy less healthy food that has a higher profit margin for them, they will (and I’m sure they try). The fact that there’s a sharp division in the US with regards to access to good food is one of the biggest class-based problems that we have (in my opinion).
So, yes, the people that we’re trying to protect from Wal-Mart are the people who shop there the most. For me personally, this is because I think it’s really unfair that people from the middle and upper classes should be able to have a large variety of places to shop for food, including specialty stores and farmer’s markets as well as cheaper grocery stores like Trader Joe’s, and as such have the power to cook a large variety of healthy and tasty food whereas people from the lower classes are often basically coerced into shopping at Wal-Mart. (Of course, Wal-Mart isn’t the entire problem — there are also questions of education, specialized equipment, time needed to prepare food, etc.)
(*Speaking of TJ’s – one of the things I noticed over the summer, which was the first time either my manpanion or I were living independently outside of a dorm, is that TJ’s was about 2/3 or less of the cost of shopping at our local chain grocery – BUT that the TJ’s in the city where we were was relatively difficult to access by public transport whereas the grocery store had a trolley line running right in front of it. So, not exactly equal access, and most of the people we saw shopping there also seemed to be middle/upper-middle class. Has anyone else observed this about TJ’s?)
I see where you’re coming from, charlemagneinsweats, but I think there are two types of anti-WalMart groups. The elitists who look down on WalMart’s customer base (and employees) probably couldn’t care less about labor issues or environmental issues.
Becky- personally I think the planet would be better without Walmarts. I think they are monstrosities and would love to get back to the old fashioned mom and pop stores which fostered a real sense of community.
I’m just always fascinated by the dialogue when it comes to the pros and cons of Walmarts. When a person of means tries to convince a person who shops or works at Walmart that the place is evil it sounds incredibly arrogant. This disconnect is something that liberals need to work on before they can save the working class from themselves.
@charlemagneinsweats – But that’s just the thing — as much as I might rail against Wal-Mart, I’d never seriously try to convince someone away from shopping there. This is something the government needs to fix by making the sort of business practices that Wal-Mart engages in unfavorable through tax and tariff structures (Wal-Mart imports a LOT of stuff from China).
I take your point, Charlemagne, but being liberal and being working class are not mutually exclusive. Liberals have plenty of first-hand knowledge of working blue-collar or minimum-wage jobs. Liberals come from working-class backgrounds. The most ferocious liberals I know are union organizers and community activists from working-class communities, particularly non-white ones. You’re assuming that latte-sipping limousine liberals constitute the entire liberal community, which just isn’t the case.
And who said anything about the working class needing to be saved from themselves? Not me.
@baraquiel: I think it depends on the area. Near my house, there was a Trader Joe’s and a discount supermarket right across the street. Both are served by a bus line. I used to stop off at both, and saw many people doing the same. Although TJ’s was cheaper than the chain supermarkets, it was pricier on some things, especially bulk stuff.
However, both stores had chosen to locate in the pricier side of town, where there is a surfeit of grocery stores, rather than the less expensive side. So there’s still the issue of non-equal convenience.
@annimal – Right, which is why TJ’s + CostCo is such a killer combination — but again, CostCo has a high charge up-front which demands that you have that amount of money available to spend at one time, so that’s another access issue (plus the fact that I’ve never seen a CostCo that you could get to easily on public transportation…).
@baraqiel: You’re definitely right about CostCo not being accessible to public transportation, at least, that’s the case at the ones I’ve been to in VA and NYC. But given that they sell everything in giant monster sizes, it would be damn near impossible to schlep all that stuff onto the bus anyway. I wonder if CostCo or BJs have some kind of scaled membership fee…some buying clubs or co-ops will drop their membership fee for people on public assistance.
@BeckySharper – I just looked on their website and couldn’t find anything, but maybe if you asked? The other thing is that at CostCo you have to pay with a check, cash, or AmEx, which, again, is geared towards people with a certain income structure. No money orders, I think, although they do have their own “cash card”.
Yeah, the combination of no public transportation + membership fees/requirements make Costco impossible for many.
I once got into a huge argument with a coworker who thought it would be easy to live on the food stamp allotment of ca. $4 a day, since he was used to shopping at Costco, getting free lunch at work, etc. I had to point out that not everyone can just go to Costco and get the giant bags of rice, etc, and even rice is pretty pricy at the regular grocery stores, not to mention having the time to shop, cook, etc.
I think the other important point about the Trader Joe’s discussion is that again, as with CostCo, even if the store is better and more affordable all-around, it’s another one of those things that just isn’t available to everyone. As baraqiel says, there are many cities in which the TJ’s is difficult to access from certain parts of town. AND, TJ’s isn’t even close to being a nationwide phenomenon. When I lived in Southern Cal I LOVED Trader Joe’s. Now that I’m back in the South, there’s nothing even remotely similar.