Over at Alice’s we have been talking about shopping at Walmart. We started out joking that you can’t go in for just a few items. You must walk out with near $100 when your list had only 5 or so small items on it. Items that couldn’t be found elsewhere, so your only choice was Walmart.

            Then Rob brought up how we should consider shopping elsewhere because they seem to treat their employees some what unfairly. He had other reasons too, and left a link to a Frontline Documentary.

            While I have never worked for, nor applied to work for Walmart, I can’t speak for how the employees are treated or what benefits are offered to them. If I had to guess I would say they are probably offered many of the same benefits companies of that sort normally offer. I spent several years working for Winn Dixie when I was younger. They had decent benefits. Medical, optical, dental, and prescription. All of these were insurances that you had to pay for part of out of each pay check, and you also had a co pay at the doctor. That sounds about right to me. The only one I remember ever using was optical, and it was good plan. The only reason I ended up paying anything out of pocket was because I picked a $400 pair of Polo frames that cost me about $280 above the covered amount. I was single, who cared?! Now I’m sure if you are married, and trying to support a family only on a Winn Dixie, Kmart, Harris Teeter, Hannaford, Lowe’s, Home Depot, Walmart, etc salary then you will probably be pinched to pay all the co pays, and insurance fees there are. That’s just how it is. That’s why there are so many 2+ income families in America. In America health care is not free. Frankly, from what I’ve heard about the health care, and waiting lists for care in other countries, I’m glad ours isn’t free. However, that’s a completely different post, and I’m not squeezing it in here. From reading that documentary Walmart doesn’t seem any less fair of an employer then any other retail company. There probably are store managers who have tried to get away with working their employees off the clock, or without breaks to save company hours and make themselves look better. That doesn’t mean it’s an unwritten company policy that is passed on to all managers when they are in training.

            I do agree there are towns that will not benefit from a Walmart, super or otherwise. These are little towns who have small specialty shops, and Walmart would surely run them out of business. When we lived in Key West Walmart fought hard to be able to build a store in the Keys. It was taken to town meetings, and most voted against it. This was 5 years ago, and there is still no Walmart in the Florida Keys. When we lived there I longed for a Walmart. There was a Big Kmart, JC Penney, Sears, Scotties (hardware-now it's a Home Depot or Lowe's I believe), but that was it as far as really big stores. Oh yeah, the big grocery store was Winn Dixie. There were not even really big name restaurants except for the fast food places. Everything else was locally owned and run. No big chains there really. That is why there was no big Walmart store. Walmart would have put all the small stores out of business. I could see it now, you walk in there and where you would see an optical shop in wally world here, it would be a screen printing shop. There would be souvenirs on every wall in the store. You wouldn’t even have to comb the beaches for real Key West shells anymore. Well ya know what? You don’t anyway. There are so many small stores in Key West that everything you could imagine you might want. If I didn’t go down there and see those stores I wouldn’t know what to do. Browsing for souvenirs should not be done from a Walmart store. Keep building those Super Walmarts in the big towns that have the economy to support them. As for the small towns, Walmart needs to stay away. Yeah, I shop at Walmart, and would really want one in any town I lived, but not at the expense of the little shops that have been there, and remain the history that holds those towns together.

            In the mean time I’ll be waiting for our new Super Walmart to open. We live in a big enough area that it won’t put any small stores out of business. What are your thoughts on Walmart?

I love Wal-Mart (and Super Target). They're convenient and the prices are right.

Although I posted almost all the comments I had on the subject over at my journal, I will add a thought about the small town situation. I do think that Walmarts in a really small town end up putting little unique businesses out of business. They just cannot compete, that is a fact. And in a little vacation spot, it would be sad to see the little shops disappear that give the area character. It gets boring when all you see is WALMART everywhere you go. It gets generic after a while. I enjoy the uniqueness of small town stores.

We dont have Walmarts here in NZ....but I have heard SO much about them! When I visit america, I am so going to check them out!!! :) Hope your day is going peachy Kathy!

Kathy, I am on daddy-duty and I don't have time right now to give you a full explanation but I obviously did not make my point if you believe I don't shop at Wal-Mart "because they seem to treat their employees somewhat unfairly". It goes way beyond that. Wal-Mart is bad for your community and bad for society.

It's true that I think they treat their employees poorly and they cause local merchants to go out of business but there is more to it. Wal-Mart demands a certain price from its suppliers, the suppliers either comply or Wal-Mart goes elsewhere and the US manufacturers close and thousands of Americans lose well-paying manufacturing jobs. Those jobs go to foreign plants which employ people at very low wages.

Meanwhile, Sam Walton's heirs are worth billions.

The Frontline documentary is available to view online. It is very interesting. If you can't watch the whole thing you should at least watch Chapter 5 on this page.

Rob, maybe you didn't make your point clear to me, but that's what I got out of it. It does bother me that when Sam Walton was alive Walmart used to advertise that they only sold American made products. I remember when I started seeing products in their store that said made in China, and I was like whoo, when did that happen. It does warm my heart when I see products made in America. Especially when I see the tags in my husbands PT uniforms that say made in Fayetteville, NC. That's my home town.

I don't believe that one large company can be solely responsible for closing down manufacturing companies. More and more companies are buying their products from countries outside the US because those products are cheaper. Unfortunately this was made possible by the Clinton administration. My own mother was out of a job in a factory that made Osh Kosh clothing because this company chose to move to Mexico where labor was cheaper. Walmart did not put those people out of work. It isn't just Walmart. When you shop, do you read all the labels to make sure everything was made in America? If not, then you may as well go ahead and shop at Walmart.

The big supermarkets wield enormous power in this area. Most suppliers are much smaller and grow reliant on sustaining a relationship with the massive retailers. The famous example in Britain is dairy farmers being forced to sell milk below cost to Tesco. It isn't pretty.

We have two Superstore Wal-Marts and it hurt a lot of the smaller grocery stores, so much that they got very expensive.

There is a Target store opening up very soon, and they will be a competition for Wal-Mart. I like both of those stores, because their prices are reasonable.

I also get very happy when I see "made in America" we need more of those.

Wal Mart is evil.
On one hand I do want to shop there because of that walmart in Quebec that the CEO's shut down as soon as the employees unionized themselves.
But on the other hand, their clothes and electronics are SO cheap, and the prices really can't be beat.

What a dillemia.

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Phone Number: (202) 512-4400:-?:-?

Government Accountability Office
441 G St., NW
Washington, DC 20548

By phone: (202) 512-3000 (Locator)

By email: contact@gao.gov

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