Whew…Blogger must have not been liking me this weekend…but now I am at work and it seems to be letting me post…so here it goes!
Take a moment and read this article. Then, really think about what you just read.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704875604575280414218878150.html?mod=WSJ_newsreel_business
I know we all are supposed to hate Walmart because of their business practices and everything else. (My reasoning right now is because my Walmart decided not to honor internet coupons, but let’s not get me started on that!) All that being said, I still do a majority of my shopping each month for groceries and household supplies at Walmart, because frankly I like the convenience and I like keeping more of my money than I would at other stores. But I often think about the local businesses that are negatively affected each time a new Walmart Supercenter is opened.
Well the town of Mundelein, Illinois did their best to keep Walmart out. Even though all of the protests and petitions were held by concerned citizens, it was really major corporations that are Walmart’s competitors in the area funding all of the lawsuits. I think the residents truly were concerned about the negative effects of a Walmart, but the fired was really fueled by Saint Consulting doing the dirty work for the companies they represented. All that ended up happening out of this was three years of legality play, lost revenue for the city, citizens having the wool pulled over their eyes, and the Walmart still was built.
Many of our discussions this week centered around Facebook and I wonder if it has the same type of situation. Facebook is there, but you don’t have to join if you don’t like it or are opposed to their stands on issues such a privacy rights. But everyone should have the right to join if they so wish. I know plenty of people who NEVER go to Walmart and that is their choice, but does that mean the rest of the community needs to go without? I don’t hardly think so. Walmart wasn’t breaking any laws by wanting to build, it’s not like it was a giant coal plant setting up shop in the middle of town. Maybe I am being unsympathetic to those citizens who complain, but I just feel as long as companies are able to produce the right permits, who am I to stop them from coming to town?
Thanks,
Christine
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You're going to see major players get into a lot of these protest movements because there's always a buck to be made.
ReplyDeleteThat being said, what makes people want to keep Walmart out is what they do to the labor market. Walmart is able to keep prices low in part because of their terrible employment practices and union busting. If other companies want to keep up, they have to pay their employees less as well. Walmart also destroys businesses in all sorts of different trades when they move in, and those people end up working, that's right, at Walmart, where they make less money. And it's not as if Walmart never gets into the lobbying and propaganda game!
Of course, Walmart is good in other ways. My understanding is that they've done a lot of work on the environmental front.
These situations are ambiguous. It is possible for a company to be ethical in some respects and unethical in others. It is possible for people to be against a company opening in their town, and for their competitors to use that opportunity to sway the local government into keeping them out. Speaking of this story, it's also possible for newspaper to find a story that is helpful and newsworthy, and for that paper also to have a partisan axe to grind!
Christine-
ReplyDeleteI very much agree with you on your correlation between Facebook and Walmart. No one is forcing a person to go to either place; it's a choice a person makes for himself.
This was a very interesting article. Two of the most telling passages in it for me are as follows:
ReplyDeleteFormer Saint workers say the union sometimes pays a portion of Saint's fees. "The work we've funded Saint to do to preserve our market share and our jobs is within our First Amendment rights," says Jill Cashen, spokeswoman for the United Food and Commercial Workers Union.
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“There is nothing illegal about a company trying to derail a competitor's project. Companies have legal protection under the First Amendment for using a government or legal process to thwart competition, even if they do so secretly”
Obviously there was some opposition to the opening of a Wal-Mart in this particular area. Apparently, the citizens have heard the well publicized stories of the devastation left in the wake of the opening of these stores in other communities and decided to put a stop to it. That there are companies who make their livings preying on these types of situations speaks more to the cutthroat nature of our business environment and our litigious society rather than any intellectual freedom principle in my opinion.