It's torn cities apart from Inglewood to Chicago and engulfed the
entire state of Vermont. Now the conflict's gone national as a presidential
campaign issue, with John Kerry hammering the megaretailer for its
abysmally low wages and Dick Cheney praising it for its "spirit
of enterprise, fair dealing and integrity." This could be the
central battle of the 21st century: Earth people versus the Wal-Martians.
No
one knows exactly when the pod landed on our planet, but it seemed
normal enough during its early years of gentle expansion. Almost
too normal, if you thought about it, with those smiley faces and
red-white-and-blue bunting, like the space invaders in a 1950's
sci-fi flick when they put on their human suits.
Then
it began to grow. By 2000, measures of mere size - bigger than
General Motors! richer than Switzerland! - no longer told the
whole story. It's the velocity of growth that you need to measure
now: two new stores opening and $1 billion worth of U.S. real
estate bought up every week; almost 600,000 American employees
churned through in a year (that's at a 44 percent turnover rate).
My thumbnail calculation suggests that by the year 4004, every
square inch of the United States will be covered by supercenters,
so that the only place for new supercenters will be on top of
existing ones.
Wal-Mart
will be in trouble long before that, of course, because with everyone
on the planet working for the company or its suppliers, hardly
anyone will be able to shop there. Wal-Mart is frequently lauded
for bringing consumerism to the masses, but more than half of
its own "associates," as the employees are euphemistically
termed, cannot afford the company's health insurance, never mind
its Faded Glory jeans. With hourly wages declining throughout
the economy, Wal-Mart - the nation's largest employer - is already
seeing its sales go soft.
In
my own brief stint at the company in 2000, I worked with a woman
for whom a $7 Wal-Mart polo shirt, of the kind we had been ordered
to wear, was an impossible dream: It took us an hour to earn that
much. Some stores encourage their employees to apply for food
stamps and welfare; many take second jobs. Critics point out that
Wal-Mart has consumed $1 billion in public subsidies, but that
doesn't count the government expenditures required to keep its
associates alive. Apparently the Wal-Martians, before landing,
failed to check on the biological requirements for human life.
But
a creature afflicted with the appetite of a starved hyena doesn't
have time for niceties. Wal-Mart is facing class-action suits
for sex discrimination and nonpayment for overtime work (meaning
no payment at all), as well as accusations that employees have
been locked into stores overnight, unable to get help even in
medical emergencies. These are the kinds of conditions we associate
with third world sweatshops, and in fact Wal-Mart fails at least
five out of 10 criteria set by the Worker Rights Consortium, which
monitors universities' sources of logoed apparel - making it the
world's largest sweatshop.
Confronted
with its crimes, the folks at the Bentonville headquarters whimper
that the company has gotten too "decentralized" - meaning
out of control - which has to be interpreted as a cry for help.
But who is prepared to step forward and show Wal-Mart how to coexist
with the people of its chosen planet? Certainly not the enablers,
like George Will and National Review's Jay Nordlinger, who smear
the company's critics as a "liberal intelligentsia"
that favors Williams-Sonoma. (Disclosure: I prefer Costco, which
pays decent wages, insures 90 percent of its employees and is
reputedly run by native-born humans.)
No,
Wal-Mart's only hope lies with its ostensible opponents, like
Madeline Janis-Aparicio, who led the successful fight against
a new superstore in Inglewood, Calif. "The point is not to
destroy them," she told me, "but to make them accountable."
Similarly Andy Stern, president of the Service Employees International
Union, will soon begin a national effort to "bring Wal-Mart
up to standards we can live with." He envisions a nationwide
movement bringing together the unions, churches, community organizations
and environmentalists who are already standing up to the company's
recklessly metastatic growth.
Earth
to Wal-Mars, or wherever you come from: Live with us or go back
to the mother ship.
