Wal-Mart Politics: Not Unlike Chicago Politics
By Sean Corbett in News on Oct 17, 2006 8:52PM
As you may have already read, Wal-Mart is in the early stages of building and opening five (that’s right, five) more stores in Chicago. It just so happens that four of those stores will be in neighborhoods where aldermen opposed the big-box ordinance. Aldermen in those wards will of course say they opposed the big-box wage hike because their wards were the places where a higher wage would be enough reason for retailers to stay out. Wal-Mart can use a similar story; they want to open in these wards because the forces of capitalism tell them to. All-in-all critics of Wal-Mart and supporters of big-box were misguided from the beginning and should be quiet according to this line of thinking. It’s all too perfect, and we’re not going to be convinced easily.
Jesse Jackson says Wal-Mart’s trying to buy out civil rights leaders. This news doesn’t come to us as a surprise -- is there a better way to repair a corporate image speckled with racial discrimination lawsuits than to support civil rights leaders?
On the legal front, Wal-Mart has again been found to be violating labor laws. Wal-Mart was found to have created a system that encourages employees to skip breaks and work off the clock. We doubt they would have qualms with employees spending time on the clock reading the new political information packets going out to the workforce however. “The information, which is still being prepared, likely will include quotes from elected officials who have been critical of Wal-Mart.” We understand that influencing political opinions is just how things go when a company has lots of employees, but why does it feel so dirty in this case? There’s just something not right about trying to maximize profits by convincing your employees that they like companies who maximize their profits by any means available, while at the same time convincing the employees that they don’t like liberals who want to put more money wage-worker’s pockets. It sounds really damn effective…
How do you pull the *truth* from the smokescreen in the case of Wal-Mart? We are all well-educated around here, maybe a little too educated to understand the perspective of Wal-Mart shoppers who aren’t outraged by the companies’ history? We’ll probably never really understand because Wal-Mart would never open a store in a *nice* neighborhood like where we live, or would they?