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How Wal-Mart is Remaking our World
Corporate Accountability and WorkPlace:
How Wall Street Wrecked Your Retirement
Nicholas von Hoffman
Democracy and Elections:
Three States Accused of Illegally Purging Voter Lists
Steven Rosenfeld
DrugReporter:
U.S. Ranks #1 in Consumption of Pot, Cocaine, Smokes
Jordan Smith
Election 2008:
McCain Doesn't Need a Fact-Checker; the Media Edit His Mistakes for Him
Brent Budowsky
Environment:
Living Without a Car: My New American Responsibility
Andrew Lam
ForeignPolicy:
German Firms Eye Iraq Market
Health and Wellness:
Your Health Care May Decide the 2008 Election
Robert L. Borosage
Hurricane Katrina:
From the Bayou to Baghdad: Mission Not Accomplished
Amy Goodman
Immigration:
Immigration and the Right to Stay Home
David Bacon
Media and Technology:
Shock Jock Savage Spews Hate at Autistic Kids; Are His Enablers Ready to Abandon Ship?
Rory O'Connor
Movie Mix:
Batman's Take on 9/11 Era Politics? Drop the Fearmongering
Michael Dudley
Reproductive Justice and Gender:
Military Women Get Ready to Rock the Boat
Jennifer Hogg
Rights and Liberties:
How Scores of Black Men Were Tortured Into Giving False Confessions by Chicago Police
Jessica Pupovac
Sex and Relationships:
What Trans Erotica Gets Wrong
Andrea Zanin
War on Iraq:
The Pornography of Power: Lust for Empire Has Weakened America
Emily Wilson
Water:
America's Got Water Problems, and No Plan to Fix Them
Elizabeth de la Vega
Bullying people from your town to China
Corporations rule. No other institution comes close to matching the power that the 500 biggest corporations have amassed over us. The clout of all 535 members of Congress is nothing compared to the individual and collective power of these predatory behemoths that now roam the globe, working their will over all competing interests.
The aloof and pampered executives who run todays autocratic and secretive corporate states have effectively become our sovereigns. From who gets health care to who pays taxes, from whats on the news to whats in our food, they have usurped the peoples democratic authority and now make these broad social decisions in private, based solely on the interests of their corporations. Their attitude was forged back in 1882, when the villainous old robber baron William Henry Vanderbilt spat out: "The public be damned! Im working for my stockholders."
The media and politicians wont discuss this, for obvious reasons, but we must if were actually to be a self-governing people. Thats why the Lowdown is launching this occasional series of corporate profiles. And why not start with the biggest and one of the worst actors?
The beast from Bentonville
Wal-Mart is now the worlds biggest corporation, having passed ExxonMobil for the top slot. It hauls off a stunning $220 billion a year from We the People (more in revenues than the entire GDP of Israel and Ireland combined).
Wal-Mart cultivates an aw-shucks, were-just-folks-from-Arkansas image of neighborly small-town shopkeepers trying to sell stuff cheaply to you and yours. Behind its soft homespun ads, however, is what one union leader calls "this devouring beast" of a corporation that ruthlessly stomps on workers, neighborhoods, competitors, and suppliers.
Despite its claim that it slashes profits to the bone in order to deliver "Always Low Prices," Wal-Mart banks about $7 billion a year in profits, ranking it among the most profitable entities on the planet.
Of the 10 richest people in the world, five are Waltonsthe ruling family of the Wal-Mart empire. S. Robson Walton is ranked by Londons "Rich List 2001" as the wealthiest human on the planet, having sacked up more than $65 billion (£45.3 billion) in personal wealth and topping Bill Gates as No. 1.
Wal-Mart and the Waltons got to the top the old-fashioned wayby roughing people up. The corporate ethos emanating from the Bentonville headquarters dictates two guiding principles for all managers: extract the very last penny possible from human toil, and squeeze the last dime from every supplier.
With more than one million employees (three times more than General Motors), this far-flung retailer is the countrys largest private employer, and it intends to remake the image of the American workplace in its imagewhich is not pretty.
Yes, there is the happy-faced "greeter" who welcomes shoppers into every store, and employees (or "associates," as the company grandiosely calls them) gather just before opening each morning for a pep rally, where they are all required to join in the Wal-Mart cheer: "Gimme a W!" shouts the cheerleader; "W!" the dutiful employees respond. "Gimme an A!" And so on.
Behind this manufactured cheerfulness, however, is the fact that the average employee makes only $15,000 a year for full-time work. Most are denied even this poverty income, for theyre held to part-time work. While the company brags that 70% of its workers are full-time, at Wal-Mart "full time" is 28 hours a week, meaning they gross less than $11,000 a year.
Health-care benefits? Only if youve been there two years; then the plan hits you with such huge premiums that few can afford itonly 38% of Wal-Marters are covered.
Thinking union? Get outta here! "Wal-Mart is opposed to unionization," reads a company guidebook for supervisors. "You, as a manager, are expected to support the companys position. . . . This may mean walking a tightrope between legitimate campaigning and improper conduct."
Wal-Mart is in fact rabidly anti-union, deploying teams of union-busters from Bentonville to any spot where theres a whisper of organizing activity. "While unions might be appropriate for other companies, they have no place at Wal-Mart," a spokeswoman told a Texas Observer reporter who was covering an NLRB hearing on the companys manhandling of 11 meat-cutters who worked at a Wal-Mart Supercenter in Jacksonville, Texas.
These derring-do employees were sick of working harder and longer for the same low pay. "We signed [union] cards, and all hell broke loose," says Sidney Smith, one of the Jacksonville meat-cutters who established the first-ever Wal-Mart union in the U.S., voting in February 2000 to join the United Food and Commercial Workers. Eleven days later, Wal-Mart announced that it was closing the meat-cutting departments in all of its stores and would henceforth buy prepackaged meat elsewhere.
But the repressive company didnt stop there. As the Observer reports: "Smith was fired for theftafter a manager agreed to let him buy a box of overripe bananas for 50 cents, Smith ate one banana before paying for the box, and was judged to have stolen that banana."
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