This is for all of those people who constantly write to me or write comments to my essays that no one can make a difference. Who would have thought that the biggest corporate pariah could be moved? I know I didn’t, even those who were on the front lines of this thing had given up. It seems that Wal-Mart is moving away from its previous stance concerning health insurance for its employees, to a more nuanced approach. Wal-Mart was notorious among major employers for its lack of a comprehensive health insurance plan to cover its employees at a price they could afford. It looked like Wal-Mart could deliver the lowest prices on everything except health insurance premiums for its employees.
The company, according to data available for the first time, is offering better coverage to a greater number of workers. Wal-Mart, the nation’s largest private employer, provides insurance to 100,000 more workers than it did just three years ago — and it is now easier for many to sign up for health care at Wal-Mart than at its rival, Target, whose reputation glows in comparison.
Wal-Mart has hardly become a standard-bearer for corporate America: it still insures fewer than half its 1.4 million employees in the United States.[1]
Because of the pressure and the damage to its corporate brand especially among state legislatures, many of whom were preparing or had passed legislation to force Wal-Mart to upgrade its insurance plans, Wal-Mart has found it now to be in its best corporate interest to begin the process of implementing a more affordable and less onerous plan.
What would cause a behemoth like Wal-Mart to retreat from its long standing policies? It was the constant pressure of those thought insignificant by the pundits, the media, and by the politicians. The thing about the power of the people is that it is not the fastest way to do things, nor is it the easiest. The first thing that happens is that you will be ignored and marginalized by the corporate media and the special interest politicians. The word must never get out that people power changes anything or that it works. They must continue the great myth that individuals cannot make changes, but time and again throughout history that has been proven to be false. People can make a difference, if they are willing to not give up in the face of innumerable odds.
The change at Wal-Mart will never be presented for what it truly represents. What it represents is a lesson to all of us who want to change this country. The lesson is, it won’t happen overnight and it won’t be easy. It means that we have to continue the pressure year end and year out, not succumbing to the temptation to give in. The belief that no one cares and we can’t change anything. It has taken almost a decade to change the corporate mentality at Wal-Mart, however if more people had taken up the mantle it would probably have succeeded sooner.
We must not be fooled into thinking that Wal-Mart developed some compassion and decided to implement these changes for the sake of its employees. Remember these were the same people who were willing to allow their employees to swell the state rolls of Medicaid just so they wouldn’t have to provide them insurance. No, this change was due to the people who continued to highlight the injustice of a company making 11 billion dollars annually in profits and yet cannot afford to provide affordable health insurance to its employees.
The company’s turnabout demonstrates the power of public pressure to change even the biggest corporations like Wal-Mart, which has based its business strategy on low costs at all costs.
What Wal-Mart discovered is that the chorus of critics it had long ignored or blithely rebutted had a point. “We were spending a lot of energy, and we weren’t making any headway,” said H. Lee Scott Jr., the company’s chief executive, who once traveled the country defending the retailer’s practices. “Retrospectively now I say, yes, that plan needed to be improved.”[2]
Make no mistake about it; this is a victory as much as the Orange Revolution was a victory for the Ukraine. We now have to build on this victory and continue to highlight and mobilize public opinion to address the many other issues that confront this nation. The injustice of higher corporate profits and lower wages, the injustice of a criminal justice system that has more people locked up than other nation in the world, and the injustice of a nation where we are still not judged based on character. The fight is long and hard, but if we endure we can move mountains…
[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/13/business/13walmart.html?pagewanted=1&hp&adxnnlx=1194984041-%20p4bFvh82AsCi6n7vWCHYg
[2] http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/13/business/13walmart.html?hp
Monday, November 19, 2007
Wal-Mart – Pariah to Pleasantville
Monday, July 2, 2007
Made In China
I remember when I was a kid we were poor, we use to have to shop in the discount stores before Wal-Mart. Usually they were mom and pop dime stores as they were called back then. Nothing ever cost a dime, but the name let you know that the merchandise was cheap and usually not very good. Most of the merchandise was made overseas in places like Korea, Japan, and China and at the time they seemed like exotic and mysterious places. We use to buy our toys there and they wouldn’t last very long, sometimes they would break as soon as you unpacked them. But again they were cheap and as a child it was always the getting that was important.
As I grew up those exotic names were replaced by others like Indonesia, Honduras, and the Philippines. The names changed, but the quality of the merchandise didn’t. Fortunately, my economic status improved to the point where I didn’t have to buy those items any longer and I could afford a little better quality merchandise. As the world has grown to embrace the global economy and the corporate pariah continue their race to the bottom, it appears that China is becoming the epicenter of the free trade showdown. In the past few months we had story after story and multiple investigations into how the Chinese do business. In their effort to secure access to the billion consumer market that is China, many businesses and governments have allowed themselves to be seduced into ignoring basic safety and inspection practices. The results of course have been a series of poisonings, deaths, and slave labor reports, not just here in America but the world as well. How is it possible that we can be exposed to these dangers in this century? Where are the safeguards that should be in place to protect us from exposure to these hazards? Eating food from another country should not carry with it a possible death sentence.
The answer lies in a large part to our globalization and free trade policies. It also lies in our desire to save money and enlarge corporate profits. Our trade deficit with China last year alone was 232,588.60[1]. That’s right; that is two hundred million dollars more we are receiving than we are sending out. Because we are importing so much from China there is no way to inspect it and defend ourselves once it arrives here. This means we have to do our due diligence prior to it getting here, but of course this is not being done.
China manufactured every one of 24 kinds of toys recalled for safety reasons in United States this year, including popular Thomas & Friends wooden train sets; consumer advocates, parents and regulators are alarmed at fact that over all, number of products made in China that are being recalled in US by Consumer Product Safety Commission has doubled in last five years, driving total number of recalls in country to 467 last year, an annual record; this makes China responsible for 60 percent of all product recalls, compared with 36 percent in 2000; this may reflect fact that toys made in China now make up 70 to 80 percent of toys sold in country; string of toy recalls has inspired new demands for stepped-up enforcement of safety by US regulators and importers, as well as by government and industry in China; Thomas & Friends trains are made for RC2 Corp of Oak Brook, Ill, at plants it oversees in China; RC2 declines to comment on safety control measures at its company plants in China, as does Toy Industry Assn; consumer advocates say staff of consumer product commission has been cut by more than 10 percent in Bush administration, leaving fewer regulators to monitor safety of growing flood of imports.[2]
The level of products entering our ports from China is too massive and our inspection is too lax to not expect a brewing catastrophe. Yesterday it was Fido; tomorrow it could be our children. Our business and government leaders must take a more active role in insuring our protection from Chinese imports. It is irresponsible to expect a country like China to police itself; their focus is to maintain their cheap labor force and high exports. China has shown over and over again that it will act only in its national interest and will resist any efforts to change how they do business. It is up to our government to do a better job through legislation and policy changes to make the Chinese aware that protecting our citizens is important. Instead what we have is once again placing profits over people; the WTO and other trade organizations have little or no method of combating the problems lax local inspections and policies.
Western companies have been so anxious to transfer manufacturing to China’s cheap factories that they have been happy to close their eyes to what else goes on over there — just as Google or Yahoo were happy to assist in repressing information to get a toe into the Chinese market, or as Washington and other Western capitals compete in trying to please visiting Chinese leaders. The ultimate source of China’s failings is a Communist Party that has jettisoned worn-out Marxist economic theories but clings to its authoritarian rule on all other fronts, creating a dangerously unbalanced behemoth.
This is not an argument against trading with or investing in China. Globalization can be a potent force for democratization. But human rights violations cannot be relegated to untouchable internal affairs. Just as the world has not hesitated, rightly, to lambaste the United States over issues like Guantánamo Bay, it should not be shy about systematic and widespread violations of human rights in China.[3]
The things that are being uncovered are just the tip of the iceberg; if we are to participate in these trade agreements and organizations we must do so with more emphasis on people and less on profits. We can no longer remain silent to these abuses to save a few cents at Wal-Mart, what are the lives of our children worth? Free trade is only as good as our trading partners and any partners that do not take safety first are not good partners. It appears the tag “Made in China” hasn’t changed much since I was child, have we?
[1] http://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/balance/c5700.html#2007
[2] http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F70D13FF385B0C7A8DDDAF0894DF404482
[3] http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/22/opinion/22fri3.html
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