Is Walmart Destroying America?

(This article appears in the November/December 2014 issue of The American Postal Worker magazine.)

Is Walmart ruining our country? That’s a question that most people never stop and ask. Most of us love shopping in big, clean stores that are packed with cheap merchandise, but the truth is that Walmart is destroying America in a lot of ways.

Walmart has destroyed tens of thousands of small businesses and countless manufacturing jobs over the past few decades. It has become a gigantic operation that sells five times more stuff than any other retailer in the United States. Unfortunately, a large percentage of the things sold at Walmart are made overseas. What that’s costing the U.S. economy in lost jobs and revenue is incalculable.

‘Bait and Switch’

For every supercenter built, at least two supermarkets and numerous other stores go out of business. Walmart uses the bait-and-switch tactic. It opens stores with rolled back prices, but once the other stores close, Walmart raises its prices, often higher than the prices of stores that it ran out of business.

Walmart’s low-wage workers cost U.S. taxpayers an estimated $6.2 billion in public assistance, including food stamps, Medicaid, and subsidized housing, according to a report published by the Americans for Tax Fairness, a coalition of 400 national- and state-level groups.

The estimate was made using data from a 2013 study by the U.S. Committee on Education and the Workforce, which found that a single Walmart supercenter cost taxpayers between $904,542 and $1.75 million per year, or between $3,015 and $5,815 on average for each Walmart employee. That’s because hundreds of thousands of full-time Walmart workers live below the poverty line and are forced to get state aid.

Walmart’s Anti-Union Tactics

Walmart has a long history of denying its employees the right to organize and the right to bargain collectively.

The company deploys numerous anti-union tactics, including requiring workers to attend anti-union “captive-audience” meetings and training supervisors in “union avoidance.”

Employees are discriminated against and even fired if they are known to favor organizing a union. Lawsuits have been filed against Walmart on issues such as: low wages, poor working conditions, racial and gender discrimination, excessive hours, and sexual harassment. Many Walmart workers are forced to work flexible schedules with shorter shifts, making it difficult to schedule their lives.

Approximately 70 percent of Walmart employees leave the job within the first year.

Don’t Shop at Walmart

Walmart has been criticized by labor unions, community groups, grass-roots organizations, religious organizations, environmental groups, and Walmart employees, with good reason.

As of July 2014, the company’s largest shareholders, the Walton family, are worth a combined total of $152 billion. The family’s wealth now exceeds the wealth of the bottom 40 percent of American families combined, according to an analysis by the Economic Policy Institute. Yet Walmart’s employees are among the lowest paid workers in the U.S., making an average of $8.81 per hour.

It’s time to expose Walmart for what it really is – a greedy corporation!

All over the country, independent retailers are going out of business because they cannot compete with Walmart. Often communities will give the company huge tax breaks just to move in to their areas. But what many communities don’t take into account is that the introduction of a Walmart is often absolutely devastating to small businesses and to the economy.

The best way to counter Walmart’s effect on the American economy is to stop buying their products. The more that consumers buy these good, the more the retailers will bring them in from countries that exploit cheap labor. When these retailers see their sales drop, then and only then, will they start to change their ways!