Working at Wal-Mart

Charles Platt, a writer for Wired Magazine, went to work as a low-level employee at a Wal-Mart in Arizona and now reports back on his experience. And he's very impressed with the friendliness and efficiencies of the Wal-Mart system. From the interviewing procedure to screen among the hundreds of people who apply for the few jobs available to the training, Platt finds a very professional organization focused on one thing - satisfying the customer or "guest" as Wal-Mart calls them. Low level employees are given the power to order automatically from the warehouses if there is something that they see that would sell in their departments.

Overall, he concludes that opposition to Wal-Mart is totally driven by unions not by those people who actually are happy to be working for Wal-Mart.

During my few subsequent days as a Walmartian, everyone at every level was friendly and decent toward me. No one had the slightest clue that I might write about my experiences; no one even knew that I had a former career as a journalist. Still, they behaved like poster children for enlightened capitalism.

My supervisor reminded me unfailingly to take my mandatory two (paid) quarter-hour breaks during each eight hours of working time. I was cautioned never to abbreviate my lunch hour. Most of all I was encouraged to educate myself using instructional videos on computer terminals at the back of the store.

These videos served Wal-Mart's self-interest by teaching skills ranging from customer service to the art of lifting heavy boxes without hurting your back. I was paid to view them, and was rewarded with an increased hourly rate when I finished the course.

My starting wage was so low (around $7 per hour), a modest increment still didn't leave me with enough to live on comfortably, but when I looked at the alternatives, many of them were worse. Coworkers assured me that the nearest Target paid its hourly full-timers less than Wal-Mart, while fast-food franchises were at the bottom of everyone's list.

I found myself reaching an inescapable conclusion. Low wages are not a Wal-Mart problem. They are an industry-wide problem, afflicting all unskilled entry-level jobs, and the reason should be obvious.

In our free-enterprise system, employees are valued largely in terms of what they can do. This is why teenagers fresh out of high school often go to vocational training institutes to become auto mechanics or electricians. They understand a basic principle that seems to elude social commentators, politicians and union organizers. If you want better pay, you need to learn skills that are in demand.

The blunt tools of legislation or union power can force a corporation to pay higher wages, but if employees don't create an equal amount of additional value, there's no net gain. All other factors remaining equal, the store will have to charge higher prices for its merchandise, and its competitive position will suffer.

This is Economics 101, but no one wants to believe it, because it tells us that a legislative or unionized quick-fix is not going to work in the long term. If you want people to be wealthier, they have to create additional wealth.

To my mind, the real scandal is not that a large corporation doesn't pay people more. The scandal is that so many people have so little economic value. Despite (or because of) a free public school system, millions of teenagers enter the work force without marketable skills. So why would anyone expect them to be well paid?

In fact, the deal at Wal-Mart is better than at many other employers. The company states that its regular full-time hourly associates in the US average $10.86 per hour, while the mean hourly wage for retail sales associates in department stores generally is $8.67. The federal minimum wage is $6.55 per hour. Also every Wal-Mart employee gets a 10% store discount, while an additional 4% of wages go into profit-sharing and 401(k) plans.

...You have to wonder, then, why the store has such a terrible reputation, and I have to tell you that so far as I can determine, trade unions have done most of the mudslinging. Web sites that serve as a source for negative stories are often affiliated with unions. Walmartwatch.com, for instance, is partnered with the Service Employees International Union; Wakeupwalmart.com is entirely owned by United Food and Commercial Workers International Union. For years, now, they've campaigned against Wal-Mart, for reasons that may have more to do with money than compassion for the working poor. If more than one million Wal-Mart employees in the United States could be induced to join a union, by my calculation they'd be compelled to pay more than half-billion dollars each year in dues.

Except for the interests of the unions, it doesn't really make sense that liberals should oppose Wal-Mart. It provides decent jobs for unskilled workers who seem to be happy with the jobs. And it sells lower-price items that people, in this economy, are seeking. Those Wal-Mart opponents are so blinded by their concern about the unions that they have lost sight of the needs of the people they pretend to be defending.