Editor:
In regards to the feelings about Wal-Mart by some people here (“Mailbox,” Dec. 29) my sister has worked for Wal-Mart for over 10 years and is a manager. I have been in several Wal-Marts over the years, and many of the people who work in them were very satisfied to work there. The stores that could not handle Wal-Mart coming into the area were those who would not have made it even with a small box store. Some were not able to survive, but many other stores remodeled and made it after a bit of refurbishing and continue to thrive. As far as calling for a boycott, this is foolish because many of us have gone to Ukiah or to Crescent City to shop.
Those who choose can boycott if they like, but many of us welcome the opportunity to shop with Wal-Mart.
Ted Adams, Arcata
This article appears in The Debt Divide.
If A Then B but not necessarily C.
I welcome Wal-Mart. Can’t wait until they build their super center too. I ignore all those negative idiots who really don’t know what it’s like to work for Wal-Mart. They have differential pay for the night crews. I worked for both Target and K-Mart, neither provide differential pay nor do they offer benefits. What other mom-n-pop store offers benefits? Not that many!
Ahhh…the paid for by wal-mart propaganda. I love making minimum wage!!! I have such a low wage I qualify for government assistance. Somebody has gotta pay for the Walton Family Jets and Yachts.
Tired is correct. I have family that has worked at Walmart for years. I shop at Walmart and am tired of the drive out of our county to get to a store. I wish we could identify the “nay sayers” so when we see them in our future store we could heckle them on the spot.
Thank you Ted for your comments.
Anyone putting 180 miles on their car, driving 4 hours to save a few bucks on the same crap in their home town, is a complete idiot. I hope they don’t have an accident on that demanding drive.
Eureka’s social services (like everywhere else in this nation), are being bleed dry by 46 million Americans working in poverty.
Wake up.
The paid trolls are America’s finest mental midgets.
It seems reasonable that people want inexpensive consumer goods, and that most are willing to work for another to earn enough to buy those goods, it requires education in global economic issues and compassion for people to be outraged by the greed and inhumanity of multinational corporations like Wal-mart and to recognize the destabilizing effect the stores have on local economies. Wal-mart will take business from local merchants, and will send much of their profit to people that don’t live around here, and therefore won’t spend it around here. That money is out of our local economy, and won’t come back. The value of our labor is in effect extracted from our community. The goods are cheaper at Wal-mart in part because they sell things that are produced by folks that make a lot less than we do here in the U.S. Much of manufacturing is done in other countries, while we are left with lower paying service jobs here. Another rub to the game is that supporting the global system (aka buying at Wal-mart) weakens the position of workers around the world by funneling cash to the very people that support agreements and legislation aimed at maximizing corporate profit including minimizing labor costs and worker’s rights. Our personal economic power is seated in how we spend and invest our hard earned money, each dollar like a vote for whatever organization we want to support. Cast your votes with care Humboldt.
Let’s face it, people that shop at WalMart are not buying products that are usually sold in local mom and pop stores. Two completely different buckets if you will. When was the last time you shopped at a local “mom and pop” store for toilet paper and shampoo? According to some it is better to not have WalMart with low paying jobs and keep more unemployed people draining the system that is already bankrupt!
Most jobs in Humboldt County are already Minimum Wage it seems. At least you know your paycheck isn’t going to bounce if you work at Walmart, unlike some of the local places I worked at.
The only professional economic study by Bay Area Economics concluded that Eureka was saturated in low wages 10 years ago.
Since then, part-time, temporary, low wage jobs have exploded in the U.S. following continual outsourcing.
But no one will care until this unsustainable charade completes its collapse.
46 million working poor and counting.
So who is at fault for driving the “non-part-time-temporay-low-wage” jobs from out of Humboldt County and out of the USA?
“The goods are cheaper at Wal-mart in part because they sell things that are produced by folks that make a lot less than we do here in the U.S.”.
Until enough average Americans realize that the $15 hairdryer they bought actually cost them $50 when you include the social costs of outsourcing, the environmental degradation in nations without regulations, the cost of 700-1,000 foreign military installations in support of dictatorships, the lost potential and productivity of hundreds of millions of people working in slave-like conditions, as well as, the costs associated with tens of millions of U.S. citizens falling into poverty…. nothing will change.
It’s a story a 9 year old can understand, but his parents, teachers, media and nation lack the courage to tell it.
“who is at fault” Unfortunately it is built into the system, the capitalist system. Our government had controls on corporate activities through charters in the early years. Those controls have been largely eliminated, which has allowed for a great deal of control going to the corporations. Those corporations have no moral center, they simply operate to produce more short term income for the shareholders (and CEOs). Colonel Sanders is in charge of the chickens, and we chickens voted him in!
Sweatshops, garbage, poverty and sprawl WORLDWIDE!
Nobody in their right mind still argues in favor of this crap anywhere, let alone where they live.
Sweatshops are preferable to subsistence rice farming. Competition to work ten hours a day, seven days a week for $150 a month (the average pay of a Chinese sweatshop worker) is steep. What would you have these millions of uneducated peasants do? All they have to offer is their cheap labor.
You, J. Alora, belong to the new american apartheid. Shame on you, for what you just suggested.
This is how it starts. You don’t make the leap from an illiterate rice farmer to a first world lifestyle. The children of these sweatshop workers will be better fed and clothed, and thus have more opportunities than their parents.
J. Alora, your attitude is how apartheid starts, alright. They are not being decently exploited, there is no such thing in the first place.
I’m not arguing that the conditions aren’t deplorable. Just that the alternative is no alternative. My favorite quote on this issue is from William Wilkinson in Slate magazine:
“I am constantly dumbstruck that so many who profess to care about ‘social justice’ do little more than complain that desperate people have really terrible options and then work to take away the best options.”
J. there are countless alternatives to herding people into slavery. You’re really not thinking clearly.
What a bunch of nutcases.
Wal-Mart, I can’t wait until you open your doors. It will be the only reason to visit the Ghostown Mall.
J. Alora:
The U.S. spent over 100 years crushing every single land reform movement in Central and South America, U.S. repression expanded with our power…worldwide.
Land reform has always been the solution for the world’s poorest people. U.S. captains of industry know it and put a stop to it.
That’s why the U.S. supports despotic regimes that force those peasant farmers off their land either by importing U.S. subsidized grains of by violence.
Sorry you had poor college profs, but you can get up-to-date by reading “Overthrow” or “Economic Hitmen”.
At $0.25 an hour, no one will ever have indoor plumbing.
Here’s my message to Walmart and corporate America: WE DON’T WANT YOUR STUFF!
Walmart is a prime example of what is wrong with our economy, please don’t shop here I know sometimes people like to argue about these sorts of things but you have to realize what it would mean to boycott this place and really stand up for everyone living in poverty which face it, is most of us!
Many think only way to survive is to use the terrible and abusive financial instruments offered to poor people. Most everything in this store is made in another country, don’t you care?!
**
Corporations like Wal-Mart now call all the shots, write all the laws, pay off almost all the congressmen and essentially (along with the other Fortune 500 companies and Wall Street) rule the nation. They’ve helped to eliminate consumer choice and the free market while convincing you they are all for “free enterprise” and the “U.S.A.”
Have some pride, have some sense, think about where you shop and where your money is going!**
Defending sweatshops is tough to swallow, I know. The evidence is it’s a better living than subsistence farming, recycling toxic obsolete computer hardware, or scavenging through a Cambodian landfill. That’s the only point I’m trying to make. These people aren’t slaves. They’re working there by choice.
I will support anyone’s personal boycott of Walmart, but I will be the first to call hypocrite when I see you there at 2:30 AM buying Pop Tarts & Tylenol.
9:16 you are sick in the head.
J. Alora sounds like he’ll fit right in at Wallmart.
That web site is hilarious.
More like horrifying.
Well just like Dorothy your wish shall be granted. WalMart will be open in the Land of Oz and all the magic slippers in Humboldt won’t take it away again. Simply put this WalMart store could have just ten shoppers and remain open. That is how financially powerful WalMart remains. It can operate without a local profit and worry-free. A long term successful strategy in the midwest where the company would open up two WalMarts close together, wait until the other businesses in small areas went under from the increased competition, and then close one store. Just your friendly Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood kind of business. Thank you Carrington Co.
Hey Ted Adams!
http://www.eurekaucc.org/files/The_comma_book.pdf
What would Jesus do? Shop at Wal-Mart who under-employs, leaves food stamp info in it’s breakrooms and sells sweat-shop goods?
I sure wish their were more Christians out there. Who are Christians…
Jane’s comment is chilling, but can anyone dispute it? Walmart is a malignancy that only the stupid would welcome.
“(sweatshops are) a better living (for children) than subsistence farming”.
Slave owners have been crowing those words forever.
There will always be defenders of tyranny and slavery in every community.
Singling out Walmart is silly. Every other big box pays the same shitty wages and uses the same dirty business practices.
I also find it funny that people are using the “Walmart gives it’s employees applications for public assistance” thing against them when in the same issue of the Journal there’s an article about how underused the CalFresh program is.
J. Alora probably defended O. J. Simpson, because the poor guy was being “singled out.”
No, I defended O.J. because of prosecutorial misconduct.
J. Alora, defender of the downtrodden.
LOL.
“Every other big box pays the same shitty wages and uses the same dirty business practices”.
And if we keep supporting the wrong thing long enough, it will all turn out OK.
I would like to point out that most local stores and companies in Humboldt County pay worse than the evil Big Boxes. But don’t let that get in the way of propping up shitty local stores.
But it’s much easier for your lazy sacks of crap to blame Walmart, and not hold a candle to the feet of local companies.