The Proof is in the Pudding

Woe is me but I like to shop at Wal-Mart. Where else in the Valley is the customer the boss. Everything possible is done to make shopping a customer friendly and pleasant experience. Their "Ten-Foot Attitude" means that associates greet each person they see. Their "Satisfaction Guaranteed" refund and exchange policy allows customers like myself to be fully confident of its merchandise and quality. Heck, what's to complain about?

Let me illustrate with just one vignette. The other day, I went to their camera section and wanted 14 photos scanned onto a disk. The price was 19 cents per photo and $2.78 for the disc for a total of $5.44. Now if you take those same photos to any specialty camera and photography store in the Valley, I suspect you might pay $5.00 per photo and $ 10.00 for the disk.....or a total of $80.00....so I saved $74.56! Oh yes, on the way in, I picked up a spatula for my grill for 99 cents and some low-priced butterscotch pudding. I like pudding and I also like one-stop shopping. On the way out, I stopped at the manager's office to compliment the great service I received at the camera department. All in all, a pleasant and thrifty experience.....one in which I was not savaged by a store manager or clerk who believes the customer is Darth Vader.

Yet despite this illustrative tale, cities around the country are still trying to prevent Wal-Mart from opening new stores on the grounds these stores would "threaten" other businesses (where customers are treated as if they were the enemy) and replace higher paying jobs with lower paying ones. In reality, such cities are using government coercion to prevent free competition, contends Dr. Edwin A. Locke of the ARI. In my view, no business has the right to be protected from competition.The business that offers the customer the best value for the money wins. This is the way capitalism works; it's a core value in the American system of free enterprise. Yet the hoards of anti-business critics would suggest that Wal-Mart is un-American. What rot! Like barking bulldogs, they make a lot of noise, but when you ask them why they are barking so loudly, they give you a dazed look.

As well, no city has the right to dictate local wages, directly or indirectly. Wal-Mart's low prices, which are particularly beneficial to lower-income individuals, are made possible in part by paying lower wages than those paid by unionized stores. But no business can force an employee to work for a given wage without the employee's consent. Wages, like prices, are properly set by the free market.

Though labor unions haven't given up their efforts to unionize Wal-Mart employees, they seem to have stopped trying to win workers' hearts and minds in favor of employing high-pressure tactics against management using an array of anti-business allies. Politicians are at work, too. Rep. George Miller, Democrat-CA, released a report in 2004 titled "Everyday Low Wages: The Hidden Price We All Pay for Wal-Mart," alleging the company's success has meant "downward pressures on wages and benefits, rampant violations of basic workers' rights and threats to the standard of living in communities across the country." What the report did not say was that about two-thirds of Miller's campaign contributions come from unions. Rep. Rosa DeLauro,a Dem-CT, is also union made. She recently urged Americans to boycott Wal-Mart for Mother's Day, and she wants the company to disclose its wage statistics for congressional review, but half of her campaign contributions come from organized labor. As Thomas Sowell once said, "One of the sad signs of our times is that we have demonized those who produce, subsidized those who refuse to produce, and canonized those who complain."

In the final analysis, the proof is in the pudding. If the employees at Wal-Mart think they can get a better deal with a union, why haven't they organized? Could it be that they read about General Motors, Ford, Delphi, Delta, and so many other firms that have gone to the brink due, in large part, to labor issues with their unions? Could it be that they have heard about the arrests of union leaders at the Shaws Supermarkets in the Worcester, MA area as Local 1445 of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW) attempts to enforce a collective bargaining agreement between the local union and the supermarket chain? Could it be also that unions, once powerful, have not adapted themselves to the changing labor force, have become archaic, and, except for the public sector have been rendered essentially unnecessary? The decline in their membership certainly suggests this and numbers don't lie. In the fight for the employees' hearts and minds, Wal-Mart typically wins, for it has come by its success fairly and has no intention of caving in to bullying tactics.

Wal-Mart should not be feared but admired as a great American story in which a five-and-dime store in a small town in Arkansas grew into the largest corporation, in term of sales, in the country. Thanks to the legacy of Sam Walton, Wal-Mart is a store where you can usually get the best bang for your buck. What is so "un-American about that? What I believe is un-American is trying to stop or curtail Wal-Mart's growth. I like getting my money's worth! What's wrong with that? Moreover, if Wal-Mart is ever chased out of Conway, where, pray tell, does one get his or her Photo's scanned?

"Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself." Milton Friedman