Wal-Mart foes have company

Neighbors countering big-box titan find help in 2 powerful unions
By JIM REDDEN

Issue date: Fri, Aug 26, 2005
The Tribune
http://tinyurl.com/9t3d4

Terry Olson is adamantly opposed to Wal-Mart building a store on Southeast McLoughlin Boulevard near his Sellwood home.

Olson, a retired schoolteacher, is co-chairing a newly formed citizen committee to stop the store. He believes the competition would hurt locally owned businesses and the increased traffic through Sellwood would hurt the neighborhood’s livability.

But, in a strange way, Olson would rather have Wal-Mart interested in the site than any number of other big-box retailers that could cause the same problems.

“It’s been much easier organizing against Wal-Mart than, say, a Costco store. There are so many resources we can tap into,” he says.

Olson is right. A Costco, Home Depot or Fred Meyer store all might draw customers from Sellwood and nearby neighborhoods. But in recent years, Wal-Mart has emerged as both a symbol and a target for a wide variety of groups with their own reasons for opposing the retail giant — including unions trying to organize the company’s workers, local business advocates worried about competition from chain stores and anti-sprawl activists who argue for shopping closer to home.

Some of the opponents are putting their money where their mouths are. They include two of the most aggressive unions in the country — the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union and the Service Employees International Union — which are splitting off from the AFL-CIO because their leaders do not believe the labor federation is recruiting enough new members.

Earlier this year, both unions helped launch two new national anti-Wal-Mart organizations with their own Web sites and community outreach workers. Wake Up Wal-Mart is a project of the UFCW. Wal-Mart Watch was funded with startup money from the SEIU.

“This is a campaign to change the way Wal-Mart does business,” says Chris Kofinif, communications adviser for Wake Up Wal-Mart.

“We are helping to weave a tapestry of concerned citizens and groups against Wal-Mart,” says Wal-Mart Watch spokeswoman Tracy Sefl.

Locally, both unions have helped organize anti-Wal-Mart demonstrations and are working with the three committees in the Portland area. Olson says UFCW organizer Jeff Anderson has furnished his committee with T-shirts and other materials.

Other unions in the state also are working against Wal-Mart, says Oregon AFL-CIO President Tim Nesbitt. Among other things, Nesbitt says volunteers from unions have helped circulate petitions against the McLoughlin store in Sellwood.

“It’s local citizens working against the store, but we’re helping them out because Wal-Mart jobs displace better paying jobs,” Nesbitt says.

Wal-Mart officials dispute the charges. They contend their stores are good for communities, beginning with the low prices that can save families $500 or more a year, according to one study. The officials also note that Wal-Mart pays its employees as much as or more than other large retailers. And they say their stores are good for economic development, citing a study that says new businesses frequently flourish near them.

More than that, the officials accuse the two unions of exploiting neighborhood residents’ concerns for their own benefit.

“Some of our critics have legitimate concerns. When we go into a neighborhood, nearby residents have a right to be concerned about traffic, and we need to listen to that and work out a solution. But other groups, like Wake Up Wal-Mart and Wal-Mart Watch, have their own agendas and are trying to make this a political issue,” says national Wal-Mart spokesman Dan Fogleman, noting that the UFCW has tried but failed to organize Wal-Mart employees for years.

This battle is playing itself out in the metropolitan area, where Wal-Mart is looking at opening new stores in Portland, Beaverton and Gresham. Local committees are fighting each store with support from unions and other Wal-Mart opponents. Although the Gresham City Council recently turned down the company’s application because of traffic concerns, the fight is still being waged in Southeast Portland and the Cedar Mill area of Beaverton.

City Commissioner Sam Adams, one of Wal-Mart’s most outspoken local critics, says he’s never before seen a campaign like the one against the company.

“It’s an amazing effort linking up local opponents with national resources. There’s a synergy there I’ve never seen before,” says Adams, adding that he is working with both neighborhood groups and the two unions to stop all new Wal-Mart stores in the Portland area.

Statistics speak volumes

If success breeds contempt, Wal-Mart is a ripe target. Since founder Samuel Walton opened his first store in Rogers, Ark., in 1962, Wal-Mart has grown to become the largest corporation in the world.

The statistics are staggering. According to the company, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is the world’s largest retailer, with $285.2 billion in sales in the fiscal year ending Jan. 31. The company employs 1.6 million people worldwide at more than 3,600 facilities in the United States and more than 1,570 stores in Mexico, Puerto Rico, Canada, Argentina, Brazil, China, Korea, Germany and the United Kingdom. More than 138 million customers per week visit Wal-Mart stores worldwide, the company says.

In the new book “The United States of Wal-Mart, ” author John Dicker says if Wal-Mart were a sovereign nation, its gross national product would be larger than 80 percent of the world’s countries, including Israel, Ireland and Sweden. Dicker is a Denver-based writer whose work has appeared in The Nation and on the Salon Web site.

According to Portland-based economist Robert Whelan, Wal-Mart uses its huge purchasing power and in-house efficiencies to lower prices, offering consumers greater savings than they can find at other retailers.

“All large stores that do a high-volume business have economies of scale that can save money. Because Wal-Mart is the largest retailer, it has the potential to save the most money and to reduce prices accordingly,” said Whelan, a senior project manager with the ECONorthwest consulting firm.

Whelan argues that the resulting savings benefit the entire economy.

“The lower prices free up consumer dollars that can then be spent for other things,” he said.

Information, allies shared

So why does Wal-Mart seem so controversial? The criticisms are so well-known that, when The Oregonian published an opinion piece extolling the company’s low prices on Aug. 22, the paper headlined it “The flip side of the coin at Wal-Mart.”

Part of the answer is the effectiveness of the campaign against the company. Olson says the committee opposing the McLoughlin store formed spontaneously. But it has included much of the information from Wake Up Wal-Mart and Wal-Mart Watch on its own Web site, www.NoSellwoodWalmart.com.

So have the other two anti-Wal-Mart organizations in the Portland area, Save Cedar Mill and Gresham First. All three Web sites link to the two union-backed Web sites and other national organizations opposing Wal-Mart.

Such coordination is advocated by the union-backed organizations. For example, the Web site run by Wake Up Wal-Mart offers tips for organizing local opposition to proposed Wal-Mart stores, beginning with calling small group meetings, giving the group “an upbeat name,” involving small businesses and community groups in the campaign, and lobbying local elected officials against the store.

The site also lists other “allies” that opponents can contact, ranging from such social justice organizations as the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now to the Sierra Club.

The Wal-Mart Watch Web site contains similar information.

“This is going to become an even bigger issue in the next election. All candidates are going to have to take a stand on Wal-Mart,” Kofinif says.

Fogleman responds that the voters already have made up their minds.

“Last year, 270 million Americans shopped at Wal-Mart. That’s more than 90 of the registered voters,” he says.