The war on Wal-Mart

Wal-Mart's chief executive went on the attack the other day against the critics of the world's largest retailer. Just what is it, he wanted to know, that some noisy, nosy folk have against free choice?

H. Lee Scott Jr. didn't put the matter nearly so bluntly, but he certainly might have, if the spirit had so moved him.

Offering middle-class America the widest selection of goods at the lowest prices that market position and hard negotiating can achieve has become a form of oppression: That would seem to be the core of the hardening case against Wal-Mart.

Who pleads that case? The United Food and Commercial Workers Union, backed by no-growthers and take-your-progress-and-shove-it types who want the chain's expansion halted.

Weary of watching his company denounced as a grinder-down of the working class and a despoiler of the environment, Scott, in a meeting with the news media, called Wal-Mart "great for America." He extolled the chain's approach to business. He defended wage rates and benefits programs as fair. He wanted, not unreasonably, to know why "people would line up for jobs that are worse than they could get elsewhere, with fewer benefits and less opportunity."

Good question. We'll see what kind of answer it gets. What is heartening is to sniff the prospect of good, open combat between those who presume to judge where Americans should shop and those who say to these same Americans: It's up to you!

Possibly my first task here is to declare relative impartiality regarding Wal-Mart. Haven't shopped there or at a Sam's Club in 10 years or more. Couldn't tell you offhand where to find the nearest Wal-Mart. Can't think of anything I'd want to do there if I knew where to go. Don't really enjoy shopping, come to think of it!

Well, that's my own business. Others make it their business to trade at Wal-Mart or Sam's Club as often as humanly possible. Is it my business to discourage them, then, through trying to block the building of new stores or agitating for the overthrow of the present employer-employee relationship? I'd say on the whole, no. Though others clearly wouldn't.

The whole merit of free markets is supposed to be customer choice. If you don't feel like trading with Neiman Marcus, why, go on over to Wal-Mart. Or trade both places, depending on price, convenience and specific needs. The call is up to the customer -- theoretically.

We know "the customer" isn't some paragon of wisdom and good judgment. He's not even one thing -- he's everybody. You let "him" choose what suits him best.

Ah! But only (according to the union) if he shops where the union has a foothold. It might well mean higher prices, but, if so, tough. The United Food and Commercial Workers Union's take on our national needs is more acute than our own -- if you don't mind letting a union decide what's best for you.

So with the union's inference that, even though 1.5 million people (worldwide) freely accept Wal-Mart's terms of employment, a little coercion by the union on wages and benefits would make their lives happier. Maybe. On the other hand, if the union's terms preclude profit levels that afford employment to 1.5 million people, employment is sure to shrink or slow down.

The Wal-Mart-busters, when you get down to it, aren't unduly respectful of free choice, whether exercised by shoppers or workers. They've got their own ideas, which, in their own minds, take precedence over the ideas and notions of others.

Did anyone really foresee American liberalism -- the creed, broadly speaking, of the Wal-Mart-busters -- becoming snobbish to this degree? Well, yeah, actually. From the 1930s, union organizers set out to hogtie large companies, thus restricting such latitude as those companies enjoyed to adapt, experiment and reach out.

Then, on Wal-Mart, the unions ganged up with the no-growthers -- an odd combo, indeed, given labor's constant need for new jobs. You could call it Howard Dean's America. If you wanted to call it America.

The irony of that statement is Wal-Mart is a notorious offender of people's private property rights. All over the country, Wal-Mart has been cozying up the local city councils and having the seize private property owners' land by eminent domain. The scam offered by Wal-Mart is one of their "big box" stores on that spot will bring in more tax revenue. So the city councils usurp the private property rights of a private citizen to give them to another private citizen.

The result is the private landowner doesn't get to choose. He or she doesn't get to choose whether he or she keeps the property or gets to sell to someone else. The right to own property is one of our basic rights, and I frankly believe the Founding Fathers would have enthusiastically gone to war against Wal-Mart for this very reason. And yet, everyone seems to thing Wal-Mart is so wonderful because they offer "low prices."

So much for choice and limited government. It reminds me of the famous Hillary Clinton quote, "We're going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good."

The people who are trying to prevent the proletariat from rising up to the level of a comfortable life are suffering from IGM or "I've Got Mine" -- they are all for upward mobility and freedom until they have achieved it, when they want to kick the ladder out from under the next guy and prevent everyone else from getting what they have. The more they can restrict the membership into "Our Class", the better they can feel about themselves.

This is both a sure sign of the old Dorothy Parker opinion that "A goosegirl in ermine is a goosegirl still, and geese will gabble everywhere she goes" (or you can take the girl out of the trailer...) -- and an extension of the same desperate sincerity that goes around slapping hamburgers and cigarettes out of the hands of adults and trying to prevent them from driving the automobile of their choice and build the home of their dreams.

I personally shop at both Wal-Mart and Neiman-Marcus, and frankly I can afford Neiman Marcus for the things I need there, because of the money I can save at Wal-Mart on necessaries. And my mother works at Wal-Mart (she's 77) and they treat her like a queen and give her every possible aid and comfort in her need to take time off to take care of my father, who is 84 and not in the best of health. The town they live in has 1100 people in it, and a lot of them work at Wal-Mart who would otherwise be sucking your tax dollars down at the local bar and grille.

From the union's point of view, this is a huge pool of potential members, who are resisting the "benefits" of union membership. Now unions COULD go around to small merchants, and negotiate to unionize their establishments, and freeze in the "benefits" they claim union membership provides for the unionized employees, but that is not, for the union, very cost effective. And small merchants have been known to band together to resist this compulsory enrollment of their employees in any union.

Ah, but big employers, that is another thing. Here, you have many more employees per management team member, and with numbers, there is strength, or so goes the reasoning.

Back in the early part of the 20th Century, when automobile manufacturing was ascendent in this country, the biggest of the manufacturers was Ford Motor Company. Henry Ford organized his company for the purpose of manufacturing automobiles. His goal was to offer a good product, fairly priced, for the common man to own.

The unions, which were little more than organized gangs of thugs, set out to organize the workers at automobile plants. Ford was the major target, even ahead of General Motors at the time. Now old Henry was a sly sort of fellow, well versed in the psychology of overcoming adversaries, and his offer to his workers was, yeah, you can join the union if you want, but your wages will DROP to the level the unions are asking for. Then he always made sure his workers were paid just a little more in terms of hourly wages than the unions had won from Hudson or Dodge or General Motors. Thus it was not economically sensible for the worker to insist on unionization, as Ford was already paying better than anybody else, and overall, the working conditions were still better than those offered by the other manufacturers.

Still the organizers showed up at the gates of the Ford plants, trying to lure away the workers as the left or arrived for their shifts. To keep the plant open, the private guards, augumented by the Dearborn police, rounded up and carted away the union agitators, who had in mind the objective of breaking up the Ford Motor Company. Understandably, Henry was not disposed to view this favorably.

Wherein the FDR Administration and its legion of legal talent became involved, trying to drag Henry into court for years, to force a vote on the union. Henry beat them at every turn, because of the pro-Communist sympathies of FDR and the legal talent, which did not sit well with the courts at the time. Remember this was in the 1930's and the New Deal had not yet had an opportunity to get their own people on the bench. Most of the judiciary then were leftover appointees from the Coolidge and Hoover administrations, and it took years to get the New Deal approved by the courts. When it finally reached the point that a sufficient number of more liberal judges were sitting on the bench, and it looked like Henry could not keep the unions out any longer, Henry called up Walter Reuther of the UAW and invited him in to organize the workers. Even with this virtual blank check, the unions could not organize everywhere in the Ford industrial complex, as Ford would continue to pay the workers who chose not to join the union a higher wage than the union was demanding for their members.

Union thugs finally took Henry's son Edsel out back and beat him up so badly he later died of the injuries, so they did not have such clean hands either. Then they had to deal with Clara, Mrs. Henry Ford. Upon the death of Henry the first, in 1947, Clara engineered the takeover of the company by her grandson, Henry Ford II, and while there was still enmity between UAW and Ford (Walter Reuther thought he was going to get a place on the Ford Motor Company board of directors), at least an uneasy peace was in place in the workplace.

Then in the late 1950's, a flood of imports was unleashed on the US market. This eventually destroyed almost every one of the smaller automobile manufacturers in this country, and rocked the Big Three pretty violently. The flood almost drove the unions, particularly UAW, into a corner, and they finally emerged, much diminished in numbers and influence. So what unions do, apply coercion to the workplace, will eventually backfire, and take down not only the workplace, but the unions who pretend to represent the rights of the employees.

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