Nevertheless, since I first saw it I've thought it both unjust and untruthful. Which makes it bad. But it's useful as a caricature of how it has become popular to view Wal-Mart. The irony is that this doesn't seem to impact Wal-Mart's bottom line, so I wonder how many people really believe that Wal-Mart is evil.
I wasn't the only one to wonder, as it turns out. Charles Platt wrote an interesting first-hand account of his new appreciation for the big-box store. He details his experiences as an entry-level employee at the retailing giant, from the hiring process to daily work. Among the interesting tidbids are the remarkable number of applicants to work at Wal-Mart, the autonomy that employees generally have on the sales floor, and the active encouragement given to self-improvement and customer satisfaction.
When he settles into describing the much-impugned (and clearly low) hourly wages of Wal-Mart employees, he recalls that co-workers had found other retail jobs to pay much less. He goes on to observe what is much more worthy of our concern:
That, indeed, is tragic! The swipe Platt takes at union power is apt, though. I recently spoke to a very contented union employee of Verizon. He loved being a technician, he said, but he really liked the union-secured benefits.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?
"My employer offered me the opportunity to become an engineer--even paying for school--but I decided it wasn't worth it. Sure, I'd get a 100% match for the first 8% of contributions to my 401(k), but I'd have to give up my pension. Managers and engineers don't get pensions--they're not in the union. I like being a technician, and the benefits are better than what the salaried positions get."While I'm all in favor of doing a job you love, I can't help shaking my head. Someone evidently thought this man could achieve more with his innate abilities, but the union's benefits actively discouraged his upward mobility. Whatever else unions may do, they certainly don't add value to employees and make them more competitive in the job-market. On the contrary, it shelters them from competition and keeps them from advancing intellectually or skills-wise.
Wal-Mart, it turns out, is far from being a sinister bogeyman, running 'honest factory workers' out of their jobs, but demonstrates an extremely efficient retailing model. Perhaps Wal-Mart is, as Platt says, "the best friend we could ask for."
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