I get your point but it's not really true. When it comes to labour rights Walmart is particularly bad. It's well documented and has already been covered in this thread how they union bust, and have an especially aggressive business model to drive competitors out of business. If you look at what's happened to Canadian box retail since Walmart has entered the market it's not pretty. Eatons and Zellers are gone. Hudson's Bay has been struggling for a very long time. These are the most high profile and biggest examples but you can imagine what's happened to smaller retailers.
For the most part, the struggles of Canadian retailers predate the entry of WalMart into the Canadian retail scene. Eaton's went bankrupt in 1998, but was having troubles long before WalMart entered Canada in 1997; Hudson's Bay struggled for the same reasons that Eaton's did but seems to have found their niche by going upscale. Their HBC stores like Home Sense, etc. seem to be doing okay and directly compete against WalMart.
As for WalMart's labour practices, it is bound to be well-documented because it simply is the biggest company. That's what I was talking about when I said that WalMart suffers from McDonald's syndrome. It's not necessarily the worst when it comes to labour, but it gets more attention than others because of its size.
It's easy and convenient to shrug shoulders at this but because of the size of Walmart, the economic issues are huge and very complex. It's driving entire national chains out of business. While it might not seem terrible without a close critical examination, the effects of this are really important. Trying to compete with Walmart means lowering costs, which means driving down employee wages, finding cheaper ways to manufacture goods (resulting not only in massive losses of local jobs from outsourcing, but in huge growth in dangerous working conditions in overseas factories under pressure to lower their costs), and the resulting pressure on government to lower business costs decreasing government revenue. It's a really big, wide reaching issue.
I think this was part of a wider, global trend in manufacturing and retail and WalMart can only shoulder so much blame. It certainly wasn't the cause of this. Offshoring of manufacturing and the documented rise in labour exploitation exists in countries that have never had WalMart or in retail sectors with which WalMart doesn't compete at all. For example, upscale fashion labels that WalMart would never carry are some of the worst offenders of these kinds of labour practices.
The other thing we have to remember is that labour exploitation in the developing world is not a new phenomenon brought about by Neoliberals after 1980. It has existed for hundreds of years in different forms, it's just the amount of attention that has been devoted to this has increased dramatically in the past 25 years, or so. Moving industry to low wage areas is as old as the hills. Manufacturing began to move out of high wage, unionized areas of the United States almost immediately after the Taft Hartley Act was signed in 1947.
Do you ever wonder why big box retailers tend to sell basic, high turnover low quality items?
Because those are things that almost everybody demands on a regular basis.
Walmart invented that business model... the same way McDonald's grew the fast food business model. The poster earlier hits the nail on the head when he talks about the decline in quality of manufactured goods at Canadian Tire.
This is all anecdotal. I haven't actually seen any real evidence that consumer goods have declined in structural quality in the past 30 years. In most cases I actually find that the quality of manufactured items has gone up, especially when you consider the price paid for those items. I mean, I can throw out anecdotes too: the 1979 Toyota Tercel my parents owned was a rusting piece of garbage by the time it had 200,000km on the clock. My friend's similarly-driven 2001 Honda Accord still purrs like a dream.
When you are competing with Walmart you have to lower costs, there's absolutely no alternative except being run out of business. Decline in quality, offshore manufacturing, lower wages, corporate welfare follows.
The alternative is you sell niche products that a big box retailer doesn't want to carry. The amount of stuff that WalMart
doesn`t carry is actually quite vast and not only includes high-priced items, but also most foodstuffs, not just specialty food items. For example, all the Portguguese fish merchants won`t be threatened because WalMart doesn`t sell fish other than frozen Captain Highliner cod. If anything, the opening of the Loblaws at Queen and Portland (which is just as close as the proposed WalMart) would have threatened Kensington more. And speaking about labour practices, that Loblaws also contains a Joe Fresh. Why aren't Kensington fashion merchants directing their anger there?
Is this something we want in Kensington Market? You might have a point that Kensington's culture is so resiliant and unique that Walmart opening in the area will have little effect, but why even take the chance? What benefit is there? Why do we need a Walmart there?
I find it unethical and elitist to restrict a business from opening based on specious beliefs. I don't see how WalMart has been involved in labour practices - especially from the foreign supplier end - that are any worse than any of their competitors. I don't see how WalMart treats its local workers any worse than its competitors, either. Actually, I know some pharmacists and they tell me that WalMart is above average in terms of pay and benefits. I don't think that everything is efficiently provided by the free market, but I think that consumer retail pretty much is. I think it's up to people to vote with their wallets. If the people of the area think WalMart is so horrendous they have the right not to shop there and the place will become unprofitable and close down. If, however, enough people do want to shop there, why not let them?
