The Low Ethics Leader

I live in a town of 16,000 predominated by Big Box stores. Want coffee? We've got 3 or 4 Starbucks outlets. Need hardware or home improvement supplies. Go to The Home Depot. Need almost anything else? Visit our "friendly" Walmart, the low ethics leader.

In fact, if you enter Aberdeen coming from the east, the first businesses you'll see on cresting the hill outside of town are chain stores. Yes, your first view of our fair city will include the following: McDonald's, Blockbuster, Taco Bell, Burger King, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Staples, Ross, Dairy Queen, Big 5 Sporting Goods, Skipper's, Baskin-Robbins, and, of course, the big spiffy Walmart.

I can't even begin to count the number of times I've been at a local establishment looking for some item and the clerk (usually a high school student) says to me, "We don't carry that. You should go to Walmart." I then explain that I refuse to shop at Sprawl-Mart and they look at me like I'm from outer space.

The next time this happens, I'm going to be better prepared. I'm going to print a lot of copies of Jim Hightower's recent article, "Wal-Mart's New Marketing Strategy Hides Dirty Practices" and keep them in my truck. I can hand them out to the ignorant.

Here's a snippet from the article (which I hope will entice you to read the whole disgusting piece).

Beneath Wal-Mart's new cosmetic sheen lies the same old ugliness. The average employee toils for $8.23 an hour -- a poverty-level wage that amounts to about $16,700 a year gross (in both meanings of that word). Many don't even make that, for Wal-Mart defines "fulltime" work as 36 hours a week rather than the usual 40. It's common for bosses to hold workers to under 24 hours a week, which reduces gross annual income to only about $10,000.

Contrast this miserliness with the company's lavishing of wealth on those at the top. CEO H. Lee Scott, Jr., had a base salary of $1.3 million in 2005, plus $4 million in "incentive" payments, as well as stock and other compensation that raised his total haul to $17.5 million (including more than $100,000 for personal use of corporate jets). Also, Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton's widow and their four children, who collectively hold 40 percent of the corporation's stock, are living grandly. At present, they are sitting on personal nest-eggs of $15.5 billion each, putting all five of them among America's 11 richest people.

Meanwhile, fewer than half of Wal-Mart's employees get any healthcare benefits at all -- and those who do must pay 41 percent of the cost for a lousy plan that carries a $3,000 deductible per family plus a $300 pharmacy deductible and a $1,000 in-patient hospital deductible. Honchos at headquarters keep insisting that the health benefits they offer are "competitive" with other retailers. But look no further than Costco, where a good plan covers 80 percent of employees and the company pays 90 percent of the premiums.