Dukes v. Walmart is the largest gender discrimination lawsuit in history, alleging that women who worked at Walmart were systematically given less pay and less chance at promotion due to gender.  We’ve spoken a lot about it in the past on this website. 

According to the 9th Circuit:

Plaintiffs contend that Wal-Mart’s strong, centralized structure fosters or facilitates gender stereotyping and discrimination, that the policies and practices underlying this discriminatory treatment are consistent throughout Wal-Mart stores, and that this discrimination is common to all women who work or have worked in Wal-Mart stores.

Walmart even knew they were wide open for such a lawsuit but did nothing to change their practices.  Now Walmart is asking the Supreme Court to say that its one million plus female employees can’t make this claim as a class action.

So maybe if Walmart had only discriminated against half a million women it wouldn’t be appealing? 

From what we can tell, the reason that Walmart is asking the Supreme Court to take on this case is that they do not want to be exposed to the damages might result from such a large class, up to and possible more than 1 million women. Walmart would like to have each woman bring suit individually, rather than trying to defend themselves against the allegation that there was an overall culture of discrimination.

Dukes v. Walmart is the perfect example of why we have class action lawsuits in this country: no lawyer would be able to take any one of these cases individually because the damages would be too small to devote the time needed to prove discrimination.

Walmart would like a legal system that only works for the big guys.

The Walmart model of low wages, poor benefits, and no job security continues to trip up the company and these missteps are seen in this quarter’s returns. Walmart Associates don’t have the resources needed to build positive financial growth in their own lives, and Walmart, as the nation’s largest employer, puts downward pressure on wages throughout the entire economy. These practices stand in the way of a meaningful recovery both for Walmart Associates and the economy as a whole.

Recently we wrote about the conditions under which garment workers in Bangladesh struggled, often making as little as 11.5 cents per hour.  Last week these workers began to protest when the wage increases they were seeking fell short of their demands.

The government of Bangladesh, under pressure from manufacturers, has begun systematically attacking worker rights groups, especially targeting the Bangladesh Center for Worker Solidarity (BCWS).  BCWS’s assets have been frozen by the government, and one of their leaders was detained and beaten by authorities. 

BCWS leaders in Bangladesh are reporting persecution from manufacturers and the government.  One manufacturer in particular, Nassa Global Wear, has filed suit against BCWS.  The owners of Nassa, who are former high-ranking military officers, may have used their political power to pressure the government to arrest BCWS leaders.  Walmart is Nassa’s largest customer, purchasing an estimated 80% of the production of the company. As the largest retailer in the world, Walmart has enormous bargaining power and influence over the way their suppliers do business.

Walmart has written a letter to the Ambassador of Bangladesh to the United States, asking him to investigate the worker crackdown, but they could use their influence much more powerfully than by just writing a letter. One phone call from Walmart--either to Nassa officials or to Bangladeshi government officials--could make these human rights abuses stop.

Please join us in calling on Walmart to use the full weight of their influence to push Nassa Global Wear to stop its assualt on workers’ rights. 

Ever wonder how Walmart can sell jeans for $8 a pair?  The National Labor Committee found out by going to the source: young women garment workers in Bangladesh. 

The Faded Glory - Women’s Organic Cotton Relaxed-Fit Flared Jean is sewn in Anowara Apparels factory in Chittagong, which sells almost 100% of its production to Walmart.  According to an action alert from NLC issued on July 28, 2010 and available at nlcnet.org.

These workers make the equivalent of 11½¢ an hour.  They are expected to make 10 pairs of Faded Glories an hour, working out to about 1.2¢ a pair.  Compare that to workers who engaged in the Bread and Roses Strike here in the US.  They were making about 15¢ per hour.  In 1912.

In June we encouraged Wake Up Walmart supporters to join the National Labor Committee and called on Walmart CEO Mike Duke to support a minimum wage for garment workers in Bangladesh.  The letter to Duke is still available, and more than two thousand people have already signed on.

Walmart isn’t willing to pay a cent or two more per pair of jeans to lift these women and thousands like them out of abject poverty. 

“The wage the workers are paid, I will say, is not only insufficient, but also inhumane.  It is simply impossible for [the garment workers] to even live from hand to mouth in the capital with the peanuts they get in wages.” - Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina

Please join us and NLC in telling Wal-Mart to support the modest 35-cent-an-hour minimum wage demand of Bangladesh’s garment workers, not one cent less.

Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.
702 SW 8th Street
Bentonville, AK 72716

Phone: 479-273-4000
Fax: 479-273-4329
Email: Mr. Rajan Kamalanathan, Vice President of Ethical Sourcing - Rajan.Kamalanathan @wal-mart.com

Let Walmart know that under no known branch of moral philosophy is this considered to be ethical:

“A few years back, I told Wal-Mart, ‘Give me one cents more a piece, one cents. I will use that money for these poor people.’ He says, ‘No, give us two cents less.’” - Bangladeshi Factory Owner

In the run up to the City Council vote in Chicago over the proposed zoning, Walmart was involved in a lot of footwork in the South Side community. For example, they did push polling², they pushed a lot of money at charities³, and they created a fake community group⁴ (along with Walmart-paid comment spammers).

The Wall Street Journal⁵ said that even Obama could learn something from Walmart about community organizing.

But if Walmart or some other group was paying these South Side residents a C-note each to “protest,” it demonstrates that this visible and media-friendly support for Walmart was manufactured.

Community groups and labor were able to extract some concessions⁶ from Walmart in the run up to the City Council vote, though Walmart said it was be reneging⁷ on those agreements.

Walmart continually claims that people want the company in their communities. When the agreement was reached and the City Council was about to vote, how many of those folks with signs⁸ that read things like “Benefits from Walmart better than AFDC [Aid to Families with Dependent Children]” and “Walmart is better than welfare 4 me” came out because they supported Walmart and how many came because there was a crisp hundred dollar bill in it for them.

Notes:

1. Brooks, Max. “You Can Buy Love” Chicago Reader. 15 July 2010. Web.
2. Robinson, Kevin.  “Wal-Mart Push Polls Chicago, Claims 74% Support New Store - Chicagoist.” Chicagoist: Chicago News, Food, Arts & Events. 29 July 2009. Web.
3. Hinz, Greg. “Wal-Mart Reaches Deal for ‘dozens’ of New Chicago Stores.” Crain’s Chicago Business. 21 June 2010. Web.
4. Robinson, Kevin. “Wal-Mart Using Fake Community Group to Manufacture Support.” Chicagoist. 26 Jan. 2010. Web.
5. Mcgurn, William. “McGurn: Wal-Mart Does Saul Alinsky - WSJ.com.” Business News & Financial News - The Wall Street Journal - WSJ.com. 6 July 2010. Web.
6. Statement from the Wake Up Walmart Campaign of the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union on the Agreement Between Worker Organizations and Walmart in Chicago.
7. Tice, Carol. “Walmart Gets Its Chicago Store, and Immediately Reneges on Its Wage Deal.” Business Blogs BNET. 25 June 2010. Web.
8. Clifford, Stephanie. “Wal-Mart Gains in Its Wooing of Chicago.” The New York Times. 24 June 2010. Web.

The fine comes from the 2008 trampling death Jdimytai Damour, who had been working at the Walmart in Long Island.  On Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, of that year a crowd of 2,000 people had been lined up for hours near a hand-written sign that read “Blitz Line Starts Here.” Shoppers busted through the line shortly before the store was scheduled to open, crushing Damour as he tried to protect a pregnant woman from being trampled. 

We have called on Walmart have higher safety standards, now it seems that the company doesn’t want to even recognize that it did anything wrong.

According to The New York Times, Walmart is fighting a $7,000 fine from OSHA.  But it is difficult to understand why Walmart is doing so.  They reached an agreement with the Nassau County NY district attorney to create a $400,000 fund for victims of the stampede, they’ve spread around $1.5 million to charities and community groups in the community around the Walmart store in question, and they have announced “crowd policy” changes, though how effective they are is open to interpretation, based upon five articles from this season.

From the Times:

In May 2009, OSHA accused Wal-Mart of failing to provide a place of employment that was “free from recognized hazards.” Specifically, the agency said the company violated its “general duty” to employees by failing to take adequate steps to protect them from a situation that was “likely to cause death or serious physical harm” because of “crowd surge or crowd trampling.”

Wal-Mart, the world’s largest retailer, says that regulators are trying to enforce a vague standard of protection when there was no previous OSHA or retail industry guidance on how to prevent what it views as an “unforeseeable incident.”

Walmart is essentially trying to drown OSHA in paperwork and spend millions of dollars in order to avoid paying a $7,000 fine, taking up almost a fifth of the time of lawyers at OSHA’s New York office.  This is like hiring Johnnie Cochran to get out of a speeding ticket. 

Walmart admitted no liability when it settled with the Nassau D.A.  But if it paid the OSHA fine, it would in a sense be admitting that it had committed some wrongdoing in not preventing the trampling death.  If they admitted wrongdoing, they might be held accountable to government.

And Walmart refuses to be held accountable by anyone but themselves. 

In 1995 Walmart hired the law firm of Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld to do an audit and see if the company was at risk of just such a suit.  No surprise to us, the firm found that

men were five and a half times as likely as women to be promoted into salaried, management positions.

In a press statement released this evening, Wake Up Walmart said

Today’s news is a smoking gun that Walmart leadership was aware of the financial risk facing the company for six years before women took legal action against its policies that systematically paid female workers less than their male counterparts and prevented women from winning promotions.

According to The New York Times article, Walmart had criticized the report that they themselves commissioned by saying that the analysis in it was modeled on the kind of analysis that lawyers filing a class action lawsuit would use. 

And then the largest class action lawsuit in the history of the United States was filed against them.

That is why we are calling on you to join us in calling for an end to such discrimination.  Send a letter to Walmart’s Board of Directors telling them that Walmart executives should not be getting massive bonuses until they prove that gender discrimination is no longer part of how Walmart does business! 

Activists will be gathering across the country on Friday carrying just that message.  See if there is an event near you and join us in calling for an end to these horrible business practices.

The results of that survey could be construed to mean that post-bailout America is truly ‘best symbolized’ by a power-sotted corporation that exploits its workers, drains our manufacturing base, hammers our trade deficit, and floods our markets with cheap sweatshop products from China. Yes, Wal-Mart ‘best symbolizes’ what corporate excess has done to America.

This week we have another survey—this one from Consumer Reports magazine---which surveyed 30,666 of its readers over a year’s time, asking them to rank experiences and products at 11 retailers, including Wal-Mart. Consumer Reports issued this brief disclaimer: “Results might not reflect experiences of the U.S. population.”
Wal-Mart will not be reprinting the Consumer Report survey on its website. The results are not very flattering—and they’re not very different from a similar survey the magazine published eight years ago.

For openers: “Last year shoppers spent $405 billion at Wal-Mart, the world’s largest retailer. But according to a new study by the Consumer Reports National Research Center, they might be better off if they switch stores.”

Consumers shop at Wal-Mart for one reason only: presumed low prices. But CR readers said prices at the 10 other retailers (which included JCPenney, Sears, and Target) were “at least as good.”
Almost 75% of Wal-Mart shoppers found at least one problem to complain about, and half had two or more complaints. In terms of overall store rating, Wal-Mart finished 10th out of 11 stores, barely nosing out Kmart at dead last.

“Wal-Mart was near the bottom of the Ratings,” CR concludes. “The number of complaints about Wal-Mart’s lines and narrow aisles was above average. About 44% of its shoppers had a problem with the staff if they sought help. Quality of apparel, jewelry, kitchenware, and electronics was rated below average.”

Ouch! 

This is not the message Wal-Mart spent $2.4 billion in advertising this past year to cultivate. Wal-Mart boasts that it serves customers more than 200 million times per week The retailer has a bloated store base spread out over 603 billion square feet of selling space in America alone. The mantra at Wal-Mart is “fast, friendly and clean.” Or as Wal-Mart puts it: “Busy moms expect a clean and efficient store layout.”

But the Consumer Report survey suggests a company whose presentation is slow and unfriendly. According to CR readers, Wal-Mart and Kmart had the least knowledgeable staffers, and Wal-Mart’s cavernous supercenters were cited as “stores that were too big to navigate easily.” The 2010 CR survey notes that Wal-Mart shoppers were “particularly peeved” at the cumbersome merchandise return process at the giant retailer.  20% of the returns took more time than expected, readers said. Worst of all, checkout lines were worst at Wal-Mart, cited by 46% of readers who had shopped there.

Wal-Mart is stung by such criticism, because the company is obsessed with its sleek and tidy image.  “As I walked through one of our stores,” writes company CEO Mike Duke in Wal-Mart’s current annual report, “the engineer in me loved seeing the efficiency and smoothness of how our operations executed and performed.”

On the one hand, Wal-Mart tells its shareholders that it “achieved record customer experience scores for the year, reflecting increased traffic, and higher ‘fast, friendly, clean,’ scores.” Apparently Wal-Mart didn’t cross tab any customer satisfaction surveys with Consumer Reports readers.

The “engineers” at Wal-Mart may seek comfort in the fact that Consumer Reports is only seen by an estimated 7.3 million readers---while Wal-Mart has 200 million customers every week. But Vanity Fair has only 1.2 million readers, so maybe Wal-Mart needs to do some more focus groups with those “Busy Moms” who drive their bottom line.

Wal-Mart’s self-serving hyperbole about efficiency and seamless shopping has become a mainstay of its culture, and is taken for granted by the media. But this week, Consumer Reports readers kicked some dirt on that shiny exterior. 

She says “The Miley Cyrus and Max Azria line is not for children.  It is sold in our lady’s apparel section and was designed for and marketed to older audiences.  However it is possible that a few younger customers may seek it out in the store.”

This, ladies and gents, is a classic example peeing on your leg and telling you it is raining.  Because Hannah Montana is marketed at “older audiences”?  Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think Ms. Cyrus’s show is on the television lineup after Grey’s Anatomy. 

Classic example of Walmart telling it like it isn’t.

The irony of course is that there already is a Wal-Mart discount store on Manchester Road in Derry---but Wal-Mart wants a bigger store so it can add a full line of groceries. There are, in fact, no less than 12 Wal-Mart stores within 18 miles of Derry, so the residents have plenty of places to get their cheap Chinese imports.

Two years ago, in March of 2008, Wal-Mart dropped plans to build a Derry superstore. But now the company says its plans are back on the drawing board---which means the company will leave behind a ‘dark store’ that could remain empty for years. According to the Lawrence Eagle Tribune newspaper, the site Wal-Mart covets now is the same location on Route 28 that it was developing two years ago.

Wal-Mart’s regional community manager issued the standard company statement about the on-again project. “We are excited to bring even more savings and convenience to the Derry community. Our relationship with the residents of this community has been long-standing and we look forward to continuing to serve the area.”

The new store will measure in at 147,000 s.f. Wal-Mart says the 160 people it employs at its current Derry store will be transferred to the new site, and that 85 new jobs will be created. This, of course, is a gross figure, and does not indicate the net jobs left once you subtract out the similar jobs that will be lost at existing grocery stores in the Derry trade area.

The existing Manchester Road location is 115,000 s.f. which is large enough to be a supercenter, so a second location is totally unnecessary. Wal-Mart could do an “in-box conversion,” in which the existing store footprint is simply reconfigured to make room for groceries. This would require no permits, no hearings, and no major controversy.

In the spring of 2008, Wal-Mart announced a major slow down in new store development. The company told Derry officials that the economy was the main reason the retailer was shutting down negotiations with the town. But Wal-Mart now says times have changed. “Due to changing dynamics in the regional and national economy, we feel this proposal is a good fit at this time,” the Wal-Mart spokesman told The Eagle Tribune.

Two years ago, during negotiations with the town, Wal-Mart was asked to come up with $1 million to help upgrade Route 28 for their new store. It turns out that town officials have been having private meetings with Wal-Mart for months, without the public knowing about it. “We’ve had some discussions with the real estate people over the last couple months,” Derry’s planning director admitted to the newspaper.

According to the town, a proposal may not be submitted until July or August. But the Derry Conservation Commission is looking over any wetlands impact this coming week.
What you can do: Town officials seem to have no clue what this project means for the local economy.

“I think it’s great,” Derry Town Council Chairman Brad Benson told the Eagle-Tribune. “I think any further economic development Derry could get is good.” But is Wal-Mart a form of economic development, or simply a form of economic displacement?

The town council has no economic impact study before them, and “think” this project means jobs---but actually has no evidence that a supercenter means jobs. Another town councilor told the newspaper, “I’m happy they are going to come. But if it’s not them, then it will be someone else. If Wal-Mart comes, it will bring a lot of other people. Hopefully, it will be beneficial to Derry.”

But economic development should not be based on ‘hope.’ The reality is not only will Derry be left with a dead Wal-Mart to fill---and very few retailers want a 115,000 s.f. used building---but there is also an existing Wal-Mart superstore only 7 miles away in Salem, New Hampshire, which could also lose sales.

Wal-Mart admitted in its recently-released 2010 annual report that new stores often steal sales from existing stores, so the addition of new stores cuts into a key indicator called “same store sales growth,” which was very weak at Wal-Mart this year--in part because of the over saturation of stores---as in the Derry trade area.

Readers are urged to contact Derry Town Council Chairman Brad Benson at bradbenson@ci.derry.nh.us with the following message: “Dear Chairman Benson, I was surprised to see your assessment of the proposed Wal-Mart superstore as being “great.” Why do you consider this a form of economic development?

I would urge you to check with your existing grocery stores in town to ask them how many people they employ, before you start counting your 85 promised jobs at Wal-Mart.

The town might also do well to put in place a surety bond for demolition of retail stores that sit empty for more than 12 months, because you are going to have a 115,000 s.f. dead store on your hands within a year after you green light Wal-Mart. The fact is a Wal-Mart superstore will make some things increase: crime, traffic, air pollution, noise and light pollution. It will make residential property values near the site go down. But that’s it. Another retailer in town just means one more player in the game of retail musical chairs.

A study several years ago concluded that for every one Wal-Mart supercenter that opens, two area grocery stores will close.

No, Wal-Mart is not “great” for Derry. One Wal-Mart in Derry is one more than enough. Instead of wasting more land and resources on a new store, why don’t you ask Wal-Mart to do an ‘in-box conversion’ at their existing store, by reformatting the interior floor space? That would be more sustainable, consume less energy, generate less pollution, and still give them increase market share.

Before you declare this kind of retail cannibalism “great,” do some research on Wal-Mart’s impact on municipal costs--especially public safety. Then you will understand why so many towns in New Hampshire have fought this suburban sprawl.”

This year Walmart’s CEO, Mike Duke, was paid $19.2 million in direct salary, stocks, and other benefits. If this sounds like an absurdly high number, consider that this is actually less than he made last year. By nearly a third. That’s right, last year Walmart’s CEO made $28.4 million.

Despite the drop, Mike Duke still made nearly 1,000 times (actually 967 times) that of the average Walmart worker, who makes $11.24 an hour. Of course that is the official average Walmart lists, but it is skewed because many of the mid-level managers are still paid hourly and are included in that average. If you were to look at a Walmart cashier making $8 an hour (a category many Walmart workers would fall in to) working 34 hours a week (the average for a Walmart worker) 52 weeks a year, they would make just $14,144. Mike Duke made 1357 times more this year.

The comparison is astounding. It would take the average Walmart worker around a thousand years to earn what Mike Duke earned just this year, even after his compensation fell by a third.

Check out the article, which lists other highly paid Walmart execs, here.

Walmart uses tax loopholes to avoid paying taxes at a time when cash-strapped states are choosing between firing teachers and closing their budget gaps.  Walmart’s tax advisors have given company executives a list of different schemes they could use to maximize profits by using tax loopholes, shorting state budgets at a time when states are hurting.

Join us in writing to you state tax authorities demanding an audit of Walmart.

In the “sweet 16” round of Consumerist’s Worst Company in America March Madness competition, Walmart goes up against Bank of America.

Go vote now!!!

The most often-cited reason that local officials give for approving a Wal-Mart is the double promise of jobs and revenues. But in many communities, a closer examination of the numbers does not support Wal-Mart’s voodoo economics reality. The latest example comes from the pages of The Batavia Daily News, from columnist Tom Rivers, who took a four year look at what Wal-Mart did economically to several towns in the Albion, New York region.

Sprawl-Busters reported on November 10, 2004 that the Mayor of the Village of Albion, New York was pleading to save his community from the town of Albion’s Wal-Mart proposal. Village Mayor Ed Salvatore told officials from the town of the same name, that a Wal-Mart outside the Albion village center would be a disaster for his residents. “I believe it will be the demise of our community,” the Mayor pleaded. “The village of Albion will never survive that.”

The Mayor said a proposed 155,000 s.f. Wal-Mart supercenter, which needed a rezoning from residential to commercial, would force many stores in the village central business district to close. The former head of the Orleans County Chamber of Commerce told town officials that a department store was needed, but not a supercenter.

The Wal-Mart supercenter opened in Albion on June 14, 2006. The Daily News reported that Wal-Mart had hired 390 employees, but said nothing about the workers who lost their jobs at Ames when that retailer closed several years ago due to business lost to Wal-Mart. The only person at the festivities who seemed to connect the dots about Wal-Mart’s impact on the community was George Bower, chair of the Orleans County Legislature.

At the Grand Opening, Bower handed Wal-Mart officials a letter for company CEO Lee Scott, asking the retailer to help the county attract a manufacturing company to Orleans. Bower told the Daily News that he was trying to make up for the 200 industrial jobs lost the month before Wal-Mart opened in nearby Medina, New York, when the Bernz-O-Matic company, which is a brand owned by Newell/Rubbermaid (another company almost destroyed by Wal-Mart), shut down its Medina plant and threw more than 200 local residents out of work.

Bernz-O-Matic makes consumer products like torches and kits. One of their biggest customers is Wal-Mart. Bernz-O-Matic moved its plan to China, ostensibly to be able to produce cheaper torches for Wal-Mart and Home Depot. So Wal-Mart opens its doors with 390 employees (a number which will drop dramatically within months after the store opening) and on the other side of the ledger are the lost jobs at Ames and Bernz-O-Matic.

Add to that the fact that the Wal-Mart supercenter has a grocery store, a garden center, an electronics center, a tire and lube express, a vision center, pharmacy, photo lab, and hair salon---all of which already exist in abundance in Albion. All of these stores inside the store will take most of their sales from existing merchants in the greater Albion area. Legislator Bower told Wal-Mart that he would love to see products sold in Wal-Mart that say “Made in Orleans County.” But Bower’s comments were lost.

Now four years later, columnist Tom Rivers is taking the toll of Wal-Mart damage. “I was dubious and I was worried. I knew the store, despite its best efforts and intentions, would cripple many of the small-business owners in Orleans County,” Rivers writes. “A mammoth store with probably more shelf space than all of downtown Albion and Medina simply couldn’t be absorbed into a shrinking local economy without hurting many other businesses.”

According to Rivers, his look back at the last four years shows “there is evidence about the store’s devastation of the village tax bases. The villages are suffering, with independent grocery stores gone, and their hulking buildings a shadow of their former assessments.” The last four years includes a difficult recession, Rivers notes, “But there’s no denying Wal-Mart, with its sheer immensity, has sucked too many sales out of the local economy.”

One victim was Dale’s Market, located on Albion’s Main Street, which went out of business in 2007. That property once was assessed at close to a million dollars---but now the Village has torn it down to build a library which pays no property or sales taxes. A regional grocery chain, Tops, opened a new store in Albion village three years before Wal-Mart. It had to ask the Village to lower its assessed value from $3.6 million to $2.75 million because of declining sales.

In the nearby towns of Holley and Medina, two Jubilee grocery stores shut down within six months of Wal-Mart’s opening. The Jubilee store in Medina was valued at almost half a million before Wal-Mart, and is now worth less than $100,000 after three years sitting empty.

All these retail closings, says Rivers, leave other taxpayers holding the bag: “It means the remaining residents and businesses will bear a bigger burden in keeping afloat the police departments, fire companies, DPWs and other services.” In total, the Village’s tax base has fallen from $143.82 million in 2007, to $141.88 million for 2009. So valuations have actually fallen 1.35% since Wal-Mart’s arrival---a reversal of fortune. The same is true in Medina.

Even in the town of Albion, where the Wal-Mart superstore is located, town officials gave the world’s wealthiest retailer a 50% tax break on town and county taxes. Even though Wal-Mart’s store is valued at $6.975 million, it is only paying tax on $4.85 million---a 30% tax break. The building will not pay full property taxes for another six years. The Village of Albion provides the store with water and sewer services, but gets no taxes from Wal-Mart.

Tom Rivers concludes: “Wal-Mart trumpets its slogan, ‘Save Money. Live Better.’ But surveying the carcasses of former stores in Orleans County villages, the message rings hollow.”

What you can do: It’s hard to know which is more appalling: the voodoo economics of Wal-Mart’s impact on Albion, and its direct connection with the closure of Bernz-O-Matic and Ames, or the impact on existing merchants catalogued by Tom Rivers since the store opened.

How many of the workers at the Medina plant that shut down will shop at Wal-Mart? How many of them will stop by the hardware section and see Bernz-O-Matic products there that they used to make in Medina, now bearing a “Made in China” imprint on it? Will they make the connection? George Bower got the message, and he passed it on to Lee Scott. Wal-Mart is responsible for another company leaving an empty factory in Orleans county, and no amount of Wal-Mart clerks and baggers will ever make up for the lost manufacturing jobs and retail jobs that Wal-Mart convinces local officials would never happen.

Readers are urged to email the Town of Albion, NY Supervisor, Judith Koehler, at supervisor@townofalbion.com with the following message: “Dear Supervisor Koehler, If you read Tom Rivers’ analysis of the impact of the Town’s Wal-Mart supercenter, the town of Albion might want to consider apologizing to the Medina and the Village of Albion for allowing a saturated market area to become flooded with groceries from a national chain like Wal-Mart, creating empty buildings and blighted properties in the process. To add insult to injury, your own taxpayers have been shortchanged by the unnecessary tax welfare deal you gave to Wal-Mart. I would urge you to at least renegotiate the corporate welfare deal immediately, and give the added Wal-Mart tax payments created by ending the tax break, to the Village. Right now, Wal-Mart is a symbol of the total lack of regional land use planning in Orleans county. It is this lack of coordination that allowed the Town to devastate the Village---just to give added market share to Wal-Mart. Anyone who participated in this welfare deal for Wal-Mart should be voted out of office by the residents of Albion, who could have used that money to offset the cost of police and fire services to protect Wal-Mart. It is embarrassing that the Town of Albion had no clue about how these projects work economically, and that town officials were perfectly happy to hurt their neighbors by building redundant stores.”