Here's an interesting article, though I doubt it will change anybody's mind.:
The Man Who Said No to Walmart
http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/102/open_snapper.html
To sum up:
The president of Snapper was given a choice:
Do business with Walmart, make lots of money, but close the factory in Georgia, and make a junk product.
The Walmart VP actually suggests that it would be best to move the factory overseas! :barf:
When the Snapper president said "No" to Walmart, he walked away from 20% of Snapper's business, because it was the best thing for the company in the long run.
Here's the article I referenced earlier.
It's long, but it's well worth it, if you don't want to continue to shop in ingnorance.:
The Wal-Mart you don't know.
http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/77/walmart.html
Talks about the Vlasic pickle disaster, Levi Strauss, and others.
Some quotes from the article:
"People ask, 'How can it be bad for things to come into the U.S. cheaply? How can it be bad to have a bargain at Wal-Mart?' Sure, it's held inflation down, and it's great to have bargains," says Dobbins. "But you can't buy anything if you're not employed. We are shopping ourselves out of jobs."
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In January 1997, Master Lock announced that, after 75 years making locks in Milwaukee, it would begin importing more products from Asia. Not too long after, Master Lock opened a factory of its own in Nogales, Mexico. Today, it makes just 10% to 15% of its locks in Milwaukee--its 300 employees there mostly make parts that are sent to Nogales, where there are now 800 factory workers.
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And just five days before the cheery profit news, Levi had another announcement: It is closing its last two U.S. factories, both in San Antonio, and laying off more than 2,500 workers, or 21% of its workforce.
A company that 22 years ago had 60 clothing plants in the United States--and that was known as one of the most socially reponsible corporations on the planet--will, by 2004, not make any clothes at all. It will just import them.
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Believe it or not, American business has been through this before. The Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co., the grocery-store chain, stood astride the U.S. market in the 1920s and 1930s with a dominance that has likely never been duplicated. At its peak, A&P had five times the number of stores Wal-Mart has now (although much smaller ones), and at one point, it owned 80% of the supermarket business.
Some of the antipredatory-pricing laws in use today were inspired by A&P's attempts to muscle its suppliers.
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It's the same story over-and-over:
U.S. companies start doing business with Walmart.
U.S. companies close factories in U.S. :barf:
You can call it "Capitalism" or "Freemarket Economy" or whatever you want, but I call it criminal.
If we don't wake up and smell the coffee, we're going to be hoping we can get one of the "good" jobs at McDonald's.
