Wal-Mart: corporate evil or champion of the lower middle class?

Over break I read a book called The Wal-Mart Effect: How the world’s most powerful company really works—and how it’s transforming the American economy, by Charles Fishman. The book does an interesting job at showing the benefits that Wal-Mart has on families by offering cheaper prices than other stores. In a given year a given family could save hundreds of dollars by buying their groceries at Wal-Mart. However, the book chronicles how Wal-Mart is able to provide these low prices: forcing suppliers to reduce costs by whatever means necessary (streamline shipping, reducing wages of employers, sending factories overseas, et cetera). It is interesting to note that we are so concerned with prices that we are willing to sacrifice traditional “American” values like worker rights, five day work week, and a 40 hour work week. Why is price such an important factor in our everyday lives?

One might ask how does this relate to Nonviolence? Every Sunday I participate in a radio show. It’s a mix of talk radio and music. We were talking about wal-mart and one of my radio cohorts talked about Wake Up Wal-Mart. He said that their strategy was to encourage people to shop at Wal-Mart as usual, but occasionally the group would call for a campaign to shop at Wal-Mart. For example, the group would send out a release not to buy anything for Mother’s Day at Wal-Mart. The point of this campaign is to show Wal-Mart that there are numerous shoppers who don’t agree with their practices and that Wal-Mart should change their policies. As a result of this Wal-Mart has launched a major PR campaign designed to boost their image as an employer and that they promote workers rights.

When my friend told about their strategy I became very uncomfortable. This tacit might be successful but I have a hard time supporting a company that is perpetrating Human Rights violations (sweat shops, factory workers rights, employee rights, et cetera) and using this as leverage. When reflecting on how Gandhi would have dealt with this situation I believe that he would have not advocated supporting Wal-Mart when they are not in a campaign. If the company is not behaving justly, then you should not support it. Gandhi didn’t say eat UK salt after the march. He continued not to inflict harm but because of the injustice. I believe that Wake Up Wal-Mart’s tactics accentuate the effects that they can have on Wal-Mart but I think the effects would be more meaningful if they were not limited but widespread. When it comes down to it a week or two of hurt business is not going to greatly impact this multi-billion dollar company. I believe that we need to take actions not only be successful but because they are right. We need to practice actions because they are true.