CHICAGO, June 3 (UPI) -- Mayor Richard M. Daley wisely stayed out of the fray last week when the Chicago City Council debated whether to allow Wal-Mart to build its first stores in the nation's third-largest city.
Daley could have cast the deciding vote on a proposed South Side store, which failed to get a needed zoning variance by a single vote. The issue was kept alive when the zoning change was sent back to committee -- but aldermen overwhelmingly approved a Wal-Mart for the impoverished 37th Ward on the West Side.
Daley rarely casts a deciding vote and in this case faced a possible conflict of interest because his brother's law firm represented the West Side store project.
"It's a legislative function. ... Remember nothing dies in life. It comes back -- especially in the General Assembly or the City Council or Congress. It comes back," Daley said.
The mayor's analysis may prove prophetic as battles over Wal-Mart's expansion into communities across the United States continue at an astounding pace.
Pick up a local newspaper in nearly any state and you're likely to read about a fight over a Wal-Mart coming to town. Has Wal-Mart become a whipping boy of the political left, or is there a real danger of the world's largest corporation destroying communities?
The concerns are almost always the same: low wages for workers, a non-union corporate policy, destruction of little mom-and-pop businesses in neighborhoods, devastation of Main Street shopping districts, traffic and sprawl, and purchasing low-priced goods from overseas putting Americans out of work and contributing to rampant consumerism.
"Mal-Wart: The Source of Cheap Crap," proclaims one bumper sticker.
Like an ardent suitor, Wal-Mart takes rejection philosophically. It keeps hanging around waiting, biding its time and coming back.
Construction begins soon on the first 24-hour Wal-Mart Supercenter in Minnesota's Twin Cities seven years after the megastore was proposed. The 206,919-square-foot operation will have a 55,720-square-foot supermarket, a drive-thru pharmacy, an outdoor garden center, an automobile service center, a gas station and a traditional full-sized Wal-Mart discount store.
Wal-Mart has more than 1,400 Supercenters and announced plans to build up to 230 more between February 2004 and February 2005. Next year more than half of all Wal-Mart stores will be Supercenters.
There are 10 in central Minnesota and western Wisconsin. Wal-Mart is the largest grocery seller in the United States.
Woodbury City Council member Cheryl Hurst told The Business Journal of Minneapolis-St. Paul approving the project was "a no-brainer" because of the jobs and tax revenue it will generate. The Supercenter will be located on the site of a failed outlet mall.
Target, Wal-Mart's biggest competitor, opened its first Super Target in 2001 and has 10 in the Twin Cities. But Minnesota-based Target promised to pay grocery workers wages comparable to other area grocers.
United Food and Commercial Workers Local 789 says it will try to organize workers at the Supercenter in Woodbury. The president of the 5,000-member local says Wal-Mart employees deserve better than $8-an-hour jobs with no healthcare for the first two years.
Opponents of Wal-Mart's plans for 10 new Supercenters in the Indianapolis area over the next three years have organized thousands of residents.
A group of more than 1,500 Greenwood residents hired a lawyer. The Plan Commission rejected the project, but the issue won't be decided until a City Council vote Monday.
Greenfield residents are concerned about traffic jams on Route 135. Westfield, which already has one of a dozen traditional Wal-Marts in the Indianapolis area, decided to kill a Supercenter project before it reached the planning stage.
"A lot of communities are starting to take a harder look at the economic impact of these big-box retailers," Lynn Gray, the attorney for the Greenwood group, told the Indianapolis Star. "I've represented a lot of remonstrations in the past, but I've never seen a project get more broad-based, regional opposition."
But residents of four adjoining mobile-home parks along U.S. 40 in Plainfield pulled stakes as word spread that Wal-Mart wanted the properties.
No one can dispute the success of Wal-Mart's business model.
The 2,900-store chain reported net sales of $14.39 billion in May, up 11.7 percent from the same four-week period in 2003. Sam's Club discount warehouses had $2.9 billion in sales, and international sales rose 17 percent to $4.1 billion.
Members of Responsible Wealth, a group that promotes economic equity, plan to ask, "Who's sharing in Wal-Mart's success?" The Boston-based group will introduce a resolution at Friday's annual shareholders meeting in Fayetteville, Ark.
Responsible Wealth says Wal-Mart handed out nearly 14 million stock options to employees in 2003, with 13 percent going to its five highest-paid officers.
With 1.2 million employees, Wal-Mart is the largest private U.S. employer.
"Wal-Mart puts forth an advertising image of improving the lives of all its employees," said Margaret Covert, shareholder action coordinator of NorthStar Asset Management. "Our resolution simply asks them to explain how much or how little of their tremendous stock-option wealth ends up in the pockets of women and employees of color."
Wal-Mart associates made an average $329 for a 40-hour week in 2003. Chief Executive Officer Lee Scott received $295,530 a week, according to Responsible Wealth. Five of the 10 richest people in the United States are heirs of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton, with an estimated worth of more than $20 billion each.
Wal-Mart faces a gender-discrimination suit filed three years ago potentially representing 1.6 million former and current female employees that accuses the corporation of paying women 5 percent less than men doing comparable work.
Wal-Mart reportedly is devising new wage and raise guidelines to address the problem.
Co-op America, a national consumer-education non-profit, gave Wal-Mart the only "F" on its Retailer Scorecard for labor standards and practices. Sears and JC Penny received "Ds," Target a "D+," and Federated and Macy's "Cs."
Wal-Mart has been accused of using sweatshops in China, Mexico, Central America and Southeast Asia to make cheap merchandise.
Like that stubborn suitor, Wal-Mart is willing to wait for a store on Chicago's South Side. The corporation is already building a Wal-Mart in suburban Evergreen Park, about 4 miles away, just across the city limits.
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