February 08, 2009
Why all the Walmart hate?
Ventura, the notoriously anti-business burg to the north of Oxnard (the blue-collar city that welcomes retailers with open arms) has greeted the prospect of Walmart opening its doors in town with all the enthusiasm of a vegan eating a porterhouse steak.
It's fashionably trendy to hate Walmart, for reasons related to the corporation's alleged mistreatment of its workers -- and the cardinal sin of resisting the entreaties of union organizers, who have heretofore been unable to convince Walmart employees to join the SEIU-Borg collective and fork over half a billion dollars in annual dues.
So I was interested to read this piece, by a former editor at the hip tech journal Wired, who went undercover and got a job at the mega-retailer.
Along the way the writer uncovers some pretty interesting insights into how and why Walmart manages to continue growing, profits rising, even as its competitors suffer -- all the while hanging on to workers who seem to enjoy working for their erstwhile corporate oppressors.
Posted by Mike Lief at February 8, 2009 11:25 PM
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Comments
Ventura's Walmart problem is:
1. The unions who hate it.
2. The "public" who thinks the city should still be named San Buenaventura and who have fantasy dreams of a city full of vibrant mom-and-pop shops.
3. The city council, a bunch of leftist dweebs, who are secretly afraid that the store would attract "undesirable" lower-class shoppers. Like me.
Let me be honest, for a change. The city of Ventura in the state of California would not be a particularly great place to live except that the rest of the places are even worse.
Posted by: The Little Coach at February 9, 2009 08:27 AM