If Tuesday’s Wespeak (April 27) criticizing USLAC’s “leftist bureaucrats” for their anti-WalMart efforts does indeed reflect the feelings of a real, live human being and is not (as I suspect) the work of some overly-creative Argus writer who failed to make the April Fools’ edition deadline, then the sentiments and economic fallacies contained therein require attention.
Most people would agree that the government must step in when mega-corporations demonstrate unethical (and often illegal) labor and business practices which threaten the spirit of competition. The WalMart corporation’s tactics of inundating suburban and rural areas has destroyed the livelihoods of numerous small-business owners throughout North America. The effects on workers have been equally disastrous because of WalMart’s power to sidestep community labor laws and its tradition of fiercely resisting the unionization of its workers. Stalin-esque strategies of demanding unrealistic production quotas from managers and firing employees who favor unionization have already led to widespread community-based resistance to WalMart. Local and national governments, though, have usually disregarded reports of misconduct, and even grant subsidies to help the corporation grow. In various ways, the relationship of WalMart to government and society-at-large is strikingly inconsistent with the principles upon which capitalism was based.
In the case of most large corporations, the word “freedom” signifies the right to exploit workers, utilize sweatshop labor, and drown out independent business owners. For workers, freedom means choosing between miserable poverty and a degrading, toilsome, low-wage job. Most workers who have experienced WalMart firsthand aren’t quite as enthusiastic about this freedom. In fact, many are actually grateful to the “freedom-loathing leftists” who support workers’ rights.
The common argument that raising worker wages increases unemployment is based on the notion that corporate executives must maintain steady profits, that they can’t afford to increase wages. However, it’s hard to believe that a CEO (like WalMart’s) who makes $8,700 an hour (that’s right, I said it—per H-O-U-R) can’t spare a few bucks so his workers can buy medicine or pay their apartment rent. In practice, minimum wage increases have rarely led to increased unemployment. In the 12 states which have instituted minimum wage rates above the federal minimum of $5.15 an hour, not one experienced a subsequent rise in unemployment figures as a result.
Equally destructive is the popular misconception that everyone has equal opportunity to prosper in this flourishing free-market utopia of ours, and anyone who doesn’t is lazy and deserves to live in poverty. But raising wages by a few dollars wouldn’t exactly mean the overthrow of the elite ruling class. The wealthiest Americans would still make disgusting amounts of money, and could rest assured that those contemptuous workers (and their children) would still be struggling every day to make ends meet. Even if one has nothing but scorn for working class people, the fact remains that $5.15 an hour (or any similar single-digit wage) just isn’t enough to live a comfortable existence. To meet single mothers working two jobs to feed multiple children or unionized workers terrified that WalMart will build nearby leaves a strong impression. Anyone who has worked in low-income communities and actually interacted with these people at least gets a vague sense of how hard it must be.
In today’s corporate-friendly atmosphere, the idea of workers’ rights can become almost “mythical,” as political scholar Evan Carp astutely points out. However, not everyone who tries to comment on the state of American capitalism has such a clear grasp of government, economics, or the effects that dogmatic free-market theory have had on working class people. But perhaps some people—on the left as well as the right—miss the point of political action such as that recently undertaken by USLAC. Amidst the fury of anti-Bush, anti-corporate rhetoric coming from most sensible observers in this country and abroad, it’s easy to define the enemies as individual entities like WalMart or our current president—when in fact the real problems lie in the broader corporate power structure and, more importantly, in the popular belief that individual citizens have no power to alter the situation. It’s not just about bashing Bush and bloodthirsty corporations, but about trying to make life a little more bearable for those who, although they “VOLUNTARILY signed up” for their jobs, did so because there was no other option available.
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