> Brad Mayer wrote:
>
>> Gosh, what's FT got against WallMart?
>
>
> You spell it like Paris Hilton understands it! But the piece is actually
> sympathetic to Wal-Mart, so I guess the FT has nothing against it.
>
> You may have noticed that Liza Featherstone has a book on this topic
> that makes for far better reading than Waldmeir's crappy column.
Liza and other folks will appreciate this pro-Wal Mart column from Kansas City Start business columnist Jerry Heaster. This guy is so pro-capitalist in his columns that they border on an Onion parpdy of business writing. I was halfway thinking about asking the Star to add me as a columnist for balance.
Chuck
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Posted on Wed, Jan. 19, 2005
KC Star
COMMENTARY
Wal-Mart ads refute the big lie
By JERRY HEASTER
Columnist
Even the most powerful players eventually realize they must defend their worth in society or risk serious damage to their reputations and fortunes at the hands of uninformed detractors.
Add Wal-Mart to the list of those who have abandoned the notion that giving the public what it wants in terms of price and value is enough to protect it from unfounded attacks. It recently went public with ads refuting the biggest lies its enemies have been spreading about it since its rise to retail dominance.
Before Wal-Mart it was Microsoft under serious assault from those who resented its success. The war on Microsoft came from regulators for whom Microsoft was a coveted scalp. Microsoft hadn't played the Washington lobbying game until it came under antitrust siege. Whereas antitrust law is supposed to protect consumers from predatory business practices, Microsoft paradoxically found itself under attack for its product's affordability and convenience.
In Wal-Mart's case, a favorite charge has been that its relentless quest to give consumers the best quality at the lowest possible price is somehow bad for America. It's obvious, though, that even its most vocal critics patronize its stores, because so many Americans shop at Wal-Mart.
Critical focus of late has been on personnel practices, especially since the company became the target of a bogus class-action suit alleging discrimination against female employees. It's obviously more designed to get into deep pockets than to address workplace problems, because the suit's magnitude is ludicrous.
Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott finally had enough and counterattacked, responding to claims of Wal-Mart employees getting the short end of the stick. The newspaper ads point out that Wal-Mart's promotion policy, wages, benefits, employment status, work force diversity and domestic job growth are exemplary for the retail industry.
There is no reason to doubt what Scott says, either. Most of his claims likely can be checked by those willing to comb government data mills for pertinent statistics.
Moreover, my personal experience tells me tales of Wal-Mart worker abuse are without merit. Over the past year this column has explored local and national Wal-Mart controversies from several perspectives, and each column has generated more reader response than anything written during this time.
The problem is that much of the rebuttal that results borders on urban legend. It's passed along third-, fourth-, fifth-hand based on no personal knowledge. What's most significant, though, is that of hundreds of responses generated by Wal-Mart columns with positive comments, not a single word of disagreement has ever come from anyone claiming to be a Wal-Mart employee with a gripe about company treatment.
This is incredible. Given the safety of anonymous complaining these days, it would be easy for disgruntled workers to call or e-mail to take issue, claiming that the columns misrepresented Wal-Mart's workplace reality. The fact that no employee has yet criticized a positive Wal-Mart column is telling. And what Scott says about Wal-Mart employment policies and role in our economy is straight talk that was long overdue.
Jerry Heaster's column appears Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Write to him c/o The Kansas City Star, 1729 Grand Blvd., Kansas City, MO 64108; send e-mail to jheaster at kcstar.com; or call (816) 234-4297. Go to KansasCity.com and click on Business to read previous columns.