On Tuesday, Wal-Mart lost
a showdown with community leaders in Inglewood, Calif., where the
company hoped to build a Supercenter in the working-class suburb of
112,000 mostly black and Hispanic residents. The mega-retailer is
building Supercenters across America (including one just blocks from
my house), selling everything from toys to groceries in complexes
the size of a dozen football fields. In some cases, they're being
welcomed. Other times, including in Chicago and San Diego recently,
the 'Mart is getting the thumbs down.
Wal-Mart promised to bring 1,500 jobs to Inglewood. The mayor
approved store's arrival, saying that complaints were mostly from
unions that couldn't stand the competition. Opponents -- including
the City Council, U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters, even the Southern
Christian Leadership Conference -- said that the company pulled an
end-run by going directly to the public for a vote and skirting the
usual zoning and environmental regulations and public hearings.
Meager benefits
While the company lost that battle, it may yet win the war:
America is in many ways becoming a Wal-Mart nation.
Americans love bargains, and Wal-Mart means low prices. But it
also means low wages and meager benefits. Low wages are one reason
Wal-Mart can undercut the competition. Cheap products manufactured
overseas -- mostly in China -- are another. When Wal-Mart comes to
town, it often crushes competitors -- from big, unionized retailers
to local mom-and-pops -- and that can depress wages everywhere. The
California grocery strike certainly had Wal-Mart written all over
it.
Fairly or not, Wal-Mart has become a symbol for a larger
phenomenon: a kind of downward migration of middle-class work -- or
the fear of it -- that has huge implications in an election
year.
Remember the rosy (though preliminary) Labor Department report
saying that the United States added 308,000 jobs in March? The
figure included 71,000 construction jobs, 47,000 in retail
(including 13,000 striking California supermarket workers who went
back to work), 42,000 professional and business service jobs
(including 11,000 in credit mediation and mortgage refinancing),
39,000 in health and education, 28,000 in leisure and hospitality
and 31,000 in government. New manufacturing jobs: zero.
Nation of part-timers
So, yes, jobs are slowly coming back, but the truth is that
America is losing -- probably forever -- many higher-wage jobs,
particularly in technology and manufacturing, that were a ''given''
in prior recoveries.
Increasingly, the ''old jobs'' are being replaced by another
Wal-Mart staple: part-time work. According to the Labor Department,
4.7 million Americans worked part-time in March, up from 4.4 million
the month before. That includes three million people who became
part-timers due to ''slack work or business conditions'' plus 1.4
million who couldn't find any other work. (Another 19 million
Americans work part-time for noneconomic reasons, i.e., to attend
school or take care of a child.) From March 2003 to March 2004, the
number of nonfarm workers who could find only part-time employment
was up 17.8 percent.
With part-time work comes part-time wages. The hourly earnings in
the private sector rose just 2 cents in March, while average weekly
wages declined 88 cents to $523.70. This while corporate profits
surged -- up a record 14.8 percent in 2003, including a 31.8 percent
profit gain for manufacturers.
Where are corporations getting their profits? If you said
sales, no prize for you. They're getting the profits from
lower taxes, worker layoffs and by getting higher productivity out
of the workers who remain. Since the recession ended in November
2001, wage growth has averaged just 0.6 percent per year. Meanwhile,
last year CEOs raked in 16 percent higher salaries and 20 percent
higher bonuses. A Northeastern University study found that in
2002-03, American workers got the lowest share of the nation's
income growth of any economic recovery since World War II.
No middle-class jobs
America became a 20th century economic powerhouse by creating
high wage, middle-class jobs that could support a family, often with
just one adult working. In the 21st century, with global worker
competition heating up and investors demanding ever-higher profits,
wages seem to have nowhere to go but down.
That's probably good news for Wal-Mart, because it's the largest
U.S. employer and the most affordable place to shop. But what's good
for Wal-Mart isn't always good for America.
Joy-Ann Reid is an online news editor and freelance writer.
