I disagree. Walmart gets flak for being bad. They made a practice of moving into (or near) small towns, undercutting the locally owned businesses, and decimating the local businesses. How quickly we forget!
As you say yourself below, this wasn't Wal-Mart's own doing, it was consumers making a choice.
In sum, people sold out their neighbors and local biz owners by shopping at Walmart. Then, there were soon few places to work besides Walmart.
I last "shopped" there in 2007 when I was cleaning out the house of a dead relative. Only desperation would have me shop there. Before 2008, I had not been there since who knows when. I dislike their business practices, and it smells bad inside--like chemicals on products from China.
Wal-Mart doesn't destroy small businesses, rather stores like Wal-Mart have changed what kinds of small businesses exist. Additionally specific actions of the company itself do merit criticism, but to blame Wal-Mart for the choices of consumers is not logical.
Consumers destroy small businesses by shopping at Wal-Mart and Wal-Mart gets the hate for it. Whether anyone likes it or not, most consumers only care about price. Whoever has the best price wins. When you have superior distribution and logistics and infrastructure and economies of scale, you crush anyone else who doesn't have that if they choose to compete with you on price.
Most people I know (I'm 32) at least twenty years older than me who I've spoken to on the topc do not recount the small general stores, five and dimes, and local grocers being decimated by Wal-Mart in their communities. Most of them recount how Wal-Mart triumphed over the chain grocery stores, the likes of Kroger, Albertson's, Bi-Lo, Piggly-Wiggly, Meijer's, etc., who originally conquered small town America.
The consumers who chose Wal-Mart also generally decimated a lot of chain department stores' selling of housewares and the like. You'll notice most of these businesses have gone into selling higher end clothing/luxury items to differentiate themselves, and generally sell things WMT doesn't bother with.
And the consumers who chose chains never destroyed every small business, just the ones who tried to compete with larger versions of themselves. I spent a good deal of my misspent youth around the owner of a hobby store, who shrugged when Wal-mart was even mentioned because Wal-Mart's existence didn't affect him since he sold something he was a niche expert on, not something you can buy at Wal-Mart.
Also why does no one ever think of all the small businesses that now exist because of, not despite of, Wal-mart? Even in the store I worked at, we had no less than a dozen small businesses on the apron sites, and they stayed open the whole time I worked there.
That's to say nothing of the bank, the hair salon, the tax preparation service, and the McDonald's that operated inside the store.
And I haven't even mentioned all the small companies that make the "Equate" and "Sam's Choice" store brand items. Most of the manufactured items under these brand names are of course Chinese made but the food items are United States based at least.
Now does Wal-Mart pull some bull shit that small businesses suffer from? Oh hell yes.
The two worst offenders are the fact that Wal-mart has a lot of money to spend to open stores in places others often try to get, but can't because they don't have lots of money and slick executives who can sweet talk city councils.
The other thing they do that sucks is they will get leverage on a supplier, often by becoming their only distributor or at least their main one, and then pressure them to sell at artifically low prices to Wal-Mart. There are some horror stories here, with Wal-Mart playing all sorts of games with small businesses, real dirty pool.
Of course a lot of that is countered by the fact small businesses will often form consortiums to counter these tactics, and it's all nasty business that wouldn't exist if Wal-Mart wasn't so heavy handed.
As for the odor, well I've been in some stores that aren't kept well. There's at least one locally I personally avoid for that reason.
My store didn't stink, except in lawn and garden during certain times of the year, and the public restrooms at certain times of the day (usually the two hours before the next twice daily cleaning). It was large, foreboding, brightly lit, bland, completely covered in smooth hard surfaces, utilitarian, and dingy under the racks and shelves with terribe piped in music, so I'm not saying it was pleasant, but it did not stink except where you'd expect it to.
The environment of the store was certainly offputting to the senses (you'll notice Target differentiates itself with more color, softer floor surfaces, trim elements that disguise the countours of the walls somewhat, and suspended ceilings that disguise the actual size of the building, all of which make their stores far more pleasant for many people).
Wal-Mart has made some changes though, like new color schemes, building new stores differently, and colorful backsplashes on aisles like Target uses, so it's somewhat better in that regard, it all depends on how recently a particular store was remodeled.
Plenty of people I know do brain-dead jobs at Walmart and get $15-18 an hour. Not poverty wages. At the fortune 500 company I work at, where starting pay is 15 an hour, we have these kinds of things for employees... A woman's husband (who didn't work here) fell off something and became disabled. The company setup a fund where other employees could donate vacation time... Does that mean this woman was underpaid? NO! she gets $28 an hour for a job that required no college education.
Remember, this whole over-played meme about people being underpaid at Walmart is driven by union interests who want to cash in on $40-100 a month dues from each and every one of those employees.
Well, Wal-Mart does pay according to local market wages so theoretically cost of living is factored in to the wages (if you transfer stores to different geographic areas, your base pay rate is adjusted, sometimes by quite a bit), so I suppose there is a store with a lot of $15+ an hour jobs somewhere, but in my experience there it certainly wasn't the majority or even a plurality in my store who earned that much and we were pretty middle of the road company wide.
My aunt, a lifelong employee who works in a store in a very poor area with a depressed cost of living, earns right at 12 an hour for a job that would normally pay around 14, so I'm not being facetious when I say I'm sure a $15+ an hour store exists somewhere, but I doubt it's typical.
I would say the average, dedicated not screwing around Walmart employee who actually stays with the company long term probably gets to full time within 3 years at the very longest (it took me just shy of 1 year, but I caught a lucky break and took an overnight shift that no one wanted) can probably get right around 10-11 an hour plus meaningful benefits.
If they shoot up to some of the higher paying back end jobs like HR, Cash Office, etc. it's probably more like 12-13 an hour, and a lot of Department managers hover around the 15 an hour mark.
The salaried people often get some decent sounding compensation (more than I get paid currently) but their effective hourly wage is often very low indeed as WMT works salaried people 65 hours a week during the slow times of the year (which is why a lot of the lifers never go into management, it's painfully obvious it's not a high value proposition even if the pay is high).
If your information is more recent though, for all I know the company may have changed. You are definitely right about the union thing though.
Unions target Wal-Mart because its jobs can't be easily outsourced. The problem is there's nothing a union can't do for the employees that class action lawsuits, general public outcry and the competitive labor market don't already do.
Wal-Mart gets a lot of crap for its anti union stance, but the truth is their proganda is quite accurate and their employees need to be warned. When I was first hired, they showed me a video where actors played out a scene where union organizers come into the store under false pretenses and proceed to harass the employees with sales pitches.
And then they mention that unions typically would charge Wal-mart employees something like $40 a pay period (and cite their sources), and then state if there's really a problem with the work environment to please report it to whoever you feel comfortable talking to (open door policy).
Yes it's propaganda, but it is damn accurate proganda. During my time there, I twice had people, under false pretenses, in the store come there to try to encourage me to unionize and, no offense to anyone is meant, I'd rather talk to a door to door religious proslytizer, at least those people genuinely mean well and aren't being pretentious and slimey.
Both times I reported them and the managers asked them to leave. Which they should, they were disrupting me from pushing carts, stocking shelves, etc.
These people are extremely shifty, they promise the moon but their literature never mentions specifics or identifies who sent them (well one pamphlet someone left in the employees only area was marked UAWS or something like that, I think that's a real union), and they waste your time and talk down to you like you're a "victim".
Yeah screw those people. I buy nothing from anyone who is that dodgy.
I recall no less than three times I bitched at managers for some work related problems (a lack of supplies, a coworker creating a hostile environment, and I complained about one employee harassing a mentally handicapped coworker). They reacted, not as I might like, but they did clearly acknowledged the problem and did something reasonable about it.
Extra supplies were ordered and the regional office was called (so it took a couple of months but it was resolved), the coworker was talked down, and the guy harassing the mentally handicapped individual was told to take a different shift or resign. I would have preferred something different in all three cases but they acted.
I really see no use for a labor union in that situation. Any extra hourly pay they might negotiate would easily be eaten up by membership fees and it's one more layer of unneeded drama between the worker and the manager.
The only thing it might help counter is Wal-Mart's constant reorganization of jobs at the store level, which is pretty much designed to make people transfer, change shifts, hit pay caps or quit. But part of that is Wal-Mart being assholes, and part of that is that big box retail is very dyamic and competitive and you have to constantly change in that industry.
