“To me, Wal-Mart is definitely not welcome in this city,” asserted Councilwoman Melissa Mark-Viverito. “It is a union-busting, tax-evading, wage-suppressing, job-destroying, civil-rights abusing, food stamp-denying, multi-national corporation that has no place in this city.”
Wal-Mart is a loaded word. Some people think of the deplorable conditions in Chinese factories and American workers living on minimum wage. Some people just think of low-price and high-variety products conveniently located.
Hundreds of people with opinions that covered the broad spectrum from hate to love for the retail giant packed Immigrant Savings Bank where the hearing took place. A line of more people went out the door and around the corner.
Instead of coming to the hearing, Wal-Mart representatives sent a promotional video and letter.
“Since we have not announced a store for New York City, I respectfully suggest the committee first conduct a thoughtful examination of the existing (underlining in original) impact of large grocers and retailers on small businesses in New York City before embarking on a hypothetical exercise,” reads the message. “Should the committee decide to conduct the hearing in a more comprehensive manner, we would be happy to revisit our decision [not to participate in the hearing].”
Though Wal-Mart has not announced a store for New York City, it has paid members of the East New York community to promote the benefits one of their stores would have for that area, said Councilman Charles Barron. The rumor is the company has its eye on a tract of land near the Belt Parkway in East New York.
Council members responded to the challenge of examining the effects of other big box stores—Target, Kmart, and the Dollar Store, to name a few mentioned in the Wal-Mart letter—by saying Wal-Mart is in a league of its own.
“With other big boxes, you might go there to get the huge block of 40 rolls of toilet paper, but you still go to your local store to get a quart of milk,” Quinn said some studies have shown.
The massive scale of this chain dwarfs all others, pointed out Quinn. She made a comparison between Wal-Mart and gas tycoons Chevron and Exxon: the combined income of these giants just barely exceeded Wal-Mart's income for 2010.
Jobs & Small Business Closing
David Merriman, an economics professor at Loyola University of Chicago, published a report in 2009 titled “The Impact of an Urban Wal-Mart Store on Area Businesses: An Evaluation of One Chicago Neighborhood's Experience.”
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