Not a magic spell, but it's at least anecdotal evidence that the idea of WMT oppressing its workforce is a lie. Not talking about my own example as much as all the people who did much better than I did while working there, those who made a career of it. They could've earned more in the short term working at one of the other industries in the area...trucking, poultry, etc...but ended up far better off than the people who took those routes. Most of Walmart's competitors do not, or at least did not at the time, offer similar benefits that would enable low-income workers to accumulate wealth.
I don't disagree at all regarding the impact on small businesses. The worst of it is how they strong armed vendors...that's the story that should draw their ire rather than how much they paid employees who didn't have a whole lot of better options.
Here's how that process worked (I assume it still does to a point). Walmart finds a local manufacturer, say for instance someone who produces straws, and tells him they will buy a billion units per year if he can sell them at X price when the producer's current capacity is maybe a tenth or less of that number. Producer invests in capital to make this work, and has a profitable year or two. Once he's shown he can meet the demand on time, Walmart tells him they want to buy ten billion units instead of one billion at the current price. Vendor invests more capital and once again fills the order for a year or two. After this, WMT comes to the vendor and tells him they have a vendor in China who will produce the same number and quality of straws for 1/3 the price. They offer to allow the current vendor to keep the contract if he will match the price.
At this point the vendor has a decision to make. He's still paying on loans he took out for new facilities and equipment, so his fixed costs are fairly high. If he loses the WMT contract he has zero chance of paying off these debts. If he keeps it, he has no way of covering his variable costs...he's essentially just working to cover his fixed costs (if he's lucky). His options are basically to work for free, earning no profit but maintaining his creditworthiness, or to go bankrupt. It's a shït sandwich either way.
I'll end my participation in the thread derail with this. I'm not a defender or apologist for Walmart. The only time I shop there is if they have something I can't find elsewhere, or something I need in a hurry while other options are not open. That's not a moral stance as much as it is a statement to my preference for convenience. They, like any other large business entity, have more than their share of flaws and negative effects on the economy at large. My only purpose in getting into this discussion was to dispel some of the information promulgated by labor organizations and others with a vested interest in seeing Walmart fail, or at least to show that there is another side to the story that is less nefarious than those entities would have you believe. As with just about any subject, the truth lies somewhere between the two extremes.
