Customer Reviews

The Case Against Wal-Mart

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Every Wal-Mart shopper should read this book before their next trip to the superstore. It gives incredible insight to the corporate day to day practices that put Wal-Mart at the top of the Fortune 500 list...AND at the bottom of welcome list for many towns across America.

Corporate welfare abuse, how Wal-Mart takes taxpayer subsidies to build stores/distribution centers, is just one of several practices this company uses to get richer and richer. The most disturbing "enrichment" practice by Wal-Mart was its company owned life insurance policies. The company, not next of kin, is named as beneficiary! The world's richest company should NOT be benefiting from the death of its workers. Wal-Mart also to this day help keeps sweatshop labor alive and well in third world countries. Abandonment of stores for larger ones becomes a town eyesore and America is suffering from over 300 abandoned Wal-Marts! Time and time again economic impact studies show that most Wal-Marts cost a city/town more in services than it can pay in taxes-thus there is no plus to having a Wal-Mart in many towns. Just Say "NO" to Wal-Mart and stay out of the aisles....! Small town quality of life is worth more than a cheap pair of underwear!

Reviewed by Michael G. Matejka

Is Wal-Mart the happy yellow smiley face, or a lurking monster destroying American jobs and communities?

The world's largest retailer, currently expanding into the Chinese market, has quite a rap sheet against

For a quick compendium of that way-too-long list of outrages, there's no better source than Al Norman's latest book, The Case Against Wal-Mart.

Norman got into his first Wal-Mart fight in 1993 and has been dogging the giant ever since.

The book's chapter headings tell exactly the wide allegations against the big blue box: "Abuse of Power, Destroying the Value of Labor, Exploiting Your Suppliers, Degrading the Environment, Unfair Competition, Questionable Banking Practices, Exploiting Global Trade, Corporate Welfare Abuse," and that's just a few of them.

Norman's book details many of Wal-Mart's abusive practices, but in a succinct and approachable manner. The book is only 153 pages long, so this is a quick and ready summary.

Whether the question is Wal-Mart workers who work overtime but get paid straight time, Wal-Mart items made with child labor, Wal-Mart cashing in on public subsidies or Wal-Mart's cultivated public image, all the facts and details are here in a straightforward manner.

Although Norman is no fan of the Walton Family empire, he does not just beat a dead horse. Instead, he offers brief summaries of court cases, individual confrontations with the corporate giant, and Wal-Mart's feeding at the public trough. The facts are there, detailed, but not lost in minute details.

His final plea and injunction is not to the big company, but to American consumers. How and where people decide to spend their hard-earned dollars makes all the difference.

If consumers stop and say that will only shop stores that don't use sweatshop-made goods, that treat their workers decently and that allow unions a fair chance to organize, then Wal-Mart will have to respond.

But as long as shopper convenience and a mythology of bargain prices leads the family car to that big concrete block building at the edge of town, Wal-Mart will thrive. Consumer education is the key and Norman's book is a strong wake-up call.

In The Case Against Wal-mart, Al Norman delivers a blistering indictment of Wal-mart's meteoric growth and practices. Even if you think you've heard all the dirt on Wal-mart, you will be shocked by the voluminous detail Al Norman provides on the inside workings of the company and the closed-door maneuvering of corrupt City Council officials that welcome them in with streets paved with Cash.

He provides direct numeric information about how Wal-mart forced large American Manufacturers to the brink of bankruptcy and then to move 10's of thousands of jobs overseas to supply them with their "always lower prices."

Just when you think that Wal-mart has hit a new low, turn the page and Al Norman will shock and amaze you again!

This is "the book" Wal-mart doesn't want you to read. Every major publisher refused to publish the book because they sell too many books to Wal-mart and were afraid of retaliation. Make them regret it!

The book is a must read for activists, labor union members, or any average citizen who is sickened by the tactics of America's biggest Employer and Retailer and wants to do something about it!

This book is an excellent analysis of just how powerful Wal-Mart is in our economy. It's power makes it a political entity to reckon with also. This book is easy to read and well-documented. The cases cited give an insight as to how too much power can corrupt and make you oblivious to the plight of the consumer.

I loved this book, but it's not as good as "Wal-Militia."

Al Norman, who is the "shill of the anti-Wal-Mart union movement," has just written yet another jealous screed against the retailer, since a few years ago he discovered he could make money by doing so.

The book trumps up a "case" against Wal-Mart by taking rare, isolated incidents that occurred (and were corrected) at certain stores and presenting them as day-to-day company policies. In this way, Norman ( as in "normal"?) is able to spout forth his generalizing "Wal-Mart is a big bad bully" mythology.

In place of Wal-Mart's "always lower prices" slogan, he presents the following kind of "evidence" to make the store look bad:

* Always forces its workers to labor "off the clock" without pay: lie - isolated incident; they are paid.

* Always uses overseas sweatshop labor to manufacture its clothing: lie - isolated Kathy Lee Gifford incident; no underage workers allowed.

* Always sells knock-off and counterfeit merchandise that misleads and confuses its customers: lie - sells brand name merchandise.

* Always destroys acres of environmentally sensitive lands to build new Wal-Marts: lie - for every acre of store land, another acre is donated to that same area by Wal-Mart.

* Always eliminates competition in towns across the U.S. by illegally lowering prices below wholesale: lie - sells at least 10% above.

* Always forces the movement of thousands of manufacturing jobs out of the U.S.: lie - Wal-Mart doesn't manufacture anything, and makers are free to work where they want.

* Always calls "full-time" 28 hours per week: lie - at Wal-Mart, 30 hours or more is considered full time. (Although the lower the full-time designation, the quicker workers are entitled to full-time benefits.)

* Always pays wages so low that many of its employees qualify - and accept - welfare payments: lie - workers earn far above welfare levels, and by doing so couldn't qualify for welfare anyway.

* Always demands millions of dollars in tax breaks to locate in communities all over the U.S., while it earns billions of dollars in profits: lie - tax breaks were not invented by Wal-Mart - they apply for them if they can, like anyone else.

*Always ruins towns it goes into: lie - the store actually contributes far more in jobs, taxes, and in contributions to local charities than any other entity in those areas.

The book by Norman, the self-proclaimed leader of the "anti-sprawl" movement, goes Republican evangelical towards the "sinners" that run Wal-Mart, and also towards those who shop there, calling for a "boycott" of the store. Where have we heard that before? That's right - in the boycotts by Germans against Jewish shops in the early days of the Nazi movement.

Strange how Norman and his labor union pals never seem to go after those retail chains who don't threaten their pocket books at the moment, on behalf of the "greater good" of the community. No, instead only the current top dog is going to find itself in Norman's sights, and right now that happens to be Wal-Mart. Before that it was Target, and before that K-Mart.

Whoever the current #1 is, that's exactly who Norman and company are going to chase after, because then he can sell his books, and the unions can hope that Wal-Mart finally caves in to their recruiting pressure, and signs up its workers with the old Jimmy Hoffa vanishing pension fund gang.

This is a book that every American shopper should read and laugh at heartily, before then making another trip to Wal-Mart and saving a big bundle of money, as usual. Are author Norman or his union buddies going to make up that loss in your wallet if you stop shopping at money-saving stores like Wal-Mart? No way!

So I can only advise you in this direction: "Friends don't let friends be fooled by union shills!"

(Book Rating: 1 star for stupidity - and general comedy value.)

So, the author doesn't like Walmart selling decent merchandise at decent prices? I could tell that before I read this book. The 20 dollar price tag for a 160-page paperback book gave it away.