Wal-Town

On the night in question, last night, Canadian Karen and I went to the Vancouver Public Library to see a short documentary film called 'Wal-Town'.

A group of university students and a journo, travelled across Canada trying to inform people about the impact that Walmart can have on communities and they also talked to employees of the store, particularly ones in Jonquière, the city in Québec which was the only one in Canada to be unionised, something Walmart couldn't cope with and so closed it down.

It was certainly interesting, especially to me, essentially an outsider and unfamiliar with the Walmart experience. Canadian Karen tried to wind me up by suggesting that Walmart was much like Ikea, she narrowly avoided being brained.

The concept of 'doughnuting' interested me. Walmart sets up outside a city, usually with a huge amount of government subsidy money to build. The city then dies from the core.
'You just tell me of one Canadian city where that has happened,' said the manager of one store - loyalty we are told, which is bought at a salary of over $180,000 while the work is done by serfs on minimum wage and who are only guaranteed 12 hours a week.
Cut to Sault Ste Marie where the downtown core has largely closed down since Walmart arrived.

The French were the most articulate speakers against the giant, whose annual turnover makes them as a corporation, the 22nd largest economy on the planet. Somehow Norway seemed to be below them.

'Walmart takes money out of the system,' said one man, 'by closing down small enterprises it stops the money that people spend being recycled back in, they will spend it at one shop then better paid employees spend their wages at another and the money circulates and keeps the economy of the area healthy, with Walmart it all goes into this one giant and into the pockets of the shareholders. If an individual Walmart makes 8 million dollars a year, why can't only 7 million go to the already wealthy shareholders and one million towards better pay and conditions for the workers?'
Indeed we were told that the family which owns Walmart were the wealthiest family on the planet, worth 95 billion dollars.

In the main I thought that sadly, the film was preaching to the converted. I doubt whether anyone in the lecture hall with us were wondering whether they should shop at Walmart, they were, like us, already ethical shoppers.
The people interviewed on the film were, for the most part, not interested, how dare anyone try to suggest that they shouldn't be able to buy anything they liked at the lowest price possible, whatever the cost in human or environmental terms.

The workers who had lost their pittance jobs at Jonquière were already trampled.
'The best thing that came out of working there was that we met each other and became best friends,' said one woman of another,
'That's where we had the Walmart Christmas party the last two years,' said one pointing at a building, 'we paid for our own drinks, we paid for our own food and the manager of the store won the raffle.'

Scrooge right up to the end.

It is a strange effect of a system entirely dedicated to competition that such giants can arise and almost monopolise.
Walmart, we were told, holds 'only' 10% of the Canadian market, but when challenged on which single company holds the greatest slice of the market, the answer was the same, Walmart.
This film dealt almost exclusively with the employees of the stores and the impact on cities. But we also know that suppliers are destroyed too. If you cannot undercut everyone else and Walmart is the main seller, then whatever it is you are selling will be brought in from outside, possibly abroad. Then where is your market? This has already happened to small suppliers in the States, it could well have happened here too.

Of course there are benefits all round from small businesses becoming bigger, but when competition ceases to flourish, so do communities.
Here is an example from our own area. The supermarkets which compete for market share offer good wages and benefits packages. They are large enough to be constantly improving the quality and range of their products and pricing is much as it is in the British supermarkets, there are low cost versions of most products and higher quality, higher priced ones.
But the spectre of Walmart is always there. We don't have one either in Richmond, nor in Vancouver at present, but they keep trying. In Richmond, for once we have our rather curmudgeonly First Nations band to thank, since it was on a parcel of land owned by them that Walmart wanted to build.
Walmart are selling more and more food products and so the healthy competition and the good job packages of the supermarkets could be threatened.

But hey, at the end of the day, we do it to ourselves don't we? I may be sticking my neck out here, but I think that this is one battle that Canadians, being the people they are, could just win.