Evil Wal Mart Overrruns Democratic Bastion - Road to the Middle Class

THE WAL-MART PR guys just sent an e-mail to announce the opening of the first Wal-Mart in Chicago, so naturally as a mind-numbed Wal-Mart robot I am blogging about it.

The first reaction was shock. I thought that Chicago didn’t want no stinkin’ Wal-Marts polluting its pristine neighborhoods.

The second reaction was wonder. I wonder how close the new store is to downtown Chicago?

According to Google Maps, it is a mere 7 miles from downtown, so the Democrats entrenched there ought to be able to hear the rumble of the guns out at 4650 W. North Ave. Maybe the staff of City Council should drive out and take a tour of the Western Front.

The new Wal-Mart is only five miles from the faculty lounge at DePaul University. So the social science faculty could start field trips out along W. North to let the students take a look at the enemy. Students majoring in Labor History could get credit for, let’s see, organizing the workers at Wal-Mart!

After all, something like 80 percent of John Kerry voters have never shopped at Wal-Mart. Yet they all seem to know enough about to be able to tell Wal-Mart management how to run the store.

An article in the Chicago Tribune had some interesting facts about the new store. According Emma Graves Fitzsimmons many of the 490 workers at the new store are making more money than at their old jobs.

Wal-Mart sales associate Tinesha McKay, 26, a mother of three from Austin, said she makes $7.70 an hour, a $1.50 increase from her previous job as a clerk at a blood bank in Glenview. Her commute has been cut from over an hour to 10 minutes, she said.
...
Victor Calderon, 27, a father of three from Humboldt Park, said he had been working at a rubber factory through a temp agency before getting a full-time job at Wal-Mart stocking shopping carts.

He is making “about $2 an hour higher than at his previous job.”

This is pretty shocking, you’ll agree. Everybody knows that Wal-Mart employees are shockingly underpaid. Yet these workers are reporting that they are getting more money at Wal-Mart than at their old jobs. In addition, of course, they are reducing their commutes.

Shopper Therea Flores is not impressed. Interviewed after a two hour shopping marathon filling her shopping cart “with groceries, cleaning supplies and clothing,” she

said the workers deserved higher wages. She said she was disappointed the big-box ordinance [mandating higher wages] did not pass.

"I believe Wal-Mart can afford it," she said. "I wasn't buying the fact that they wouldn't open stores here. There's too much money to be made."

Thank goodness that Theresa Flores can now afford to shop at Wal-Mart.

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Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.