Bully of Bentonville The High Cost of Wal-Mart's Everyday Low Prices Is Hurting America

CHAPTER ONE THE CASE AGAINST WAL-MART H. Lee Scott Jr. looks every inch the chief executive of America's biggest and most powerful corporation as he strides through the lobby of the Omni Los Angeles Hotel on his way to make the most important speech of his career. Wearing an expensive, well-tailored suit on his stocky frame, his hair carefully coiffed, and his corporate game face on, Scott shows no sign of his natural fear of public speaking. To the contrary, the fifty-four-year-old executive appears eager for the chance to justify his company, Wal-Mart Stores, to the 500 business and community leaders who await him in the Omni's ballroom. The Omnia luxury high-rise located in a solidly pro-union, politically liberal cityis an unlikely venue for the chief executive of an Arkansas-based corporation that is famously frugal, deeply conservative, and Southern-fried to the core. Wal-Mart already has 180 stores in California, but its ambitious expansion plans call for it to quadruple this total while moving from the outskirts into the heart of Los Angeles and the state's other big cities. In many Golden State locales, Wal-Mart was being denied the zoning and other clearances it needed, and so Scott has flown out on this February day in 2005 to make the case for himself and his company in person at a luncheon sponsored by Town Hall Los Angeles, a nonpartisan group that immodestly but not inaccurately bills itself as a forum "for the most important thinkers and leaders on Earth."(1) Scott takes the stage to polite applause and opens with an aw-shucks flourish reminiscent of the late Sam Walton, the disarmingly folksy "Mr. Sam," who founded Wal-Mart in the remote Ozarks hill town of Bentonville in 1962. "I know that Town Hall Los Angeles has a national reputation for hosting conversations on the issues that mattertalks that feature prominent figures from the worlds of government, business, the nonprofit sector, and the arts," Scott says. "It's a little humbling for a shopkeeper from Arkansas to follow such folks to Town Hall's distinguished podium."(2) Scott soon discards the faux humility to offer a ringing defense of the embattled company where he has worked for twenty-six years. By selling vast quantities of goods at its trademark "Every Day Low Prices," Wal-Mart has single-handedly raised America's standard of living, saving consumers about $100 billion a year, he contends. "These savings are a lifeline for millions of middle- and lower-income families who live from payday to payday," he says. "In effect, it gives them a raise every time they shop with us." As Scott tells it, Wal-Mart also provides good jobs for hundreds of thousands of equally deserving employees, offers even part-time workers generous health insurance and other benefits, and contributes hefty tax payments to thousands of towns and cities from sea to shining sea. "I believe that if you look at the facts with an open mind," he says, "you'll agree that Wal-Mart is good for America."(3) Scott accuses greedy labor unions, inefficient supermarket chains, and other Wal-Mart opponents of distorting "the facts" to suit their own purposes, undermining not only the company but also the nation. In so many words, the CEO contends that Wal-MartisAmerica and that to oppose the company's advance into California and other growth markets is to oppose progress itself. "When someone builds a better mousetrap, it's not the American way to deny average folks the chance to use it to improve their lives," he says. "The horse and buggy industry wasn't permitted to crush the car. TBianco, Anthony is the author of 'Bully of Bentonville The High Cost of Wal-Mart's Everyday Low Prices Is Hurting America', published 2006 under ISBN 9780385513562 and ISBN 0385513569.