During my term as a King Soopers deli clerk, there were many, many occassions when I heard the horror stories about Wal Mart's poor treatment of its workforce. The news was coming from everywhere: coworkers, union brochures, managers, and official company newsletters all talked about the Wal Mart menace.

Wal Mart was given as a reason for every hardship. Can't hire enough staff to reasonably handle the workload?

"It's because of the competiton from Wal Mart."

Reprimands being given to anyone who logs more than a little overtime because there aren't enough workers scheduled?

"Well, the company can't afford it because of the Wal Mart threat, of course."

Benefits being scaled back?

"Wal Mart."

Though nobody could deny the huge growth of Wal Mart nationwide, I always found it a little odd that even in in Boulder, a town that has no Wal Mart within the city limits, Wal Mart would consistently be painted as the reason the company was tightening the screws. Though credible as a potential future threat, there was no reason our particular store would be suffering any losses from Wal Mart in the immediate present.

The reason I bring this up now is because this alternet article, which talks about the strikes that have been ongoing in California for the past several months, brought it all back.

The article makes the case that though Wal Mart does represent a competitive threat, at least on the surface, it is not the real source of the grocery chains' problems.

Let's make it plain: The problem is not that there is too much competition in the retail food business, even of the cutthroat, Wal-Mart kind. Rather, the chains have loaded themselves down with debt to eliminate the previously existing competition, and there are not enough customers with enough income to buy enough goods to pay off creditors and satisfy the ever more ravenous demands of investors at the same time. So they decided to cut labor costs by forcing a strike and lockout of United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) members throughout southern California. Wal-Mart provided the excuse to do what comes naturally to the corporate class in George Bush's America. Wal-Mart is leader of the pack, but they are all wolves.

What I found shocking was this tidbit. These "competitors" have agreed, for the duration of the strike, to share revenues with each other (i.e. not compete). Is this really free market capitalism?

Class solidarity means the owners share a common war chest. There is not even a pretense of corporate competition when it comes to making war on workers. From the moment the first UFCW picket lines went up at Vons and Pavillion stores, in October, the companies have shared revenues to compensate for strike losses. The arrangement is legal, they claim, because the chains all have contracts with the same union. California Attorney General Bill Lockyer has filed an antitrust suit charging revenue sharing hurts consumers. "This action is about protecting shoppers against unlawful, anticompetitive conduct that keeps prices artificially high," said Lockyer. The companies have, in effect, suspended competition to engage in price-fixing, from which all of them benefit. The suit contends the agreement "essentially freezes the pre-strike market share."

Real money changes hands, according to equity analyst Andrew Wolf. If pickets deter shoppers from Safeway and Albertsons locations, but traffic is heavier at Krogers-owned stores, then "Kroger would actually write checks to the other two," said Wolf.

!!!

Safeway lost nearly $700 million in the last quarter, but only $100 million due to the strike, say company executives - and some of that was covered by revenue sharing. Yet Safeway's stock rose 70 cents last week. How could that be? Because Wall Street is rooting for the home team, home being anyplace where corporate diktat is challenged. When issues that really matter to the corporate class are at stake, the rules of the game are rigged by hype-masters in the money markets: workers beat down, stock goes up - hip-hip, hooray!

The article goes on to discuss Wal Mart's technique of abusing government-run public assistance programs by encouraging their employees to enroll, thus making the state (i.e. the rest of the taxpayers) pay for benefits the company is too cheap to provide themselves. Again, how much money are we really saving when we shop at Wal Mart?

But as the article points out, corporate executives consider Wal Mart anything but a demon when not issuing public statements. In private, Wal Mart is admired as an example that other retailers are hastening to follow. Actions speak louder than words.

If this is the model for the way America is to work, I want to find a new country to live in.