Symposium: The elephants in the corner.
When I read Lee Scott’s speech yesterday last night for the first time, I thought, “Man, he’s either going to save the world or is completely off his rocker.” Then I remembered that this is Wal-Mart. He’s not really serious. How do I know? There’s Wal-Mart’s past record for one thing. Anybody remember when Lee Scott stood up next Andy Stern of SEIU and said they were going to bring about universal health care? I do. Now Wal-Mart is going to profit off our broken healthcare system. Here’s Scott:
This year we will be contracting with select employers in the U.S. to help them manage how they process and pay prescription claims. Our approach will be based on taking out unnecessary costs while providing high quality health care products and services. With this effort, we believe we can save employers more than $100 million this year alone.
Not much incentive to change then, is there?
Lee Scott loves to talk about sustainability, and how his company makes his its customers “live better.” What about the factory workers who lost their jobs because Wal-Mart actively encouraged their former employers to move to China? Scott actually had the nerve to say:
Wal-Mart will work with the Chinese government and NGOs to make sure suppliers comply with Chinese environmental laws and regulations. We will require our suppliers who export from China to certify that they meet key standards. We will include this certification in our supplier contracts. And we will have a mechanism in place to make sure our suppliers meet these standards throughout the term of our relationship. We commit to doing these things as quickly as possible. And we hope to see significant results within three to five years.
Thanks Lee, but if those suppliers were based in the United States those standards would already be the law of the land. The Chinese environment is just another victim of Wal-Mart’s unsustainable business model.
And what about the school children in towns whose schools will get less money because the local Wal-Mart got a multi-million dollar tax break? What about the competitors it drives out of business? What about Wal-Mart’s own low-wage employees? These people are all the figurative elephants in corner. We all know they’re there. Wal-Mart has to spin wildly to make sure we won’t look at them. Indeed, echoing Robert, the fact that this speech sounds so crazy at first blush is a good indication of just how successful Wal-Mart’s critics have been at focusing attention on those elephants. Nice job everybody!