When New York was down, Walmart stood up.
The city has thumbed its nose at the company time and time again, blocking the retail giant from opening a store here — yet Walmart stepped up to help New Yorkers affected by the storm.
In cash and in-kind donations over the past two weeks, Walmart has given more than $2 million to Sandy relief efforts — over a million bottles of water, plus everything from cleaning supplies to board games to families stuck in shelters. It even donated its trucks and drivers’ time to transport generators to power schools and hospitals around New York. (What, you thought Deputy Mayor Howard Wolfson was going to get them there in his SUV?)
In September, the retail giant had to scrap plans to open a store in East New York largely because of union opposition. Patrick Purcell, spokesman for the United Food & Commercial Workers, explained, “Walmart’s corporate practices . . . bottom out prices . . . and they hurt the community and workers.”
New York’s politicians, not surprisingly, lined up to spout the union line. At a hearing last year, Public Advocate Bill DeBlasio called Walmart a “Trojan horse” and City Councilman Charles Barron called the store a “plantation.”
Hey, councilman, here’s a news flash: Walmart has never forced anyone to work there. And it’s hard to imagine how East New York, where more than a third of people live below the poverty line and one in five is unemployed, is going to be hurt by a store coming in to offer residents jobs and lower-priced goods.
Richard Vedder, an Ohio University labor economist who’s studied big-box retailers, reports that, on opening, a Walmart store typically has 200 to 300 positions to fill. Even if it ends up eliminating some competitors, that’s still a “net positive” effect on job creation in the community. And, says Vedder, the stores provide goods at lower prices in neighborhoods where every penny counts.
But the greatest benefit may not be the cost savings so much as the “variety.” Vedder explains, “You have a nice modern store with lots and lots of products that you didn’t have before. Poor people in these communities couldn’t buy certain things without leaving the community.”
In recent days, people across the Tri-State area have been lining up at their favorite big-box retailers, buying everything from space heaters and generators to tarps and hand-crank radios. These aren’t items your local bodega or Shop-Rite keeps in stock.
But people in the devastated city neighborhoods didn’t have the option of hopping on a train or bus to get to New Jersey or Westchester to do their emergency shopping.
Welcoming Walmart to New York would help New Yorkers who’ve been worst hit by the economic downturn.
The company’s also shown time and again that it’s a good corporate citizen. Look at Walmart’s efforts after Hurricane Katrina: It was singled out by Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush for its charity, after it gave tens of millions of dollars to relief.
Plus, its supply chain remained almost unbroken even as FEMA fumbled the recovery so badly. The president of Jefferson Parish in the New Orleans suburbs even said on Meet the Press that if “the American government would have responded like Walmart has responded, we wouldn’t be in this crisis.”
Diana Gee, a spokewoman for the company, told me, “Hurricane Sandy caused unspeakable devastation for millions of people. At Walmart, our thoughts and prayers remain with those who have been affected. Moments like this demand that we all come together — business, government and community — to help our neighbors rebuild their lives.”
Moments like this should make us wish for more neighbors like Walmart.