Urban Areas Should Give Wal-Mart a Chance (Editorial)

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. was built in small-town America, and despite its great success, it meets its greatest resistance in the large urban areas where there are a lot of small local businesses and strong labor forces to fight its coming in.

Wal-Mart has been trying for several years to enter the nation’s large cities, such as New York and Los Angeles, but so far has had to settle for outlying areas because of the opposition it encounters.

In early April, the world’s largest retailer announced another plan to reduce that resistance.

It said it plans to build 50 stores in the next two years in neighborhoods with high-unemployment or high-crime rates, contaminated land and old shopping centers in need of revitalization.

The Wal-Mart plan targets 10 urban areas, and the new stores should create at least 15,000 jobs.

That’s not enough, however, to counter the opposition to what many see as practices that run the mom-and-pop stores out of business and that pay lower wages than the unionized stores.

So this time Wal-Mart said it will establish economic-opportunity zones and then offer development grants to companies within the zones.

Wal-Mart will also offer those companies free advertising in newspapers and on Wal-Mart’s in-store radio network.

It also will offer seminars to minority- and women-owned businesses on how to become Wal-Mart suppliers and how to survive alongside the retailer.

It will donate $500,000 to the Chambers of Commerce in the enterprise zones and work with them to spend the money on local businesses.

Can Wal-Mart buy acceptance? Considering the outright hostility toward Wal-Mart in the big labor cities, it’s doubtful. But Wal-Mart has little choice if it is to continue to expand.

It already dominates the rural and suburban areas. The large urban areas are all that’s left.

The company has simply not had much luck in moving into the major cities.

Each attempt has sparked controversy and raised tensions among small businesses and unions, who say Wal-Mart forces wages down and drives out competition.

Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott, in a conference call, said, “We see that we can also be better for communities than we have been in the past, if we’re willing to stretch ourselves and our resources a little bit.”

Naturally, unions dismiss the new plan as simply another image-polishing stunt. They think everything Wal-Mart does to try to correct past practices is a public relations ploy.

Efforts to improve health care benefits and reduce fuel emissions — good things in anyone’s book — have been met with skepticism.

Yes, the plan certainly will benefit Wal-Mart. There are millions of shoppers in those urban areas who will leap at the chance to buy the lower-priced merchandise.

Having grown up with Wal-Mart stores nearby, Arkansans don’t understand all the negative attitudes that come from the urban areas.

What we do understand is that Wal-Mart is the place to shop for most household items if low price is your primary concern.

Those areas that are so hostile toward the company should also look at allowing their residents the right to choose where they want to shop and if they want to pay less. They should give the new plan a chance.