Wal-Mart Gets Religion

Wal-Mart must be getting desperate to restore its image with the public. According to an article in the Los Angeles Times, they’re turning to religious leaders for help in getting their message out.

Wal-Mart has quietly reached out to church officials with invitations to visit its headquarters in Bentonville, Ark., to serve on leadership committees and to open a dialogue with the company…

Wal-Mart declined to comment on its outreach to clergy. But church leaders from around the country said the retailer had contacted them to encourage their support — or to respond to their criticism — of the company.

Adversaries aren’t sitting quietly on the sidelines though. Wal-Mart Watch is launching a week of anti-Wal-Mart consciousness-raising at churches, synagogues and mosques across the country, where leaders have agreed to incorporate what they see as moral problems with the company into their sermons.

I don’t see how Wal-Mart can win the hearts and minds of consumers by taking their fight into churches. The company is encouraging churchgoers to compare their corporate actions with biblical teachings and they’re going to come out looking bad. Their low wages and huge profits are inequitable and in juxtaposition to church teachings. A recent article in Sojourners (a magazine about faith, politics and culture) points out that Wal-Mart (and all companies) should be guided by righteous dealings as their first consideration in the marketplace.

The biblical exhortation, "From everyone to whom much has been given, much will be required" (Luke 12:48), is about an understanding of stewardship that is always bound to fair use. Stewardship underscores our humble understanding of our temporary ownership of common goods and the obligations for equity and sustainability tied to that privilege. Unfortunately, Wal-Mart's current dominance of the market is draining rather than sustaining local communities. Every Wal-Mart store employing 200 or more people costs taxpayers more than $420,000 in government social services used by employees whose low wages and unaffordable health insurance mean they largely subsist among the ranks of the working poor… Wal-Mart's anti-union policies also prevent workers from organizing for wages and benefits to support their families.

In contrast, unionized workers in the retail food industry earn 30% more than their nonunion counterparts. Every time Wal-Mart increases its market share by 1% in the grocery business, cashier's wages in the local market drop an average of 5.5 cents per hour. And Wal-Mart's market share has grown by 20% in the last five years, according to United Food and Commercial Workers. Yet if Wal-Mart paid each employee $1 more an hour, it could maintain its current profitability level by increasing prices a mere half-penny a dollar. (Emphasis added.)

Wal-Mart’s practices encourage corporate greed, but extend a culture of poverty. If the company truly wants to win the support of American consumers, management should attend some of those churches they’re reaching out to, listen to the message on stewardship from the pulpit, and then go and sin no more.

Update: It appears that Wal-Mart is just plain desperate to win over the American consumer without really knowing how to define their corporate image. After posting this blog about their attempts to reach out to churches, I came across an interesting post at Last One Speaks. It seems Wal-Mart fired an employee for honestly answering a customer's complaint about the store using Happy Holidays instead of Merry Christmas. Bah, humbug.