They Hate You, They Really Hate You!
The good folks at Wal-Mart are learning the hard way what happens when you try to mollify your critics by pandering to them. From an editorial in Wednesday's WSJ we learn of their efforts to throw a bone to their opponents:
Hoping to make nice with detractors, Wal-Mart Chief Executive Lee Scott has called on Congress to increase the $5.15 minimum wage.
Not surprisingly, their most rabid opponents quickly dispatched with the bone before once again unfurling their fangs:
Senator Ted Kennedy, whose latest bid to raise the national minimum was spurned last week, had this reaction: "When even the head of Wal-Mart, one of the most anti-worker companies in the world, says that a minimum wage of $5.15 is out of date, we know it's long past time for an increase." That's probably not the response Wal-Mart was looking for.
No, I'm sure it wasn't. The truth of the matter is that the Ted Kennedys and other Wal-Mart haters of the world are going to continue to nip at the heels of the retail giant every chance they get, whether or not Wal-Mart shows any signs of compromising their positions. In fact, the more Wal-Mart compromises, the more likely the pack of critics will be to press the attack. They can sense weakness and the smell of blood makes them even more ravenous.
They are not going to happy until Wal-Mart:
- Stops selling guns.
- Devotes two aisles in every store to soft-core porn.
- Donates 10% of their profits to the ACLU.
- Provides full health care benefits to all employees, their domestics partners, cats, and ferrets.
- Agrees to abide by "sustainable growth" compacts and abandon the dreaded "big box" store concept.
- Implements a quota hiring program for the transgendered.
- Opens express abortion clinics in all stores.
Of course at that point about 98% of current Wal-Mart shoppers would be completely disgusted with the company and it really wouldn't be Wal-Mart anymore.
The lesson in all this is best summarized by this part of the Journal editorial:
It's a shame that a company that offers a wonderfully wide selection of quality goods at low prices, and provides 1.3 million people in the U.S. with jobs, could have image problems. But Wal-Mart isn't going to solve them by trying to win over the liberal special interests. As Senator Kennedy illustrates, that's a fool's errand.
Unfortunately, there never seems to be a shortage of fools willing to try.
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