California Town Says 'No' to Wal-Mart

The Union of Food and Commercial Workers, which represents 20,000 supermarket workers in the Los Angeles area, successfully lobbied the city council of Inglewood, Calif., to block construction of a new Wal-Mart supercenter there.

The union, which has raised a $3 million war chest to fight Wal-Mart's expansion in California, is now pushing a similar ordinance in the city of Los Angeles.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (Bentonville, Ark.) recently announced plans to build at least 40 super centers in California over the next four to six years, bringing the company's giant discount-plus-grocery stores to the state for the first time. The food workers union says those stores directly compete with union supermarkets and could erode the high wages and benefits paid to its members.

According to The Los Angeles Times, Wal-Mart officials said they have not yet determined how they will respond to the 4-1 vote by the Inglewood council. While the measure does not specifically name Wal-Mart, it does bar construction of retail stores that exceed 155,000 square feet and that sell more than 20,000 nontaxable items, such as food and pharmacy products.

“We're not accepting that this ordinance is permanent yet,” said Robert McAdam, Wal-Mart's vp for state and local government relations. “It may mean that we'll launch a referendum or that we will seek its repeal.”

Wal-Mart is a non-union employer, and unions have long argued that Wal-Mart stores depress local economies because so many of its workers are part-time and paid slightly above minimum wage. They claim that because about two-thirds of Wal-Mart employees do not receive health benefits, this taxes local health services.

In March, Wal-Mart sponsored and won a referendum in Calexico, Calif., overturning a measure aimed at preventing retailers from opening a Wal-Mart-size discount and grocery store. And in Las Vegas, after Wal-Mart battled the city's 1999 anti-super-center law, the city repealed the measure and passed a far-less-restrictive one.

“We tried to tailor it [the ordinance],” the union local president, Rick Icaza, told The Times, “so that it wouldn't impact someone like Costco,” which operates a union store in Inglewood. “We're really aiming at the super centers. A Wal-Mart comes in and uses the grocery items as loss leaders to get the people to come in.”