I detest Wal-Mart. Really. It’s not that they carry the cheapest crap on the face of the planet, it’s their business practices. From destroying any competitor, whether large or a small, independent shop owner; to their discriminatory and shady employment practices; to their shift from American-made goods to cheap Chinese-made products that encourage horribly low wages and sweatshop conditions.
Wal-Mart is a marvel of information technology, and it’s not hard to imagine how wonderful it would be if they had a different business philosophy, one that encouraged fair, living wages around the world and good corporate citizenship.
This story from today’s Washington Post shows a tiny glimpse of what could be if Wal-Mart would turn their powers to good:
At 8 a.m. on Wednesday, as New Orleans filled with water, Wal-Mart chief executive H. Lee Scott Jr. called an emergency meeting of his top lieutenants and warned them he did not want a “measured response” to the hurricane.
“I want us to respond in a way appropriate to our size and the impact we can have,” he said, according to an executive who attended the meeting. At the time, Wal-Mart had pledged $2 million to the relief efforts. “Should it be $10 million?” Scott asked.
Over the next few days, Wal-Mart’s response to Katrina — an unrivaled $20 million in cash donations, 1,500 truckloads of free merchandise, food for 100,000 meals and the promise of a job for every one of its displaced workers — has turned the chain into an unexpected lifeline for much of the Southeast and earned it near-universal praise at a time when the company is struggling to burnish its image.
While state and federal officials have come under harsh criticism for their handling of the storm’s aftermath, Wal-Mart is being held up as a model for logistical efficiency and nimble disaster planning, which have allowed it to quickly deliver staples such as water, fuel and toilet paper to thousands of evacuees.
In Brookhaven, Miss., for example, where Wal-Mart operates a vast distribution center, the company had 45 trucks full of goods loaded and ready for delivery before Katrina made landfall.
… The same sophisticated supply chain that has turned the company into a widely feared competitor is now viewed as exactly what the waterlogged Gulf Coast needs.
