June 3, 2011_nWLP 5/31/11 10:21 aM Page 2
Union workers under grave threat from Walmart expansion
A thousand UFCW
members could lose
jobs if Walmart opens
17 Portland-area
stores as planned
By DON McINTOSH
Associate Editor
The story appeared May 3: Walmart
is looking to add 17 stores to the four it
now has in the Portland area.
Local union officials say that would
be a serious threat to workers at union-
ized grocers like Fred Meyer, Safeway
and Albertsons. Walmart is legendary
for its opposition to unions: Though it’s
the largest private employer in the
United States, not a single U.S. worker
is union-represented. And Walmart has
1.4 million U.S. employees — twice as
many as Kroger, Safeway, and Super-
valu combined. (Kroger owns Fred
Meyer and other regional chains, while
Supervalu owns Albertsons and others.)
According to an article in the Ore-
gonian, Walmart hopes to add eight
stores in Portland and nine in Clacka-
mas, Washington and Multnomah coun-
ties. Of the Portland stores, four would
be “neighborhood markets” (the com-
pany’s term for smaller stores the size of
a traditional supermarket), and four
would be supercenters (which include
grocery) or discount stores like its sole
existing Portland store at Eastport Plaza.
Outside Portland, Walmart would open
four neighborhood markets and five dis-
count stores and supercenters. All told,
the new stores would employ 4,300 full-
and part-time workers, according to a re-
port prepared for the company by the
Vancouver economic analysis firm E.D.
Hovee & Co. Walmart currently has 31
stores in Oregon — 17 supercenters and
14 discount stores — according to its
2011 annual report.
The Portland roll-out is part of a na-
tionwide push by Walmart to build in
cities that have long resisted the com-
pany.
“Walmart really saturated rural and
suburban America,” explains Jennifer
Stapleton, national spokesperson for
Making Change at Walmart, a cam-
paign of United Food and Commercial
Workers (UFCW) union. “There’s
nowhere else Walmart can grow in
those communities without cannibaliz-
ing their own stores. So the top 50 mar-
kets in the United States — places like
Portland, Seattle, Los Angeles, D.C.,
and New York are the only places left
for Walmart to grow.”
Large coalitions have come together
in Washington, D.C. and New York to
oppose the Walmart expansion, Staple-
ton said. Local unions will need to
mount a similar response in Portland.
“This is the fight we’ve been waiting
for,” said Jeff Anderson, secretary-treas-
urer of Tigard-headquartered UFCW
Local 555. “We’re going to use every
tool in the tool box to fight these stores.”
Local 555 represents grocery work-
ers throughout Oregon and Southwest
Washington, and has fought Walmart
before. When it loses those fights, its
members lose their livelihoods. Two Al-
bertsons stores closed in Salem, and one
in North Bend, after Walmart stores
opened nearby, Anderson said.
“Retail is a zero sum game,” Ander-
son said. “You can only drink so much
milk. More stores means you’re taking
an existing pie and shrinking it.”
Anderson said a conservative guess
is that as many as 1,000 UFCW mem-
bers could lose income and their health
benefits if the proposed Portland-area
Walmart expansion succeeds.
To oppose Walmart’s expansion, Lo-
cal 555 came up with several options at
a May 23 strategy session: an ordinance
banning construction of new big box
stores; a living wage ordinance; land-
use appeals; and community pressure.
Local 555 backed a big box ban to
stop a Walmart store in Keizer earlier
this year, but the local ballot initiative
— barring retail buildings larger than
65,000 square feet except in the Keizer
Station development — failed by 34
votes in a March 8, 2011 special elec-
tion. If a big box ban passed in the Port-
land area, existing stores including
about 10 unionized Fred Meyer loca-
tions would be “grandfathered.” But
such a ban wouldn’t do anything to
counter Walmart’s plans for “small
box” neighborhood markets.
A living wage ordinance, setting a
minimum wage and benefit levels for
certain kinds of businesses, might be
trickier, but it’s been tried in other
places, like Chicago, Anderson said.
Both strategies rely on politics,
which is an attractive route because it
allows Walmart critics to make the case
to elected officials (or to local voters
through an initiative) that the company
is a bad citizen — paying everyday low
wages (and thereby reducing the tax
base); relying on taxpayers to pick up
health care costs for its low-income
part-time workforce; skirting wage and
hour and gender discrimination laws as
alleged in two ongoing multi-state class
action lawsuits; selling overwhelmingly
foreign-made goods; and causing small
business closures and the loss of higher-
paying jobs at competing companies.
The third strategy — using the land
use appeals process — is indirect, but
has often succeeded in halting plans for
Walmart stores. Any major develop-
ment, particularly big-box retail, must
get approval of city planners, and citi-
zens normally have avenues to weigh
in on such things as traffic impacts,
safety, aesthetics, and parking.
But all these campaigns would
hinge on community sentiment. And
Walmart is a veteran campaigner in
these so-called “site fights.” In Port-
land, the company is already cam-
paigning. Ads are airing on conserva-
tive talk radio shows, directing listeners
to a web site to find out about the com-
pany’s good deeds — and to sign up to
get updates from the “Walmart Oregon
Community Action Network.”
“We are going to develop a very ro-
bust response to Walmart’s entry into
the Portland market share,” Anderson
declared. “We’re going to be fighting
them on the streets.”
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