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Cleveland, OH. Fighting Over the Scraps of a Once-Robust Economy

For Cleveland, OH., Wal-Mart is a curse packaged up as a blessing. The retailer has heralded its new store in the city as a boon to the local economy, but Wal-Mart damages the communities it sells to in a number of ways. Most relevant to this story from the Cleveland Plain Dealer, the company lowers median wages, reduces the overall number of jobs in a community by putting local stores out of business and frequently violates labor laws, both domestically and abroad. Wal-Mart claims to help working class Americans, but by paying low wages, exporting jobs overseas, failing to provide adequate health care for its employees and bilking the communities it sells in, Wal-Mart is helping create the poverty-related problems that are now damaging its sales. For more information, click on our Labor Relations or Community Impact page.

Wal-Mart draws huge crowd - of applicants [Cleveland Plain Dealer]

As the world’s largest private employer, Wal-Mart is used to being greeted by large numbers of applicants almost every time it opens a new store.

But the 6,000-plus people who applied for jobs at the new Supercenter in Cleveland’s Steelyard Commons took everyone, even Wal-Mart, by surprise.

“We had to recount [the applications] three times,” said Mia Masten, Wal-Mart’s director of corporate affairs, Midwest division.

When thousands of people compete for a few hundred ordinary jobs, trend watchers say it’s an indication not only of a less-than-stellar economy but also of a workforce short on marketable skills.

The huge number of applicants wouldn’t have caught anyone’s eye had these been skilled, high-paying jobs, the types of positions that thousands of people always seek.

But these were regular retail jobs with low-to-average wages and benefits, not the sort of positions typically in high demand. Target wouldn’t disclose the number of people who applied to work at its Steelyard Commons store.

Sadly, few of the people interested in working at Cleveland’s first Wal-Mart actually got a job.

Those 6,000 people were competing for some 300 positions. That means for every one person hired, 19 people walked away empty-handed.

It could have been worse. In Illinois recently, Masten said, 25,000 and 15,000 people applied at two Wal-Mart stores in the Chicago area, and neither of those is a large Supercenter.

“Sometimes, it’s easier to get into [someplace exclusive] than a job at Wal-Mart, statistically speaking,” she said.

The Steelyard Commons Wal-Mart wasn’t the first in Northeast Ohio to attract hordes of job hopefuls. At the newly opened Wal-Mart Supercenter in Streetsboro, the applicant pool was nearly 2,000, while the new Wal-Mart in Elyria drew 1,000.

Amy Hanauer, executive director of Policy Matters Ohio, said she finds these ratios “deeply troubling,” reminiscent of bread lines in times of great poverty. She said the figures paint a bleak portrait of the regional job market and underscore the need for more and better employment opportunities.

“That’s Depression-era kind of imagery,” she said. “. . . You can’t have an economy that works that way. It speaks to the need to generate a different kind of employment in Cleveland.”

It’s possible, of course, to view the Wal-Mart situation in a positive light, at least from certain angles.

James Kastelic, a planner with the Cleveland Metroparks who has studied Cleveland’s retail environment, said at a time when Ohio’s unemployment rate is 5.9 percent, any job is better than no job.

Furthermore, Wal-Mart is a large, established company, and a job there represents stability, perhaps more than at other retailers.

“It’s security,” he said. “Wal-Mart is going to be around . . . and people just want to make ends meet.”

Margy Waller, director of the Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit The Mobility Agenda, said it’s likely many of those 6,000 applicants saw Wal-Mart as a step up.

Wal-Mart’s average hourly wage in Ohio is $10.40, for annual pre-tax earnings of $21,632. For someone making minimum wage, that’s a jump. Even if $10.40 is a little less than someone made in a previous job, Wal-Mart’s 10 percent employee discount might help offset the difference.

“Anything that’s a small improvement could be a strong draw,” Waller said.

Or it’s possible some workers see Wal-Mart as one of the few employment options available to them. Masten said Wal-Mart considers people with zero work experience and demands only that applicants be able to read, write and speak English, possess identification and pass a drug test.

“There’s a large number of people here with low skill [levels],” explained Thomas Buescher, a Cleveland-based labor market analyst with the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services. “There’s a worker gap, and within that is a skills gap.”

The store’s location is another key factor. Steelyard Commons is easily accessible by bus, and its proximity to several Cleveland neighborhoods no doubt was attractive to the 90 percent of Steelyard Wal-Mart applicants who live in the city.

With gas prices on the rise, “People like to work close to where they live and shop,” Kastelic said. “It’s a great advantage.”

But to truly understand why so many people in Northeast Ohio seem to want to work for Wal-Mart, and what that says about the local economy, you have to go straight to the source.

Daniel Sherman, 49, of Cleveland, is an “instock supervisor” at the Steelyard Wal-Mart. As such, he’s in charge of about 12 people on the dock.

“I own the back room,” he said. “It’s probably one of the tougher jobs in the store.”

He enjoys the job, he said, citing a 401(k) and the employee discount as benefits. Furthermore, the Wal-Mart of 2007 is more “enlightened” than it used to be when it comes to making sure employees are on the clock when working.

“It isn’t like the old days,” he said, when Wal-Mart was accused of requiring some employees to continue working after they had clocked out.

Still, Wal-Mart was not his dream. His goal was to be an attorney.

Sherman said he used to work at Ford’s Lorain Assembly Plant but lost that job when it closed. After that, he said, he enrolled at Cleveland State University and spent four years earning a law degree.

But after failing to pass the bar exam, he found himself not only out of the legal field, but out of work, period. Then he heard about the new store. Now he’s in a supervisory role from which he said he could see himself retiring.

“After four years of law school, you, too, can work at Wal-Mart,” Sherman said with a laugh. “Life’s a funny thing. . . . You may actually be Mr. Wal-Mart until it’s time for the old rocking chair.”

The problem with that, from the larger perspective, is that retail employment “isn’t going to make you a life,” said Buescher of Job and Family Services. “It’s just going to put you to work.

“As far as bringing money into the economy . . . I don’t think that should be the key. . . . To me, there’s other things out there that maybe we should be looking at.”

In the meantime, “We have good retail employers,” said Hanauer of Policy Matters, citing wholesaler Costco as a retail employer offering living wages and benefits.

But the ultimate solution, those “other things” Buescher described, are probably green.

Hanauer said the local economy won’t grow and big-box retail will retain its dominant place until employers find places for low-skilled workers in the emerging market for energy-efficient products.

“We have a legacy of manufacturing,” she said. “The question is, how can we reinvigorate that?”

Kastelic, the Metroparks planner, said the answer lies in cities working together.

“That’s what all these discussions about regionalism are all about,” he said. “What we have to do is look at how we can become stronger as a region. . . . We have to continue to work on the overall picture.”

Posted by Alex Goldschmidt on Monday, November 26, 2007

Click Here for a Printer-Friendly Version

COMMENTS

Yea matt baby.what cha doing to me with all this bs?you say your gonna be there for me and you chill dog.how am i supposed to learn from the master if you always showing up after dog?lets get it back together and do some price checkin and bs’n on the walmartwatch.later dog.

student of matthew vantress in gresham oregon
Monday, November 26 at 11:46 PM

I am sure many Wal-Mart workers would GLADLY work someplace else if they could. But it is my guess that many lack the education to work anywhere else. The end result is that many make poverty wages. According to Al Norman, author of The Case Against Wal-Mart and Slam-Dunk Wal-Mart, the average Wal-Mart employee LASTS ABOUT 3 MONTHS BEFORE THEY LEAVE.
The moral here folks is get an education if you can. Go beyond high school. A high school education will have you working as a janitor the rest of your life--unless you get creative or lucky. Wal-Mart gets away with paying poverty wages--and THEY DON’T CARE. Some great company, huh?

Jane in N.Y. in
Tuesday, November 27 at 10:53 AM

Thanks to the stealth paparazzi team!

Now, thanks to our ever-vigilent paparazzi team, you can see your favorites like matthew vantress, mary, jerry, and The Sage in the same place at the same time. Check out The_Gang to see why they are force that should not to be taken lightly.

ScrewedbyWal-Mart in Anytown, America
Tuesday, November 27 at 11:07 AM

Jane - You are right, people need better education to get the better jobs, but walmart pays “low” wages, not “poverty” wages, “poverty” wages are less than minimum wage. And, it’s not that they don’t care, it’s because they prefer to keep prices low for the consumer, which is where their income comes from. If they raised prices to a level to pay people more, they wouldn’t be as big as they are and wouldn’t be able to support a 1.5 million person workforce.

jerry in
Tuesday, November 27 at 11:09 AM

Jerry (or is it RDS, Bob, or Robert?)

As usual you ether have your facts WRONG or you are spreading more lies, you choose.

WM most definitely pays poverty wages, According to the U.S. government’s definition of poverty.

lets take the average starting wage at WM for full time employees for example.....7.00 per hr. X 26 = $182 (per week) X 52 = $9464 (per year)

Persons in Family Unit 48 Contiguous States and D.C. Alaska Hawaii
1 $10,210 $12,770 $11,750
2 $13,690 $17,120 $15,750
3 $17,170 $21,470 $19,750
4 $20,650 $25,820 $23,750
5 $24,130 $30,170 $27,750
6 $27,610 $34,520 $31,750
7 $31,090 $38,870 $35,750
8 $34,570 $43,220 $39,750
For each additional person, add $3,480 $4,350 $4,000

SOURCE: Federal Register, Vol. 72, No. 15, January 24, 2007, pp. 3147–3148.

That is a POVERTY wage any way you slice it, and that’s poverty for a single person, what about a single parent or head of household.

So as you can see you are WRONG again as usual Robert, Bob, RDS, or Jerry or what ever your SHILL name is this week.

Big D in
Tuesday, November 27 at 12:09 PM

Big D in: It’s great to see you back!!

ddrb in
Tuesday, November 27 at 12:31 PM

ddrb

Thank you for the warm welcome back. I wish that I had more time to blog on this site, but the nature of my business is such that when I am out on a job I don’t have the time for such luxuries as this. But between assignments I look forward to blogging here.

Big D in
Tuesday, November 27 at 01:37 PM

Does “La Boz” mean that you’re finally coming out of your little closet, Tom?

ahhhhh in
Tuesday, November 27 at 03:07 PM

Big D (or is it Screwedby) -

I guess, if you choose to use the lowest common denominator to accentuate your point, I guess you can say that they pay SOME people (Newbies) a ‘poverty wage’ if they only work 26 hours a week, but we have been told that ‘full time’ employees usually work at least 32 hours per week ($7.00 x 32 = $224.00 x 52 + $11,648.00, or $1,438.00 above your $10,210.00 ‘poverty wage’ for a single person. And, the fact is, that people don’t stay at $7.00 an hour, the average is over $10.00 an hour. If that is not enough money for someone, they shouldn’t have taken the job in the first place, the size of a person’s family is not walmart’s responsibility and has no bearing on a person’s wage.

jerry in
Tuesday, November 27 at 06:18 PM

I wonder if Ohio is one of the states that has the tax avoidance REITS(like the one with the Illinois-Italy connection??)

ddrb in
Tuesday, November 27 at 06:24 PM

Ohio lost massive jobs when the Steel companies moved. So hence the large pool of applicants,when they is nothing else you take what you can get to help feed your family

We are so lucky on this broad so many people who do not have to take any job just to survive how lucky you are,has nothing to do with education or such just to live another day

Wallstreet in
Tuesday, November 27 at 11:19 PM

union grocers and other retailers like k-mart and target not walmart pay poverty level wages screwed by and ddrb and so do fast food joints go pick on them and their blatant exploitation of their workers.

matthew vantress in gresham oregon
Wednesday, November 28 at 06:10 AM

Wallstreet:I echo your sentiment completely,that we can only control and direct just so much in our lives-the rest is a roll of the “cosmic dice”, if you will. It is another losing roll, that most steel is being manufactured in China now,according to my understanding.(But I believe the dice were” loaded “on this one!)

ddrb in
Wednesday, November 28 at 09:29 AM

Jerry (or is it RDS, Bob, or Robert?)

I’m addressing this mainly to Big D, Sick of Walmart, and ddrb.

If “jerry’s” little act and latest blog persona seem all to familiar, its because it is. Lest anyone should doubt why “jerry” sounds so much like “RDS. or “Bob in,” its because they are one in the same.

You gotta give ‘ol RDS credit for trying to slip it past everyone. Shortly after he started blogging as “jerry,” on or about November 18th, he came back with a few more posts as “Donald in” just to “throw people off his trail.” It’s funny...we haven’t heard from “Donald in” for some time now, but we sure know that “jerry” has been using more than his share of white space.

Consider these ramblings by “jerry:”

“…we are a nation of LAWS…”

“I guess…America should abandon “The Rule of Law” and go to a system of judging by “Feelings”

“people with a welfare mentality, seem to think that a job is guaranteed for life”

“look what is happening at GM”

“Who said I can’t hold a job, the shortest job I have ever had, was 5 years, the longest was 15 years, so I guess you are right, I can’t hold a job.

“If walmart was ‘bad’ for this country, why are so many intelligent people across the country supporting them? Why do 138 million people shop there every week?”

“even my 10 year old grandson knew that”

“only a person with poor skills and work ethic,themselves,will disagree with you, they think it has everything to do with LUCK and nothing to do with ambition and hard work.”

“After all, if the government starts a welfare type program, the companies should be required to take it over, shouldn’t they? We wouldn’t want the taxpayers to pay for government programs, now would we?”

“And, yet, walmart is still number 1.”

“These people can’t understand, that it is ‘customers’, that put the mom & pop’s out of business. If a customer shops at Pete’s Retail Store and then switches to walmart, he and the other ex-customers are the ones that took the business away from Pete’s and gave it to walmart.”

Can you imagine “Donald in” saying things like this? Coincidence? I don’t believe in “coincidences,” especially when it comes to this blog. “Donald in” disappears and “jerry” starts posting like crazy...pretty clear to me.

So, Sick of Wal-Mart, ddrb, and all the rest if you want to think of “jerry” as “jerry” and continue to encourage his blather, that’s your call. As for me, I want to fondly refer to “jerry” as Jerry Baloney. (thanks again ddrb for the Paul Winchell inspiration on this one!)

In fact, I’ll make it easier on everyone. When you see “jerry,” just think “Duh Donald.”

ScrewedbyWal-Mart in Anytown, America
Wednesday, November 28 at 10:28 AM

Screwedby: Your welcome. BTW, how does changing one’s screen name change one’s mentality?I don’t understand .

ddrb in
Wednesday, November 28 at 11:04 AM

P.S. : IF changing one’s screen name alter’s one’s intelligence ,and makes a person smarter,hey,say buh bye to ddrb!!

ddrb in
Wednesday, November 28 at 11:29 AM

Wallstreet in : I have referred to this study before, but in light of this Ohio issue,it bears repeating. I would highly ,and humbly, recommend that ANY city,county,or state who is considering a WalMart ,please read the University of Pennsylvania research study on WalMart and its effects on County Wide Poverty.This scholarly,meticulous paper was not underwritten by any corporate interest. It is replete with statistics and logarithmic graphs to substantiate its findings.The percentages show that gaining a WalMart did not decrease poverty rates(the study did” control “for initial poverty rates.) The paper is the work of Professor Stephan Goetz and Hema Swaminathan, Pennsylvania State University,dated October 18,2004. It may be obtained at sgoetz@psu.edu

ddrb in
Wednesday, November 28 at 11:44 AM

screwed by we will refer to you as full of bs

matthew vantress in gresham oregon
Wednesday, November 28 at 06:01 PM

I noticed from the Cleveland Plain Dealer article that Daniel Sherman at the Steelyard Commons Walmart had a law degree. A law degree and the best he can come up with is as a stocker supervisor at Walmart. 6,000 people show up for these retail poverty jobs at one store because there are no other jobs. 25,000 at another Walmart in Chicago. This is the real economy that has been created by the corporate governance of America and the interests of the wealthy. Walmart, NAFTA and the Bush/Clinton types sent your good paying jobs overseas to China. Earn a college degree...to work at Walmart. Typical corporate greed and the results. No thanks.

Richard in MSU
Monday, December 10 at 09:00 AM

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