Wal-Mart vs. Inglewood a Warm-Up for L.A. Fight
With Inglewood voters set to decide Tuesday whether Wal-Mart can build a Supercenter in town, the battle over the chain’s expansion throughout California may soon shift to Los Angeles, where officials are laying plans to effectively ban the megastores in much of the nation’s second-largest city.
From Calexico to Contra Costa County, the retail giant has successfully fought efforts to keep out the centers, which combine the trappings of a normal Wal-Mart with aisles of groceries.
But in Inglewood, Wal-Mart has employed a new strategy.
The world’s largest company has put an initiative on the ballot that would sideline local officials and allow the development without the usual traffic studies, environmental reviews and public hearings.
“The stakes in Inglewood are the highest they have ever been anywhere,” said Madeline Janis-Aparicio, executive director of the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy, a community organization that is trying to rally residents against the initiative. “They want to throw out all the local planning laws and make themselves a little Wal-Mart city.”
In Inglewood, Los Angeles and elsewhere, many labor and community groups are opposed to the nonunion Wal-Mart stores because they say they depress wages, drive out existing businesses, create traffic problems and actually reduce the total number of jobs in the surrounding area.
Wal-Mart officials say they are only trying to give consumers what they want: low prices, jobs for young people and sales tax revenue for cash-strapped cities.
“It’s important that Inglewood consumers have the same shopping that many of the neighboring communities have had for years,” said Wal-Mart spokesman Peter Kanelos. “Wal-Mart and our customers are tired of being bullied by the unions. If the unions and the local politicians they put in office want to attack Wal-Mart, they can rest assured that we’ll fight back.”
In the city of Los Angeles, where officials are putting the finishing touches on an ordinance that would effectively prohibit the Supercenters in much of the city limits, political and labor leaders say they are watching Inglewood closely for clues to the kind of fight the company may wage against them.
Councilmen Eric Garcetti and Ed Reyes introduced a motion more than a year ago that would prohibit stores with more than 100,000 square feet that devote more than 10% of their inventory to nontaxable food and drugs in areas of the city designated as economic assistance zones, which cover about 60% of the city. A Supercenter can run 200,000 square feet.
The proposal still must go before the city’s Planning Commission and the City Council could vote on it as soon as this summer. Mayor James K. Hahn has said he supports the idea, as does City Atty. Rocky Delgadillo.
Garcetti said the ordinance is necessary to “maintain small businesses and protect decent-paying jobs.”
“We’ve seen the record of the Supercenters throughout this country in shutting down main streets ... and in replacing good-paying jobs with poverty-level jobs that take billions out of the local economy,” he said.
But some local leaders take issue with blanket prohibitions against Wal-Mart Supercenters.
Los Angeles City Councilman Bernard C. Parks has opposed Garcetti’s and Reyes’ proposed ban. A traditional Wal-Mart store opened in his district last year in Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza, and has proven to be tremendously popular, Parks said. “Certain communities like the 8th District ... should not be restricted from having access to those willing to come in to the community,” Parks said.
Ever since Wal-Mart announced plans to build 40 Supercenters throughout California, their impending arrival has triggered changes in the grocery industry and sparked skirmishes between the company and organized labor and their allies.
The specter of the Supercenters fueled the longest supermarket strike in Southern California history last fall and winter. About 70,000 grocery workers, who earn an average of $19 an hour, walked picket lines for 4 1/2 months to protest proposed reductions in health benefits that the supermarkets said they needed to hold their own against Wal-Mart. The strike was settled in February with a two-tier system under which the stores will pay new hires less in wages and benefits than veteran workers.
With the strike over, organized labor, including the United Food and Commercial Workers union, which represents grocery workers, has turned its attention to mobilizing local communities to keep the Supercenters out.
In some communities, such as Bakersfield and Hemet, residents, often backed by union money, have sued to block construction. In others, such as Oakland and Turlock, city and county leaders have enacted laws that would prohibit them.
Wal-Mart has been fighting them every step of the way -- and has not yet lost a Supercenter battle. In Calexico and Contra Costa County, for example, the company has persuaded voters to repeal prohibitions against Supercenters. In other instances, the retailer has filed lawsuits against cities.
Wal-Mart is using a new strategy in Inglewood. Instead of launching a campaign to repeal an ordinance, the company is pushing for a more sweeping initiative that would allow construction of a shopping center the size of 17 football fields without normal city input. It would be built on an empty lot between the Hollywood Park racetrack and the Forum.
Inglewood officials and Wal-Mart have been tussling over the development, which could include a Supercenter, for more than a year. The first volley came in October 2002, when the Inglewood City Council adopted an emergency ordinance to prevent construction of retail stores larger than 155,000 square feet that sell more than 20,000 nontaxable items, such as food and drugs.
Within a month, Wal-Mart had enough petitions to force a public vote on the ordinance. At the same time, the company threatened to sue the city for alleged procedural violations.
Inglewood officials backed down, rescinding their Supercenter ban. Outraged at the retreat, the United Food and Commercial Workers union successfully backed its own candidate for City Council. Faced with the possibility that the new council would revive attempts to block its plans, Wal-Mart backed a group called “Citizens Committee to Welcome Wal-Mart to Inglewood” and quickly gathered a new batch of signatures for an initiative.
Both sides are pushing hard in the working-class town, which is roughly split between African Americans and Latinos. Wal-Mart has spent more than $1 million on an election in which fewer than 10,000 people are expected to vote. The company has flooded the city with television commercials and mailers depicting happy African American families and calling the development “good news for everyone in Inglewood.”
Other fliers trumpet the project as a boon for Inglewood youths who need entry-level jobs and say that $3 million to $5 million in new sales tax revenue could boost the police force and “fix up our streets and sidewalks.”
Mayor Roosevelt F. Dorn, who says the Wal-Mart development would create 2,000 construction jobs and more than 1,000 permanent jobs for residents, is the only Inglewood elected official who has endorsed Measure 04-A.
The other side, meanwhile, is trying to make the point that the development would not only hurt Inglewood’s established businesses and bring in the wrong kind of jobs, but would set a dangerous precedent.
“Beyond the question of do you like Wal-Mart or not, the real issue is, is it appropriate for them to bully their way into the city and not comply with local laws ... state environmental law ... and public input into the process,” said Assemblyman Jerome Horton (D-Inglewood).
A broad spectrum of community leaders have come out against the initiative, including city, county and state officials, clergy from the Nation of Islam, the Catholic Church and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
But they acknowledge that they are facing an uphill fight -- especially because they have far less money. The Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy has spent less than $20,000, and the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor-Backed Voter Improvement Project has budgeted $125,000 for the fight.
“We just don’t have the kind of funds to be on television like they are,” said Miguel Contreras, the labor federation’s executive secretary and treasurer. “We’ll be outspent 10 to 1.”
Still, California is giving Wal-Mart a run for its money. “The political obstacles set up by our competitors and the unions have made it a challenge,” said Robert McAdam, the company’s vice president for state and local government relations.
Harley Shaiken, a professor of geography at UC Berkeley who studies labor and the political economy, said the retailer’s victories may be coming at a price here. “Wal-Mart is winning,” he said. “But it is a costly victory. It’s expensive in dollar terms ... but it is also expensive in image terms. No retailer wants to be constantly fighting a battle about its image in the community.”
But labor leader Contreras predicts an intense fight in Los Angeles. “We’ll do the battle royale in Los Angeles,” he said. “This will be a battleground, a national battleground.”
