Who's To Blame? Wal-Mart, Unions, Public Education ... or US

Wal-Mart is alive and glowing on New Richmond's southside. Last week the new super center opened and the future of New Richmond looks...different. From where I live in New Richmond, I can see the bright Wal-Mart lights blazing brightly throughout the night. Down the road, going north, south, east or west, new houses are constantly going up. It has been this way for the last decade. Wal-Mart was only a matter of time.

Wal-Mart: Love v. Hate
I attended a concert last Friday night at the Gem Theater and the musicians made a few comments about driving by the Wal-Mart Super Center on the way into town. Like..."How could you let that happen?" Obviously not of the pro-Wal-Mart set, the comments from the stage were met with pro and con responses. Like it or not, the big WM is here and New Richmond will continue to change.

Personally, my conscience does not bother me when I walk into WM. The same goods for sale at WM can be purchased up the road at Pamida. I first entered a WM in Jonesboro, Arkansas on a hot Sunday afternoon in August in 1982. From the greeter to the prices on the merchandise, I knew this was no K-Mart. Since then, the WM business model has exploded into the largest company in the world. Companies like K-Mart, Sears, Wards and others have virtually vanished from the face of todayÂ’s retail landscape.

Those old guard companies could not compete with WMÂ’s business model of low-prices and low-wages. We see a similar thing happening in the auto and airline industries. The old business models that grew up during the 1900s can't do the dance moves required in today's global business boogie. In business, the target never sits still and, in todayÂglobaling economy, the target is moving and spinning at an ever-increasing rate. It's all part of that "free market" thing.

Hitting Home
As we transition to the "service" economy, things are changing. The smokestacks are coming down, the idea of life-long jobs is rapidly disappearing and leaving many older workers scratching their heads in the dust of disappearing pensions, vanishing 401kÂ’s and rising healthcare costs. All kinds of plans are changing. The talk of revamping Social Securitbeen beden silenced by such things as Katrina and the fact that the push for the change was from the top down where the people have nothing to lose and everything to gain.

You can see this transition right here in our neighborhood. In River Falls, Kolpak, a manufacturer of commercial refrigerators and freezers, in closing its RF operations and relocating its production to a plant in Tennessee. Kolpak says it is not moving because of the taxes. They are moving because the area of Tenesesse to which they are relocating has a strong work force and has a location that makes transportation of their products less costly. This will leave more than 100 people without a job in the RF area.

Twenty miles away, Wal-Mart opens in New Richmond bringing with it over 100 jobs. So it is a zero-sum wash, right? Wrong! Those Wal-Mart jobs will pay substantially less, will not have anywhere near the pension and healthcare benefits that workers received at Kolpak.

A half mile north of the NR WM Super Center, a small group of strikers are quietly picketing across the street from the Bosch/Doboy plant. Hook your horn, if you drive by them. They are your neighbors and they need your support. Better yet, stop by and ask them what is up. They will tell you what they are striking for. They are not the evil demons that some bloggers on this borderline like to paint union members. They, like those bloggers, have families to feed, bills to pay, retirements to plant for, taxes to pay, etc.

I stopped by last Wednesday evening and talked to the strikers. They said the story in the NR News did a good job of covering the issues with the strike. They told me the company wants to increase healthcare premiums, reduce wages and have the option of working 32-hour weeks, i.e., Bosch wants to cut labor costs. These guys are not "young bucks." They have 20 to 30 or more years with the company. Think about them and think about the friends and relatives you know who are out on strike at Northwest Airlines. You do not see the color rose in any of these scenarios.

You Can See The Schools From Here
Up the hill from the Bosch/Doboy strikers is the West Elementary school, a block east of that school is the high school, a couple more blocks and you are at the East Elementary school, go north a couple blocks and be at the middle school and just down the road is WITC. In others words, those strikers are surrounded by New RichmondÂ’s public education system. They support it with their taxes, their kids use it or they have used it. The future of AmericaÂ’s ability to react to and anticipate the changes of the global economy are housed in those school buildings and the teachers to whom we entrust the education of America's future. Now is the not the time to drain the resources needed to educate our future. However, that is exactly what policy is being deployed by the Bush administration, the majority in the US Senate and Congress, at the state level with the Tax Payer Bill of Rights (TABOR) and a the local level by anti-public education groups like those at www.ontheborderline.net.

People need to understand that education is not an issue about right or wrong, it is about exercising political power. There is a great deal of blog ink being expended on the borderline about how bad public education is. If I believe everything, I read on the borderline, anything to do with public education is negative. Is public education the perfect solution to our educational needs? Are the schools the cause of all the problems in society?

Like it or not, the pressures of parenting and providing the necessities of today is not they used to be. The greater the sophistication of our communication tools, the more isolated we seem to get as individuals and members of the community. We can talk on the cellphone to our friends on the other side of the state, as we wind our way through morning traffic, but are we talking to our neighbors down the road? Do we even know them?

There is a lot to think about. The kind of thinking needed involves the whole community and focuses on our long-term future. As the community grows, the need to update the educational facilities grows. The charting of the future needs your input. Get involved. Find out what is happening at your local school, town, city and county boards. In the links to the right of this post, you will find links to the local school district. Check it out. Find out when the next board meeting is...and go.

Your understanding of the process and your input is what the members of these boards need. Anybody can sit home, watch “Fear Factor” and complain about local, state and national politics. It's up to you to get off you duff and change things. I know it is much easier to blame it on Wal-Mart or blame it on the unions, but the blame might legitimately be placed on you and me. There is a great deal of power stored in the votes of the people of this nation. To use or not to use that power is the question you need to understand and ponder.