Abstract
Walmart in China brings together 11 essays examining how the world’s largest corporation, Walmart, penetrates the Chinese market on an enormous scale. With topics ranging from the supply chain to the retailing operation, from ‘made in China’ to ‘sold in the US’, these essays raise serious debates about Walmart’s behaviour in employee relations. The book asks what happens when the world’s biggest company meets with the global largest new economy? The book also engages with controversies of ‘Walmartization’ in China and how these compare with Walmart’s base in the USA.
In the introduction, the editor surveys the development of Walmart’s encounter with the Chinese market and how its employment policies are shadowed by its consistent low price strategies. The book is then presented in three parts. Part One explores the development of Walmart’s global supply chain and how this ‘dirty kingdom’ influences South China’s manufacturing industries. Chapter 1 evaluates Walmart’s legacy in the USA and the company’s expansion into China. It highlights Walmart’s enormous power in representing the globalized capital that has reshaped ‘the worldwide distribution of labor’. Walmart’s low price outsourcing strategies and its unbalanced relationship with Chinese suppliers are discussed in Chapter 2. Evidence shows most Chinese manufacturing companies supplying Walmart are required to provide low quality products and experience poor and sometime abusive labour conditions which breach ethical codes. Chapter 3 highlights the dilemma of Walmart’s ‘the lowest of low’ policy in the race to bottom in labour standards in its toy product suppliers. Clearly Walmart’s private regulations are not sufficient to improve labour conditions in Chinese suppliers. As shown in Chapter 4, a major form of exploitation lies in low wages and long working hours. Central to improving workers’ conditions would be increasing hourly rates, piece rates and overtime payment, while limiting speed-up.
Part Two examines Walmart’s supermarkets. In Chapter 5, the focus is the hierarchical structure used to monitor and control the workplace. Walmart’s traditional enterprise culture has also been used to regulate, discipline and control its staff in China through a centralized system from its US headquarters. Chapters 6 and 7 tell the stories of two store employees. The fascinating narratives disclose their experiences as low and middle level managers. Their views about unions also reflect the dynamics of management in responding to workers’ collective representation. Chapter 8 covers the role of technologies in interactive labour, illustrated by cashiers who are subject to heavy workload and tight control. Walmart uses modern technology to facilitate customers’ control over cashiers’ work, reinforced by the performance related payment system.
Part Three focuses on employment relations, particularly the development of trade union organizations. Chapter 9 reviews the unprecedented unionization process in Walmart’s Chinese supermarkets. The official Chinese unions deployed a bottom-up approach to establish workplace branches and bypassed Walmart’s deliberate obstruction. Despite management’s victory in the end, workers’ collective representation has started to alter Walmart’s employment practices. As a national union official claims, trade unions had a ‘legitimizing and demonstrative function’, showing a potential favour for workers.
By examining two grassroots union branches, Chapter 10 highlights the significance of workers, not management staff, within the union. Workers’ challenge to management is limited due to the absence of genuine support from official unions locally and nationally. The final chapter compares the American and Chinese labour movements in Walmart.
The book provides a multidimensional analysis of Walmartization in China. Four conclusions are drawn. Walmart’s Chinese expansion has encountered workers’ collective resistance, half-heartedly supported by Chinese official unions and government authorities. Walmart’s low pricing policy is accompanied by reluctance to fully implement its corporate social responsibility. Walmart’s low wage strategy, coupled with tight control, has influenced employees’ morale and career prospects. Last, the Walmartization of labour relations in the USA has not been replicated, because unionization in its Chinese stores is at least symbolically meaningful against Walmart’s anti-unionism. Union branches are weak but still developing, with limited ability for effective mobilization.
The essays show some optimism for the future of Walmart’s labour movement, with critical suggestions provided for key parties. Chinese unions are advised to keep developing grassroots branches with bottom-up tactics. Labour activists need to pay more attention to core issues such as hourly wages, to help monitor Walmart’s corporate social responsibilities. Unionists and academics are advised to improve cross-national collaboration, because their joint action may help Chinese workers’ resistance in Walmart. With these insights, the book helps readers to appreciate Walmart’s changing employment relations in China. We should monitor the labour movement in Walmart China and how far Walmartization will go in future. Of course, the Chinese Government authorities’ attitudes are also a key issue.