California politics: Oakland bans Wal-Mart super-grocery stores

The City of Oakland has just passed an ordinance on a 7-to-1 City Council vote aimed at banning Wal-Mart mega-grocery stores. It doesn't ban regular Wal-Mart stores or discount warehouses of the CostCo type.

Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, issued the predictable complaints about interfering with competition and hurting the consumer. An attorney with a union favoring the ordinance gave some of the thinking behind the ban: "Mainly what these things do is cannibalize sales from existing retailers [and] sap the vitality out of neighborhood commercial districts."

Columnist Ruth Rosen elaborates:

Wal-Mart ... has already pushed some two dozen national supermarket chains into bankruptcy during the last 10 years by paying poverty-level wages, offering unaffordable health benefits and underselling other big box stores by importing goods made by cheap foreign labor. The average Wal-Mart grocery worker earns $8.50 an hour, which results in a below poverty-level annual income of $14,000. By contrast, a union worker at a supermarket earns $17 an hour, plus health benefits, which allows working families to share a slice of the American Dream and keeps taxpayers from picking up the tab for their health care.

There's no indication in any of the reporting I've seen that Mayor Jerry Brown played an active role in the decision. But my guess is he favored the ordinance, because it represents the kind of focused, community-oriented approach to urban development he favors.

Tags: california politics, jerry brown, oakland, wal-mart