Word: wals
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...same jobs but make only $20,000 annually because they work only two or three days a week. Economywide, the number of temps in the labor force has more than doubled in the past decade. Says Roach: "The ((job-creating)) leader in this recovery is not IBM, not Wal-Mart, not General Motors. It's Manpower, the company that offers you a job for a week without benefits, not knowing where you're going to be next Monday." About the only way in which the Buick City situation is untypical, in fact, is that the workers finally rebelled...
...hand it to the resolutely rustic citizens of Vermont: they know how to bend outsiders to their will. Outraged by the thought of Wal-Mart megastores sprouting among their sugar maples and dainty shops (Ye Olde Wal- Marte?), antigrowth protesters have repeatedly fought off America's No. 1 retailer and made their state the only one in the country to remain Wal-Mart free...
That stubbornness has forced the huge company, based in Bentonville, Arkansas, to think small. In a deal that reflected the determination of Wal- Mart to conquer all 50 states, the firm last week agreed to build a sharply scaled-back outlet near the downtown area of St. Johnsbury (pop. 8,000) as the price of admission to Vermont. Not that it will be a mere boutique. At 75,000 sq. ft., the store will dominate the town's landscape, yet it will still be modest by comparison with the discount palaces of 120,000 sq. ft. that Wal- Mart...
...Vermont the compromise reflects the recognition that Wal-Mart will bring jobs to depressed parts of the state. Even nervous merchants agreed that the company could generate fresh business for everyone by attracting customers to downtown areas. Governor Howard Dean himself journeyed to Arkansas last October to make the case for building near Main Street and attracting shoppers there. "If you want to come into Vermont, our growth areas are downtown," says Steve Bradish, a leader of the statewide group Vermonters Against the Wal. "They are not suburban sites and cornfields...
...truce could prove only temporary. A lot of Vermonters think of the battle in symbolic terms, referring to the store chain as "Sprawl-Mart," a term conveniently supplied last year by the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Wal-Mart opponents vow to fight the retailer's efforts to build stores in the more suburban locations of St. Albans and Williston, where Wal- Mart has unsuccessfully sought permits for the past four years. As the company surely knows by now, Vermonters give ground grudgingly when they give...