Schools Losing Workers to Wal-Mart
02.08.2008
This article about a new Wal Mart being built in Edgewood, NM, really caught my attention. In the article, it was revealed that the Edgewood Schools have lost three bus drivers to the retailer, with as many as five additional employees considering a job move. Wal Mart plans to hire as many as 400 people in this town of about 2,000.
Clearly, if people are making the move from government jobs to Wal Mart, then America’s largest retailer must not be paying the “slave wages” critics so often accuse them of.
And don’t assume that the public schools in New Mexico don’t have adequate resources to pay bus drivers and other professionals, because they do. First and foremost, as the Rio Grande Foundation has shown in a recent study, education spending in the state is higher than that of our neighbors. New Mexico also spends more on administration and other expenses “outside the classroom” than any other state in the nation. Perhaps it is being mismanaged, but that is nothing new.
The fact is that Wal Mart pays competitive wages and will be a boon for Edgewood residents who will have access to inexpensive goods. That is the free market at work.