Walmart's Editorial on Saturday Protests

Wal-Mart Public Affairs, in anticipation of a at the site of a store planned in Chinatown, published an editorial on the Huffington Post.

Steven Restivo, the company's senior director of public affairs claimed the three planned locations in Chinatown, Altadena and Panorama City would create 200 jobs for county residents.

The editorial starts:

There is a gathering scheduled on June 30 in protest of our new store planned for downtown L.A. With county-wide unemployment concerns, city budget shortfalls and families struggling to make ends meet, L.A. residents aren't looking for protests -- they're looking for solutions. So it's unfortunate that the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy (LAANE) continues to focus its energies on a selective campaign of "no" when it comes to new jobs, fresh sources of tax revenue, revitalized neighborhoods and more affordable shopping options.

After all, protests don't employ people, but new stores do.

With the County unemployment rate above 11 percent, one would think that an effort to create private sector jobs would be applauded, especially from a business that offers competitive wages, affordable benefits and the chance to build a career. At Walmart, our average hourly full-time store associates earn more than $5 above the federal minimum wage; we promoted more than 161,000 hourly associates last year; we recently paid out more than $200 million in quarterly bonuses to 88 percent of eligible store associates; and health care coverage is available for as little as $15 per pay period. For those reasons and more, over 72,000 people choose to work for Walmart in California and nationally, more than 300,000 associates have been with the company for more than 10 years.

Protests don't help communities, revitalized neighborhoods do.

Read the rest on the Huffington Post.

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