Wayne and Erika Pfeiler

I saw this sign on the walk to work this morning. It's advertising a group called Wakup Walmart and sponsored by the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union.

I've heard a lot of negative comments in the media about Walmart lately. It's interesting. A few years ago my general impression of the company was pretty positive...it had a great distribution system and was able to offer better than average prices. Now I hear things all the time about poor benefits for workers, high competition for manufacturers, smaller companies losing business, etc.

So why is Walmart the focus of so much more criticism now? I wonder if it has a lot to do with how they've firmly established their company as the "big dog" on the street. They're the largest retail company around and they do more business than I'd like to think about. I'm not saying Walmart is perfect, but I think people's reaction to them lately has something to do with psychology.

Given I'm not a psych major, but I think there's a tendency for people to root against the clear leader in a competition. Remember Microsoft a few years ago with the aniti-trust lawsuit. People were so excited to see what would happen to this hug company and how hard they'd fall. And a similar thing happened to Martha Stewart a few years ago. People were so excited to see how much trouble she would get into, and if she'd go to jail. I wonder how much of the public and media backlash at Walmart has to do with this.

What do you think?