Letters to the Editors

S&R not enough

Dear Editors,

Re: “S&R closing a great loss to Kingston” (July 28, 2009)

Jamie Swift paints an overly generous picture of the downtown retailer, making it seem as if S&R is the David to the Goliath of Walmart. In reality, there’s a much more complex and fuzzy distinction between the two. Yes, S&R was locally-owned. Great—that means the couple of people at the top of the hierarchy live in Kingston instead of Arkansas. Does that mean their profits were returned to the Kingston economy? No—they were invested in the global marketplace so they can make more money. Yes, this “local” retailer was one of the last places to find affordable everyday items downtown. However, like Walmart, this is because the majority of their goods came from sweatshop factories in China and other parts of Asia and Latin America. Being a “crucial local business” makes little difference to where their goods were produced, and under what conditions. I have visited several sweatshops in the South—the high-end goods like Ralph Lauren and Cherokee are made side-by-side with the cheap stuff for Walmart and S&R.

While Swift notes that S&R was unionized, the union existed largely in name only, doing little to improve the wages and working conditions of its members. Unions must be understood as a practice, not merely a formal status. In the coverage of S&R’s closure, little was said of severance packages offered to employees, pensions or attempts to find alternative employment. There’s a difference between S&R and Walmart, as there are differences and unique qualities between countless other retailers. The question is whether those differences are sufficiently significant—whether S&R represents the kind of economic institution we want in our communities, and whether it represents the values we want to emphasize in our community. For me, that includes democratic workplaces, local as in locally-produced and grown, unionized as in workers have collective power vis-à-vis their employer, and affordable as in no one makes a profit off people buying toothpaste or a new pair of boots. Sadly, S&R didn’t aspire to these same goals.

S&R is better than Walmart, but that doesn’t mean it’s good enough or worth fighting for. Small-time capitalist or big-time capitalist, they are still based on a system of exploitation and unequal accumulation of wealth. Local versus global business is not where the line should be drawn. If we constantly focus on which is the lesser of two evils, we lose sight of what is “good.” Instead of lamenting the loss of S&R, No Frills etc., we must articulate what types of institutions and organizations we want to see and then fight to create them.

Amanda Wilson,

ArtSci ’07

All final editorial decisions are made by the Editor(s)-in-Chief and/or the Managing Editor. Authors should not be contacted, targeted, or harassed under any circumstances. If you have any grievances with this article, please direct your comments to journal_editors@ams.queensu.ca.

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