His commentary for Fast Company was recognized by the Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing with its Best in Business award for 2018. He has also written for Fortune, Time, Businessweek, and many other publications. His books include The End of Loyalty: The Rise and Fall of Good Jobs in America, which was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in Current Interest and named one of the best books of 2017 by strategy+business; Obscene in the Extreme: The Burning and Banning of John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, which was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in History and a PEN USA Literary Award; and The King of California: J.G. Boswell and the Making of a Secret American Empire (with Mark Arax), which won a California Book Award and the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing.
Wartzman applied the "Page 99 Test" to his new book, Still Broke: Walmart’s Remarkable Transformation and the Limits of Socially Conscious Capitalism, and reported the following:
If you open to page 99 of Still Broke: Walmart’s Remarkable Transformation and the Limits of Socially Conscious Capitalism, you don’t get a full sense of the story, but it does provide insight into one very important element of it: Walmart’s willingness to engage with its critics.Follow Rick Wartzman on Twitter.
The page drops you into a section of the narrative in which top Walmart executives are holding secret talks with the Service Employees International Union in 2006. These conversations would ultimately result in Walmart lining up alongside the SEIU—a bitter foe—to endorse universal healthcare. “It is interesting when you actually sit down with people that you think are your enemy,” said Linda Dillman, a Walmart executive vice president who managed the company’s medical benefits, “and you find out they’re just another human being, dealing with the same things you are.”
By endorsing universal healthcare—and taking a series of actions to become a more environmentally sustainable company—Walmart was able to transform its image over the years. It has “gone from being seen as a problem to becoming a significant part of the solution,” as one observer put it. This is the retail giant’s “remarkable transformation,” as highlighted in the book’s title.
But page 99 also foreshadows where Walmart falls short—the “Still Broke” and “limits of socially conscious capitalism” language that makes up the rest of the title. As noted, Walmart and the SEIU discussed a number of issues, including whether the company would agree in the urban areas it was trying to enter to pay its workers a prevailing wage that wouldn’t undercut what labor organizers had negotiated with other supermarkets in those cities. This idea went nowhere.
Eventually, Walmart would raise its pay. But the bottom line is that the average Walmart worker still makes less than $29,000 a year—hardly a living wage. It still has workers who are on food stamps and Medicaid. Many struggle to make ends meet.
Page 99 gives a hint of how Walmart has made real progress on a number of fronts in terms of being more responsible. But putting more money into its workers’ pockets has always been the toughest step for the company to take.
The Page 99 Test: Obscene in the Extreme: The Burning and Banning of John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath.
The Page 99 Test: The End of Loyalty.
--Marshal Zeringue
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