8,000 Applicants For 350 Jobs At N.J. Wal-Mart

Wal-Mart tomorrow will open its newest store just more than seven miles from Manhattan, in Kearny, N.J., part of its strategy to ring the city with stores in order to hasten their arrival here.The store received more than 8,000 applications for 350 jobs, a Wal-Mart executive said.Although Wal-Mart is the nation’s largest retailer, boasting more than 4,000 stores nationwide, it has no outlets in the five boroughs, and in the last 16 months, two attempts at siting a store in Queens failed.Some members of the City Council, lobbyists for small businesses, and representatives of the commercial food workers’ union have tried to block Wal-Mart’s entry into the city – claiming Wal-Mart is a bad corporate citizen and questioning the chain store’s effect on smaller neighborhood businesses.The director of corporate affairs for Wal-Mart in the Northeast, Steven Restivo, said the large number of applicants for the jobs in Kearny, which is in New Jersey’s Hudson County, “shows that we are bringing good jobs with good benefits, and tremendous career opportunities to this community.”Mr. Restivo said that several hundred of the applications came from New York City residents, and 23 New Yorkers were hired. He said those workers will commute each day to New Jersey from as far away as the Bronx, and that the average wage for employees will be about $10.50 an hour.“In terms of career opportunity, the majority of store managers nationwide started out as hourly associates,” Mr. Restivo said.A lobbyist who represents the Neighborhood Retail Alliance, a small business group, Richard Lipsky, said the high number of job applications is driven by the number of local manufacturing jobs that have been killed by Wal-Mart.“It shows that people are desperate for jobs. When Wal-Mart comes into the community, others stores are put out of business, and union labor is put out on the street,” Mr. Lipsky said. “The overall cost outweighs the benefit.”A senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, Steven Malanga, said the 8,000 job applications is in line with the number of applications Wal-Mart receives in other urban settings.“New York City residents would be interested in working at Wal-Mart,” Mr. Malanga said. “The kinds of benefits offered at independent retailers don’t compare at all with what you get for working at Wal-Mart.”The 142,566-square-foot store in Kearny is located in a former industrial zone that has been designated by the state as an “urban enterprise zone,” meaning that consumers will pay 3% sales tax instead of 6%. It will be New Jersey’s 44th Wal-Mart.Mr. Restivo said there are still relatively few Wal-Mart stores in the Northeast compared with other parts of the country, but that would likely change.“It’s a natural market evolution,” he said.In April, Wal-Mart representatives announced that New York City residents are heading to suburban Wal-Mart stores in record numbers, spending 30% more at the region’s half-dozen stores last year – $128 million – than they did in 2004.The giant retailer operates stores close to New York in Secaucus and Woodbridge, N.J., and Valley Stream and Westbury, Long Island. This summer Wal-Mart will open in White Plains, N.Y., just north of the city in Westchester County.

8,000 Applicants For 350 Jobs At N.J. Wal-Mart

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