The last thing Morganton needs is another Dollar General Store
I went to Morganton and they had so many ______.
Historic homes. Beautiful old churches. Incredible locally owned restaurants. Parks and green spaces. Fun and exciting things to do. Excellent primary doctors. Incredible views. Thriving small businesses.
Anything but Dollar Generals. Please. Imagine inviting friends or relatives to visit, and one of the first things they see coming off the interstate is a Dollar General. A poor impression, to say the least.
The idea that yet another business-zoned lot on the main thoroughfare of Sterling Street might be turned into a low-paying, understaffed, aisles-dangerously-crowded by unstocked merchandise, crime-magnet, price-baiting Dollar General should fail immediately on its own merits, but apparently there is to be a vote held by the zoning board to allow this excrescence to metastasize.
All of the above criticisms are supported by either federal or state investigations to include the following:
Dollar General has a corporate dictum that wages remain below 5% of gross sales, positioning it among the lowest payers in an already low-wage sector, as disclosed to ProPublica by the son of the company’s founder.
The Economic Policy Institute’s continuous wage tracking shows that 92% of Dollar General workers earn under $15 per hour — a figure nearly 30% better at Waffle House in comparison.
In 2014, the retailer settled a class action lawsuit for $8.3 million over unpaid overtime, stemming from policies that required store managers to work up to 90 hours weekly while misclassifying them as overtime-exempt, despite spending fewer than 10 hours a week on managerial tasks.
In 2019, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission took Dollar General to court for racial bias against black applicants, leading to a $6 million settlement.
In 2011, over 2,000 female employees brought a lawsuit claiming they were paid less than men in similar roles, prompting the company to settle for $18.75 million plus legal costs to keep internal practices out of the spotlight.
Since 2017, Dollar General has faced over $21 million in fines for more than 300 OSHA violations at the state and federal levels, with inspections uncovering understaffed, hazardous stores often run by a single worker.
In 2023 alone, nine inspections across four states identified risks like blocked exits and fire hazards, resulting in $3.4 million in fresh penalties.
According to the Gun Violence Archive, 49 people have died and 172 have been injured at Dollar General locations since 2014. A 2020 CNN report further highlighted that at least six employees were killed in armed robberies since 2016.
On the pricing front, a 2023 Ohio lawsuit found that 16% to 88% of items, depending on the store, were priced higher at checkout than on the shelf.
That year, Dollar General settled for $850,000 in Wisconsin and $1.2 million in New Jersey over thousands of pricing mismatches.
In 2019, Vermont’s attorney general secured a $1.75 million settlement for similar overcharges, despite the company receiving over 50 prior warnings from state inspectors to fix the discrepancies.
Dollar General has shown consumers repeatedly what they stand for, the demographic they target, and their willingness to skirt the law and workplace safety regulations, paying its employees a bare minimum while paying its CEO nearly $9 million a year.
We do not need another Dollar General in Burke County, certainly not at the offramp to our beautiful town.
Dr. Kim Edhegard is a veteran and founding partner in Foothills Family Dermatology, based in Morganton.
