Twitter
StumbleUpon
Facebook
Delicious
Digg
Newsvine
Google
Yahoo
TechnoratiAgainst the Wal
They are consistent lawbreakers. They are virulently anti-union. They have undermined the rights of workers here in the United States as well as abroad. Their business model is based on cheap labor and exploitation.
And, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, this corporation has become one of the biggest donors to the Democratic Party.
The corporation is Wal-Mart and it is hedging its bets going into the November elections to stave off federal labor law reform that could make it easier for workers to join unions.
Money flows to power in politics. Twelve years ago, Wal-Mart gave 98 percent of its political action committee money to Republicans. In the current election cycle, the $2.2 million in PAC money split is 52 percent for the GOP, 48 percent for the Democrats.
That any member of the Democratic Party, the historic champions of the American worker, would take a dime from arguably the most anti-worker corporation in the nation speaks volumes about where the Democrats stand right now. Thankfully, no member of Vermont's congressional delegation has taken any Wal-Mart money.
Buying off politicians is all well and good, but it's not a substitute for good, old-fashioned intimidation. The Wall Street Journal reported last week that Wal-Mart has summoned thousands of its store managers and department supervisors to mandatory meetings to warn of increased union activity if the Democratic Party wins the White House and larger majorities in Congress.
While the managers and supervisors apparently weren't directly told how to vote, it was made very clear that a vote for Barack Obama was a vote for organized labors and the ruination of Wal-Mart.
The particular focus of Wal-Mart, and other anti-labor groups such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, is a bill called the Employee Free Choice Act. It would allow employees to form a union if more than 50 percent of workers simply sign a card saying they want to join.
Currently, companies can demand a secret ballot vote, and those votes are almost always preceded by mandatory anti-union indoctrination sessions and intimidation campaigns against union supporters. Technically, this behavior is illegal, but companies are rarely punished and if they are punished, the penalties are negligible.
With the "card check" system, workers can be approached anywhere -- on the job or at home. Organizing can take place without having to notify employers, which gives unions a chance to form without having to face the strong-arm tactics that have driven down union membership in this country from about 15 percent of private sector workers in the early 1980s to only 7.5 percent today.
The Employee Free Choice Act was first introduced in 2005 and cleared the U.S. House, but was blocked by a Republican filibuster in the U.S. Senate and a veto threat by President Bush. With a possible Democratic triumph in November, the prospects for the bill's passage look much better.
That is why Wal-Mart, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other business-backed organizations are spending tens of millions of dollars to lobby against the bill. For its part, the labor unions have also pledged to spend whatever it takes to make sure the bill is passed.
Unbelievably, big business says it's the underdog in this fight, because labor unions have pledged to spend $300 million on the election compared to $100 million by business groups. This is simply untrue. When it comes to national political campaigns, corporations outspend labor unions by an average margin of 15-to-1 and outspend civil society groups by an average of 30-to-1.
The decline in union membership in the United States has coincided with the decline in wages and benefits for the average American worker. As labor law has been weakened and employers get away with just a slap on the wrist for violations of the few laws that remain, the cards remain stacked against workers. That's why the heirs of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton are billionaires while Wal-Mart's employees struggle to survive on the meager pay they receive. The last thing corporate America wants to see is a level playing field for workers. That is why it is lobbying so vigorously against the Employee Free Choice Act. Let's hope Congress doesn't lose its nerve and fail American workers yet again.
© 2008 Reformer
23 Comments so far
Show AllI, for one, will not shop at WalMart. Period.
simple solution..vote out ANYONE who is an incumbent..period.
it is the career politicos who are the cause of the problem.
the system of democracy we have is broken, taken over by people more interested in being "elected" to further their career( and pad their wallets via favours to the "donators"), than in "governing", so they are very beholding to any and all who will donate to "elect" them.. so you know who they will cater to when decisions need to be made.
our system of democracy was meant to have "joe from down the street" serve his comunity and country via being in government for a few years then going back to his "real" job.. not for joe to stay around for years and years raking in the cash from his "supporters" ( read corporate enablers).
so i say again.. throw them ALL out.. if they are currently "in office", or have been in the last 20 yrs throw the bums out..
when service to the country in the form of politics is returned to the dull chore of actually running the country in a way that is dictated by the people and not the companies, we have a chance.. surely one can see any joe off the street could do a better job of "governing" our country, than the current batch of company bought hacks have done recently.
oh but i forget.. this is N America ..soon as anyone notices they are getting the shaft...the powers in charge create an unseen shadowy force we need to have a "war on _________" (fill in the blank)..
get rid of them ALL.. couldn't get worse than it is now.
Projection, folks, projection.
It is so easy to project the things we want and believe in onto the person who's personality is the most appealing. Be careful about that.
What exactly has Obama had to say about workers' right to organize? or about raising the minimum wage? or about big box stores and working conditions?
Some candidates who are no longer in the race (Kucinich, for instance) had plenty to say. Nader and McKinney do too. If Obama has, I must have missed it.
physicscitizen August 8th, 2008 3:22 am
I love it when you say what I'm thinking and it comes out coherently. Thanks!
The only thing I would suggest is that we consider the man/woman and not the party. There are a number of Republicans that are much closer to the liberal view than a number of Democrats.
Bane Richter
In my wildest dreams I can't fantasize a scenario in which a vote for Nader peals a vote away from McCain. No one that would consider voting for Nader or McKinney would EVER consider voting for McCain.
Nonsense, in states where the duopoly is running neck and neck, for example Virginia -
A vote for Nader will peel votes from MC Cain, the result will be Barack taking the electoral votes. This will be a practical 'reverse' application of the myth that "Gore lost because voters choose Nader", over the other two in '00.
I'm no fan of Daniel David. But I seriously believe that all the Nader supporters on here are closet republicans. Suppose EVERYONE here reading CD votes Nader.
Huge victory for John McCain is the result.
Why? Because CD doesn't have many readers. I know this because it takes CD several weeks to collect money to keep operating. It probably reaches only a million people, if I'm being generous.
Nader then get's a million extra votes and Obama loses by about a million votes to McCain....assuming you Nader guys don't actually convince the centrists to vote for McCain anyway.
Now lets compare the two possibilities.
Just think about them......
Barack Obama for four years, who I can just about guarantee you would put reasonable people on the Supreme court, would pass this labour bill, and would actually try to get us out of Iraq.
Or John McCain for four years, who would do all the opposite and who would continue America's slide to being a minor 3rd world power with game-ending nuclear arsenal. Heck, McCain's Supreme court appointments ought to give ANYONE pause. Think about it, we live in an era where Reagan appointee Sandra Day O'Connor is considered a 'liberal-moderate' when she was on the court???? good grief. That part of President McCain alone is enough to get me out to vote for Obama.
Oh no, Obama did blow it for me. I was one of the converted but I will NOT turn out and stump for him now. But I will vote for him and I will explain to anyone who is curious as to why.
Republicans are failures and they are bad for America. I think they love only their money really. We need to focus folks, on the biggest problem first. Then focus on the next biggest problem which is getting rid of the corporate influence in Washington that got us here in the first place.
Only after those two things are done will ANY of our true views stand a snowball's chance in Hell.
Wal-Mart? Is a symptom, not the illness.
The illness could be cured instantly by an enforced minimum wage of $15.00 bucks an hour, take home ten, live on 1600 a month instead of $800.00?
Paying people slave wages is the problem,
Wal-mart is just the biggest example of it.
"They have undermined the rights of workers"
Too bad the Brattleboro Reformer makes such a statement. The right of people to be MORE THAN workers should prevail over any rights AS workers.
To be more than workers, the people open mom-pop shops. Problem? No problem. Low low prices are not the goal. Local production, local ownership, fair prices and moderate consumption are the goal.
So who needs Walmart? There are models for department/discount stores composed of tiny mom-pops - swapmeets/fleamarkets. Some of them are much larger than a Walmart, more variety, and as good or better prices. The moms/pops accept returned items with big smiles. They remember you, even when it was the mom/pop next door you bought stuff from.
So we don't need Walmart. Now the swapmeet model is well known in all the cities, big and small in most countries around the world, outside Western Europe and North America. Wow! It's a cultural thing! The capitalist central planning model of Walmart is rather unnatural.
Our natural model of swapmeet mom/pops can later integrate stock from local craftspeople, materials locally produced. So we have our localist model for the entire network - small independent farmers/craftsmen/merchants. We're building it worldwide - no capitalist central planning needed - no capital needed.
Daniel David August 7th, 2008 2:09 pm wrote:
"You do not better the lives of Walmart workers by bashing Walmart while fiddling around and losing the election. You win the election first and install liberal leadership in both the agencies and the Congress. This is the only hope of fix for Walmart in specific and for unionism in general."
DD, you consistently argue using false premises here. Many of us realize that whether Obama or McCain wins we have lost the election. Your premise that electing the good-cop Democratic side of the plutocracy amounts to "winning" for the average person or to "liberal leadership" is blinkered in the extreme.
Repeating your faulty premises at every opportunity does not make for a cogent argument. You keep repeating this: Elect Democrats, Elect Democrats, as if this is the magic prescription for success, or "any chance of success" as you would probably put it. That's simply wrong. The governmental system that has devolved in our country is in much more serious trouble than what merely electing a (rapidly diminishingly) charismatic presidential candidate and another slew of corporate politicians in this round of the eternal seesaw can solve.
The longer term view is the correct one. We're going to have pain in the shorter term, because of this incredibly impotent political process we now have. This is similar to another important facet of our existence - environmental degradation. There are no good, low-pain ways out. We're going to pay the price for the idiocy, greed, and shortsightedness of many people present and past.
Same with US politics. Electing Obama is like banking on biofuels to solve the energy and environmental problems, while still basically carrying on with heavy-handed consumption and hope in technology as usual. It doesn't meaningfully address the potent problems, except to apply a very short term band-aid and make some of us feel "hopeful" for a few months, maybe longer depending on personal perceptiveness and gullibility.
You know what the potent problems are with the US political system. But I wish you would then understand that another round of Democrats and business-basically-as-usual in our construct isn't meaningfully helpful.
Take the long view, please.
I worked for Wally World Canada to get me through undergrad. I could have worked for any other big box and it would have been the same. If you want to know fist hand how bad it is, even in Canada where our labour laws are stricter than yours (still), then you can ask me. It is bad. (Disclosure, I am a believer in social economies -- you know, reciprocity, barter, community, etc.)
I left it a year ago after grad and will never, ever, go back and will always champion those who are abused by the neo-liberal capitalist system and others like it (communism in practice), whether retail workers in our countries or the abused workers in foreign countries. Our corporations now are trying to own the world, but they can be stopped by us, and we alone. We, the consumers of those products of abuse, extortion, and exploitation of not only those in the global south, but we of the global north. Yes. We too, are both the abusers and the abused. The exploiters and the exploitees. Are we going to stand for it? I will not.
Walmart is the biggest problem because they intentionally pay and treat workers as bad or worse than any other employer. They find the bottom and undercut it. Also Target and many other retailers set conditions just slightly above Walmart. Improving conditions even slightly at Walmart will improve conditions across the board.
Costco on the other hand provides pay and benefits that create a livable, but modest life. Costco is profitable even facing the people abusive competition.
Walmart CHOOSES to treat people worse than necessary and even conducts an aggressive and wastefully expensive drug testing program that mostly serves to make the life of their employees even more dismal. The big money spent on drug testing checkout staff would be better spent on pay and benefits.
I think they get off at the idea of making people pee in a cup. Forcing people to urinate on command helps to make sure you have a submissive work force.
GwNorth August 7th, 2008 3:45 pm
Please revisit.....
The Lies of Hiroshima Live On, Props in the War Crimes of the 20th Century
If Walmart kept their money in local bank accounts so that it were available to small businesses when startup money was needed, I might be persuaded to believe they were willing to be a good neighbor. If they did the right thing by their own employees and offered reasonable medical or reasonable retirement benefits, I would dare to dream that all right-wingers could be preparing to join the rest of the human race. When exploitation causes Human Resources to become even more of a joke job than usual, it's time for all good parties to join up for the duration of the war on poverty. Acceptance of blood money as a delaying tactic against the next battle is bullshit. This election is for all the marbles. If you're not going to help us, don't help yourselves to my hard-earned cash as well.
"They are virulently anti-union."
So, start a union in them one-by-one.
It's just sprinkling a little Christianity on a vampire, they shrivel up and die, releasing all the mom and pop stores and the neighborhood people that were in their power.
Corporations and Party Politics are the truest enemies of Democracy.
pk
Cavedweller
You're partly right about Reagan crushing unions, but unions began their numerical decline in the 1950's -- this can be tied directly to the 1947 passage of the Taft Hartley Act; the Act amended the Wagner Act, which allow unionization. The Act destroyed the labor movement's power and purged the radical members. The bill was passed over Truman's veto, though he used it.
Nader, to his credit, called for repeal of the Act in his 2000 campaign.
There are some major problems with Wal-mart, but singling them out might not be the best approach. Other retailers are not much better.
In Bennington and some other towns, it is a class issue. Those with the money to travel the 45 miles to Albany to shop do. Those without cars, gas, or money shop in Wal-mart.
Maybe instead of complaining about Wal-mart, we should all support the 'Livable Wage Campaign' and the campaign for a Single Payer Health care system.
Reminder - it was the democratic Governor Dean who blocked Single Payer and also opposed the casino/convention center which was proposed for Pownal. That would have provided high paying jobs with benefits and made an enormous contribution to the tax base state-wide and locally. Now Dean has a job and many in the southwestern part of Vermont are under-employed and unemployed.
"Money flows to power in politics. Twelve years ago, Wal-Mart gave 98 percent of its political action committee money to Republicans. In the current election cycle, the $2.2 million in PAC money split is 52 percent for the GOP, 48 percent for the Democrats."
It's always good to hedge your bets. The shareholders would expect nothing less.
When the union is certified in a Wal Mart store, they simply close it down (a la Quebec, Canada). That works for now, but the pattern will not be allowed to continue. Congress would eventually pass the "Protecting Wal Mart from economic terrorism act" and prohibit union organizing in any Wal Mart store.
Since Ronald Reagan's administration there has been a shift of wealth from the poor and middle class to the richest of the rich not seen since the robber barons of the early 20th century. Reagan started the destruction of unions in the US when he crushed the Professional Air Traffic Controllers (PATCO)union in 1981. Union membership nationwide has declined since then. As it was a hundred years ago, workers of today face the unbridled greed of corporations whose only loyalty is to the almighty dollar. The onslaught on workers will continue until the vast majority of us has nothing more to lose. Eventually, things will get so bad that we will stop being distracted by corporate television's absurd infotainment. Then We the People will take to the streets and end government by the corporations, for the corporations and of the corporations. Only then will the Walmarts of the world be forced to pay their employees a living wage.
It should also be noted that Hillary Clinton (who actually won the Democratic Primary if you look at the way that Obama has acted since he's become the official presumed Dem nominee, was on the Walmart Board for a number of years and it can be assumed that she had the contacts to get the bucks.
Additionally, Hillary was in the White House as "co-president" when Bill Clinton pushed through Most Favored Nation (MNF) status for China. The biggest single beneficiary of that trade designation was not China -- but Walmart.
Clearly Walmart knows who their most productive employees are(Billary)and so they are both rewarding the Dems for past favors and greasing them to keep the largess coming.
Vote Nader!!
You do not better the lives of Walmart workers by bashing Walmart while fiddling around and losing the election. You win the election first and install liberal leadership in both the agencies and the Congress. This is the only hope of fix for Walmart in specific and for unionism in general.
Nader/Gonzalez 08--nothing more need be said.