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11. February 2005 • MarkDilley
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Take Action: Hold Wal-Mart Accountable

“Wal-Mart announced Feb. 9 it will shut down the Canadian store where workers had formed a union six months earlier to have a voice on the job.”



  1. I already never shop at Wal-Mart. They’ve done so many things I find objectionable.

    I suppose I could not shop there twice as often.
       —Joseph j7uy5    Feb. 12 '05 - 09:05PM    #
  2. I was going to say about the same thing. “Hey, you’d better stop treating your employees so sucktastically, or I’ll tell everyone I know about how terribly you treat your employees. Again.”
       —Murph    Feb. 13 '05 - 02:44AM    #
  3. Well, I actually see this as different that your run of the mill objectionable practice.

    I see this as what Reagan did the to air traffice controllers, and what the union movements actions should have been after that, in terms of solidarity.

    The difference is, when a group of people go through the difficult process of working together in the form of a union, I need to back them up.

    So this is different than “You treat your employees bad” – this is “You are punishing a group of employees who choose to work together, and that is not acceptable.”

    Kinda like it is time to get out in the streets, instead of “I am not going to shop there.”

    My two cents.

    Solidarity,
       —Mark    Feb. 13 '05 - 08:11AM    #
  4. Mark, here are the other reasons I don’t shop there—and honestly, any of these would have been enough to get me in the streets independently, if I’d had the sense that there was an organized movement (the labor movement, anyone?) behind me. In no particular order:

    1. refusal to stock the morning-after pill in its pharmacies; reports that some Wal-Mart pharmacists have refused to fill BCP prescriptions at all.

    2. special deals to sell censored editions of popular culture items (DVDs, CDs, etc.)

    3. LOCKING EMPLOYEES INTO BUILDINGS OVERNIGHT and threatening to fire them if they exited thru fire doors-even in one instance when an employee had a broken leg-Triangle Shirtwaist fire, anyone (1911, for those of you wondering exactly how old the lesson that WM refuses to learn actually is)? This is actually worse than closing the store, as far as I am concerned.

    4. unconscionable big-box esthetics.

    5. tendency to drive out every nearby competitor with anticompetitive practices that rely on

    6. government welfare benefits to keep WM workers afloat, to the tune of about $200,000 in subsidy for every 100-person store they have open in a year.

    7. systematic practice of denying workers enough hours to get benefits, and refusal to pay earned overtime, and to appropriately promote qualified women employees, all of which are currently being litigated.

    This is the one part of the SEIU organizing plan with which I am 100% on board. Organize the shit out of these motherfuckers.

    AP
       —Alyssa P.    Feb. 13 '05 - 09:32PM    #