Fair Labor Practices - USA vs Canada

I have mixed feelings about the need for Unions, however, I also understand why and how they evolved in the USA. It was because of companies like Wal-Mart. Employees shouldn't have to 'organize', they should be treated with respect by employers.

Unions and Wal-Mart in the USA

There’s little secret to Wal-Mart’s success. The company will simply do whatever it takes to keep workers from organizing. “Staying union free is a full-time commitment,” reads one of the company’s training manuals. “[F]rom the Chairperson of the ‘Board’ down to the front-line manager … [t]he entire management staff should fully comprehend and appreciate exactly what is expected of their individual efforts to meet the union free objective.”

Read more here.

Unions and Wal-Mart in Canada

The Canadian legal system does not play Wal-Mart's game, if the company now thought they would. In two recent court decisions, the retail giant has been mercilessly exposed for its repressive and anti-social behaviour. Workers that were fired in Jonquière, Quebec, for their union activities, have to be compensated. In a Saskatchewan court, Wal-Mart's efforts to disqualify the Labour Relations Board from dealing with unionisation issues in Wal-Mart ran on ground.

More here.

Wal-Mart and Small Town Voter Influence

Wal-Mart has been fined for "failure to register with the Monroe city clerk before a 2005 referendum on so-called big box stores, in violation of state campaign finance law." Also, here.

The civil forfeiture action alleged that Wal-Mart spent money on ads, a mass mailing and a public relations company to encourage "yes" votes on the referendum.

The question on the non-binding referendum was "Are you in favor of the City of Monroe allowing the construction of a very large retail supercenter store?" Wal-Mart was not mentioned.

Unfortunately, the fine was a miniscule $753. Monroe, WI voters were smart enough to ignore the illegal Wal-Mart campaign.

Chicago Approves Living Wage Ordinance

The City of Chicago passed an ordinance, 35-14, which requires mega-retailers with sales over one billion dollars and stores with greater than 90,000 sq ft to pay workers at least $10/hr plus $3 in benefits.

"It's trying to get the largest companies in America to pay decent wages," said Alderman Toni Preckwinkle.

HERE.

Saranac Lake should do the same.

Nowata, Oklahoma and Wal-Mart

A small town of 4,000 people who were delighted when Wal-Mart opened a store in 1982. Within three years of Wal-Mart's opening, 18 existing businesses closed their doors.

But that isn't the bad news. In 1994 Wal-Mart closed the Nowata store to move into a supercenter 25 miles away.

(Shipley) said when Wal-Mart left, the downtown was literally boarded up and the citizens were left without local options for shopping other than driving 25 miles away to the Supercenter.
“The question you need to ask Wal-Mart is ‘How long do you intend to stay?’” said Shipley.

“I think I am up here to show how Wal-Mart devastated Nowata when it left,” she said. “Actually it devastated when it came in. Within 1 1/2 years, half the businesses [of the 18] were closed; within three years they were all closed.”

“I can tell you this, they had no sympathy for our town for the citizens who lived there,” she said.

More Here.

Summary of Local Wal-Mart Issue

Chris Knight, news director of WNBZ radio, gives a summary of where we stand with the local Wal-Mart controversy HERE at North Country Public Radio (Speakers required).

The Wal-Mart Debate: A False Choice Between Prices and Wages

On the left side of this blog is a link to a technical article called "Wrestling With Wal-Mart: Tradeoffs Between Profits, Prices and Wages".

There is now a more readable summary of this paper called The Wal-Mart Debate: A False Choice Between Prices and Wages. You can read it HERE.

The Case for Breaking Up Wal-Mart

The article, by Barry Lynn, published in Harpers Magazine a few weeks ago is not available at AlterNet. Click HERE to read it.

The stakes could not be higher. In systems where oligopolies rule unchecked by the state, competition itself is transformed from a free-for-all into a kind of private-property right, a license to the powerful to fence off entire marketplaces, there to pit supplier against supplier, community against community, and worker against worker, for their own private gain. When oligopolies rule unchecked by the state, what is perverted is the free market itself, and our freedom as individuals within the economy and ultimately within our political system as well.

It's too bad people couldn't understand this concept. But many are too busy consuming to be good citizens.

But the issue before us is not how Wal-Mart grew to scale but how Wal-Mart uses its power today and will use it tomorrow. The problem is that Wal-Mart, like other monopsonists, does not participate in the market so much as use its power to micromanage the market, carefully coordinating the actions of thousands of firms from a position above the market.

How is this a free market when Wal-Mart has such power over it's suppliers and politicians? Oh, but it is a free market you say? Read the article!

Wal-Mart and a growing number of today's dominant firms, by contrast, are programmed to cut cost faster than price, to slow the introduction of new technologies and techniques, to dictate downward the wages and profits of the millions of people and smaller firms who make and grow what they sell, to break down entire lines of production in the name of efficiency. The effects of this change are clear: We see them in the collapsing profit margins of the firms caught in Wal-Mart's system. We see them in the fact that of Wal-Mart's top ten suppliers in 1994, four have sought bankruptcy protection.

Behind the Greeting

An article in the St. Petersburg Times by SAUNDRA AMRHEIN:

During her lunch hour, Ellen Stanton walks stiffly back through aisles of discount clothes and frozen foods.
She wobbles into the employee break room on the artificial knee that makes her leg throb, on the foot rendered painful from diabetes.

She sits down and takes off her shoes. Hours on her feet greeting Wal-Mart shoppers take their toll.

Stanton worked almost her whole life, but she never thought she'd be working this long, at the age of 74.

Click on the link and read it.

Wal-Mart, Nuns, Civil Rights Activists and PaidCritics

Paidcritics.com is proud of the latest great business move (read P.R. move) by Wal-Mart. The idiots actually point to this article which they think reflects well on Wal-Mart.

Wal-Mart hired an ex-nun, Harriet Hentges, to be their liaison with nonprofit and academic groups and with government agencies dealing with the environment. Some time ago they hired Andrew Young, ex-mayor of Atlanta and owner of Goodworks International, to head a group formed to spread the word about the positive contributions of Wal-Mart Stores. What Wal-Mart don't seem to get is that real change is what will help Wal-Mart's image, not hiring ex-nuns and ex-civil rights workers to help with P.R.

Detroit news Eitorial writer Manny Lopez thinks this is really great for Wal-Mart and paidcritics wants you to read this column. Manny doesn't get it either.

Really Wal-Mart's newest blue-vesters are only the most recent of the company's brilliant business moves.

Manny, I doubt the P.R. bigshots in Bentonville are required to wear the stupid blue vests, although I'm pretty sure some of the people at paidcritics.com do wear them. Manny goes on to say:

I know, I know. Wal-Mart is supposedly the most evil company in America. Workers are abused and taken advantage of. Suppliers are nickeled and dimed to death. Mom-and-pop shops are put out of business. The horror of it all. It's awful, just, awful.

Manny goes on to point out that all this stuff is just the result of the 'free market', not Wal-Mart's fault. Manny doesn't even spend much time denying that Wal-Mart is evil.

Excluding the (rare) unfair work practices the company has been found guilty of, they've stayed a step ahead of the activists who despise the company's every move, mostly because they can't get their hands in Wal-Mart's pockets.

Manny conveniently forgets that Wal-Mart was sued about every two hours, 4851 times in the year 2000. There is even an entire website dedicated to class action suits against Wal-Mart.

And, even if Wal-Mart is evil it's only because Unions are equally evil says Manny.

When workers at a store in Canada approved representation, Wal-Mart closed the store. Are some of those things dirty? Perhaps, but no more so than the tactics the unions have used there and elsewhere.

Finally, Manny gives some good advice:

And quit shopping there if you worry for the so-called suffering, abused masses who have chosen to work there.

Don't worry Manny, several of us have taken your advice long ago and many more are joining. Why do you think Wal-Mart is investing so much in P.R.?

Andrew Young - Working Families for Wal-Mart Says:

For more than 40 years, Wal-Mart has carried out Sam Walton’s belief that people in rural, underserved communities should be able to buy the same things folks in the big cities were buying and at prices they could afford.

Yessireebob, us poor ole hayseeds need to buy them same store bought goods that the city slickers buy and we don't care if our store bought goods are junk as long as they are cheap.

Thanks Andy Young, you condescending idiot, I'm sure Martin Luther King would be proud of you.

Wal-Mart's P.R. War

Firing whistleblowers. Discriminating against women (and, most recently, black truck drivers ). Violating child labor laws. Locking workers into stores overnight. Mooching off taxpayers. Disregarding local zoning laws. Mistreating immigrant janitors. Abusing young Bangladeshi women. Paying poverty-level wages in the United States. Destroying small-town America. If you read any newspapers -- or even watch "The Daily Show" -- you can probably guess which company has been grabbing headlines for these and countless other charges and offenses.

Read the rest of this Liza Featherstone article HERE.

Sam says:

“You can’t create a team spirit when the situation is so one-sided, when management gets so much and workers get so little of the pie.” - Sam Walton

What would Sam say about the misleading $10.17/hr average wage that Wal-Mart claims to pay? Tell us what the median wage is please.

Yes, all Wal-Mart 'associates' are eligible for profit-sharing, health insurance, etc. Tell us the percentage of employees that actually qualify for these benefits.

It's sad that the largest most powerful corporation on the face of the earth deems it necessary to be so misleading to it's supporters.

Wal-Mart Critics:

Wal-Mart critics fall into many different groups. Which group do you fall into?

1. Honest, good hearted Americans who have been misinformed or misled.

2. Political critics and opportunistic trial lawyers who attack companies for being successful.

3. Labor leaders who want more money for their unions.

4. Snobbish elites (probably from away) who are self-appointed arbiters of taste and culture and who don’t appreciate Wal-Mart providing the great American middle class with countless cartloads of affordable goods..

5. Blame-America-first political radicals and environmental activists.

6. Journalists who make their living spreading doom-and-gloom economic reports.

7. People who see themselves as citizens first and consumers second.

Average wage vs. Median wage

"Wal-Mart full-time pay averages $10.17 per hour".

The MEAN is the arithmetic average, the average you are probably used
to finding for a set of numbers - add up the numbers and divide by how
many there are: (80 + 90 + 90 + 100 + 85 + 90) / 6 = 89 1/6.

The MEDIAN is the number in the middle. In order to find the median,
you have to put the values in order from lowest to highest, then find
the number that is exactly in the middle:

80 85 90 90 90 100
^
since there is an even number of values, the MEDIAN is
between these two, or it is 90. Notice that there is
exactly the same number of values ABOVE the median as
BELOW it!

Wal-Mart will not divulge the median wage of their 'associates'.

Could it be: 6 6 6 8 8 12 14 14 20 ?

Average= $10.44
Median= $8.00
Mode=$6.00

Supercenter has nothing to do with size

Sometimes size does matter.

A 121,000 sq ft WalMart Supercenter is the equivalent of 50 downtown independent stores.

Or, 12 Kinney's (a true regional company) Drug stores.

Or, 4 football fields.

Web Wars Escalate!

Wal-Mart supported Working Families for Wal-Mart (I am a card carrying member of WFFWM) is tired of being criticized by paid union leaders. It is every American's right to shop and buy stuff at one convenient location. You save money and time! Just try not to think about any possible peripheral effects of your actions.

In any case, Working Families for Wal-Mart must not be working very well. WFFWM has started up another website called 'paid critics'. This is a much better website than WFFWM in that it uses the tried and true 'Swiftboating' techniques designed by Karl Rove. In fact, 'paid critics' is actually run by paid critics, some who helped get us involved in the Iraq War, some who used to work for big tobacco and my favorite RedState blog founder and current Edelman PR employee Mike Krempasky (BTW, he is the least evil member of the group, but I voted for him).

To further escalate the Wal-Mart/Union war, we now have an entertaining site called 'a bunch of greedy right wing liars who work for Wal-Mart'. Seriously! You can even vote on who is the most evil greedy right winger (poor Mike is in 5th place, but I'm sure he's working on it when he's not playing poker or shooting pool).

One thing you can count on.....NO ONE at 'paid critics' comes from a 'working family'. These guys are out of work, ex-Republican party operatives doing what they do best. Does anyone believe these guys actually care about actual 'working families'?

We have paid Union members (from WakeUpWal-Mart) fighting $300 billion Wal-Mart, Inc. for living wages and benefits. Asking for fair labor practices. Asking that jobs not be shipped overseas. Then you have these guys:

Taylor 'don't count the votes' Gross,
Rick 'my house cost more than yours' Berman,
Kevin 'RNC' Sheridan,
Lee 'don't raise the minimum wage' Culpepper,
Mike 'I missed the recount riot' Krempasky,
Robert 'Tobbacco is Good For You' McAdam
and Terry 'I don't know Tom Delay' Nelson

These guys are being paid to swiftboat the people who are lobbying for a better life for actual 'working' people. These guys do not make $10 an hour.

By all means, visit 'paid critics' and get the Wal-Mart/Edelman viewpoint from a bunch of guys who you couldn't pay to set foot in a Wal-Mart store. Guy's that don't know the meaning of the word 'fair'. Then visit 'a bunch of greedy right wing liars who work for Wal-Mart' and find out what these guys have done in their past lives in the name of God, country and the almighty dollar.

UPDATE: See comments by Joe Trippi

Why does this blog look so much like a classic Swift-Boat attack? Probably because Wal-Mart has hired many of the same corporate and political operatives involved in past high-profile smear campaigns. Kevin Sheridan, a former spokesman and operative at the RNC, now works for Wal-Mart as consultant from Edelman PR. Terry Nelson, previously a Deputy Chief of Staff for the RNC and National Political Director for the Bush/Cheney 2004 campaign, is currently a strategy advisor for Working Families for Wal-Mart - the group officially behind paidcritics.com and fully funded by Wal-Mart. And then there’s Rick Berman and Bob McAdam, two men who worked hard for Big Tobacco to convince Americans that smoking is good for you. Now they work for or with Wal-Mart on its communications strategy.

Additional comments:
Fratpack
Scatterbox
Writing on the Wal

Sam Says:

“We still want to drive a hard bargain, but now we need to guard against abusing our power.” - Sam Walton

Maybe Wal-Mart abusing it's power is just a matter of opinion. But, I'm guessing many of those American factory employee's that are out of work might disagree. Is there any other way that Wal-Mart abuses it's power?

Wal-Mart's Pay Gap

Want to see how much Wal-Mart excutives make in comparison to overseas workers? Lookhere.

Wal-Mart claims it doesn't make enough money to pay it's workers better. But wouldn't it's 1.3 million employee's in the USA be able to purchase more 'stuff' from Wal-Mart if they were better paid? It worked for Henry Ford.

These Wal-Mart exec's are the 'rich outsiders'.

Sam says:

“Maybe the most important way in which we at Wal-Mart believe in giving something back is through our commitment to using the power of this enormous enterprise as a force for change.” - Sam Walton

How come Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton thought Wal-Mart could be a force for change yet current Wal-Mart supporters don't believe Wal-Mart has any power/responsibility for change? Any ideas on how Wal-Mart could use their enormous enterprise to institute change?