| | | |
| | MESSAGE FROM SECRETARY-TREASURER
Steven P. Vairma |
| |
| | | |
WAL-MART IS GOOD REASON TO
VOTE FOR CHANGE
President's Column-Rocky Mountain Teamster
The corporate management at Wal-Mart - which made $13 billion in profits last year- is afraid that changing the nation's political landscape might be good for the country's workforce in general and Wal-Mart employees in particular.
At a time when gas prices are soaring, jobs are being lost, wages are stagnating and hard working American families are struggling to get by, Wal-Mart's sales for June were up 5.8 percent from last year. So maybe what's good for the company is bad for America, something its chief financial officer once suggested when he said "tough times are actually a good time for Wal-Mart."
And perhaps that's why the corporation is, according to a story in the Wall Street Journal, "mobilizing its store managers and department supervisors around the country to warn that if Democrats win power in November, they'll likely change federal law to make it easier for workers to unionize companies-including Wal-Mart.
Authors Ann Zimmerman and Kris Maher reported that Wal-Mart has, in recent weeks, summoned store managers and department heads to mandatory meetings at which the retailer stressed the downside for workers if stores were to be unionized.
At the meetings Wal-Mart managers reportedly told employees that voting for Barack Obama for president would "be inviting the unions in." Wal-Mart workers also report they have been pressured to vote against candidates who express support for the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), which would allow unions to gain representation at companies through a card-check procedure.
Unfortunately for Wal-Mart workers, this intimidation is nothing new. It's actually part and parcel for Wal-Mart's business plan. When Wal-Mart employees stand up for themselves and try to form a union, they face threats, propoganda, discrimination, intimidation and even firings in retalition.
Wal-Mart appears to be carefully stepping toward the edge of legality in what it can say to its employees. According to the WSJ: "The Wal-Mart human-resources managers who run the meetings don't specifically tell attendees how to vote in November's election, but make it clear that voting for Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama would be tantamount to inviting unions in, according to Wal-Mart employees who attended gatherings in Maryland, Missouri and other states.
"The meeting leader said, "I am not telling you how to vote, but if the Democrats win, this bill will pass and you won't have a vote on whether you want a union," said a Wal-Mart customer-service supervisor from Missouri. "I am not a stupid person. They were telling me how to vote," she told the WSJ.
What Wal-Mart is doing for November's political elections is what it and hundreds of other anti-union companies do all the time when workers say they want a union: intimidating them to act against their own self-interests.
Rather than pay its employees a decent wage and provide affordable health care, Wal-Mart is putting huge amounts of money into front groups that are spearheading a multi-million dollar ad campaign to slam workers, their unions and their efforts to pass the Employee Free Choice Act. Wal-Mart is using its corporate power as America's largest private employer by corrupting the political system to protect profits.
The company is the largest member of the Retail Industry Leaders Association, one of the main financial contributors to the $30 million anti-union campaign called "Coalition for a Democratic Workplace. It's clear the business community will spend heavily in this election year to protect its interests.
Fortunately, working people cannot be fooled; they know this election is about creating real and lasting economic change.
And they know that Wal-Mart and John McCain represent the past. The company desperately wants to maintain the status quo, which allows Wal-Mart to exploit workers to maximize and safeguard profits at the expense of working men and women.
There is no better reason than that for workers to vote for change.
RightToWorkForLessInfo.pdf
