The most ridiculous part is at the end where Wal-Mart claims the condition of the store was "fragile". Sorry....not buying it.
Posts: 1114 | Registered: Mar 2004
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Yeah, Wal-Mart is the anti-Christ. What gets me is that my friend who got me to boycott Nestle and Mitsubishi loves them Posts: 2010 | Registered: Apr 2003
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There are lots of things to not like about Wal-Mart, but I don't find this outrageous at all. They said that the union demands could not be met without losing money. What do you expect? A store should stay open, lose money, and just keep operating because the union says so?
I don't find Wal-Mart nearly as egregious re: their employees as companies like Manpower, where the employees cannot possibly unionize, yet have no job security or benefits.
Posts: 5948 | Registered: Jun 2001
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quote:They said that the union demands could not be met without losing money. What do you expect? A store should stay open, lose money, and just keep operating because the union says so?
We don't know enough about the profits of the store or the plasticity of the demands of the contract to know if they were really losing money.
The thing about unionizing Wal-mart is that it's going to have to be a mass drive, with fifteen stores involved, because one store can just close, sending an intimidating message to all of the other employees at other stores. I've been in an ugly union drive, and this is the kind of fear that works. Nobody wants the store to close. It's not good for the Union and it's the employee's livelihood.
I thought this was funny:
quote:The closest a U.S. union has ever come to winning a battle with Wal-Mart was in 2000, at a store in Jacksonville, Texas. In that store, 11 workers — all members of the store's meatpacking department — voted to join and be represented by the UFCW.
That effort failed when Wal-Mart eliminated the job of meatcutter companywide, and moved away from in-store meatcutting to stocking only pre-wrapped meat.
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Jeni, if you assume that what Wal-Mart is saying is the truth, then you are correct--there's nothing outrageous about that (annoying, perhaps, but understandable). However, I've learned enough about Wal-Mart and corporations in general that I no longer trust them when they say they're losing money. Perhaps if I had their papers to look at I'd find that they're right in this instance--but "it'll cost too much" is far too often used as an excuse for not providing needed changes.
Posts: 1114 | Registered: Mar 2004
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They've been losing money for several months, but only just now decided to close. Yeah, that's believable.
And the errily brilliant thing is that since whole communities are involved in bringing in a Wal-Mart, this closing can not only intimidate employees but recruit entire municipalities in repressing the possibility of unionization.
Posts: 2010 | Registered: Apr 2003
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The company decided that it wasn't win/win, so they said "no deal". They've got a pretty well established reputation for intolerance to unionization. The employees voted to make the attempt anyway. And lost. No one makes a person work for Wal-Mart. I don't see what's so outrageous about what Wal-Mart did. It's not like it is surprising.
Posts: 5948 | Registered: Jun 2001
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That it isn't surprising is part of what makes it outrageous, Jeni.
When Wal-Mart enters a community--a small town, at least; they aren't tough enough to take out whole cities--they almost inevitably undercut the local competition so that it collapses. (I still bear them a grudge for what happened to my home town when the Super Wal-Mart opened.) Prices are kept low by keeping wages and benefits low, and other places of work disappear, forcing the community into dependence on Wal-Mart for both goods and jobs. It becomes the very image of the old corporate towns that sprung up around mines in eastern Kentucky. That such towns eventually fail when their workers become too poor is not much comfort.
Events like this are familiar--we recount them all the time, online and in person--and still Wal-Mart claims it is doing nothing wrong. That is what is outrageous.
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WalMart wanted to buy property and build in my town and our city council said no thanks. They wanted to buy property near the main exit, and again, no.
They did finally purchase land another exit up - puts them outside the city limits, and since it's the exit up I don't need to see it.
Not every small town rolls over and welcomes them with open arms.
Posts: 14428 | Registered: Aug 2001
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