Walmart would rather see the operation shut down “entirely instead of having employees with any kind of power.”
That kind of power?
As White notes:
“Many Wal-Mart employees are apparently so underpaid that their only recourse is to try and unionize their stores in order to negotiate a better wage.”
Meanwhile, four of the Waltons, who control Walmart, were named to the Forbes’ top 10 richest Americans list. Jim Walton ranked No. 6 at a net worth of $15.7 billion, right behind Warren Buffett and Microsoft founders Bill Gates and Paul Allen.
Do the Waltons really feel threatened? Are they really worried about some workers organizing to make an honest buck to take care of their families?
This is disgraceful. Boycott Walmart.
Please share widely!
…this isn’t the first time, actually. A Walmart in the northern town of Jonquière was shut down after voting to unionize, as well. The problem in Gatineau was that a court had ruled that Walmart must allow the unionization after they attempted to block the process.
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p>Quebec labor could teach lessons to the rest of North America.
There are other places to buy ANYTHING and EVERYTHING besides Walmart. This behavior is not acceptable.
People will buy anything and everything from the cheapest place they can find it… and right now that is Wally-World. Times will be getting tougher soon and people will want things even cheaper so expect the Macys/Nordstroms/Sears and other middle of the road stores to lose business to Walmart.
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p>And in many places in this country there IS NO OTHER place to go. Walmart has a lock on the business in most rural locations.
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p>People may have to decide whether supporting their union is worth losing their Walmart. Does anyone know the business pan for Walmart and how a unionized labor force would effect the bottom line?
So my business may be a drop in the bucket [and in fact these days, my business is “a drop in the bucket”] but as long as Walmart is closing stores that unionize, and otherwise showing its contempt of its own workers and the rule of law, I, personally, can say “I am not shopping at Walmarts”. Not an organized boycott, no. Just one vote.
some people will buy anything… from the cheapest place.
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p>Many people will not.
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p>Many others can be convinced not to, or at least to shop there less, because of all these sorts of news stories.
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p>Case in point: my mother likes cheap stuff as much as the next. She’s not rich, after all. She’s spent a lot of money at Walmart over the years, despite my protestations, not really understanding the full implications of what was going on. Well, one day she watched a documentary on Walmart that was on On Demand and was absolutely horrified. She was absolutely guilt stricken that she’s been spending money there all these years and immediately stopped going there, instead shopping at places like Target and Market Basket when necessary.
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p>The key isn’t to get everyone to boycott Walmart or spend less there, it’s to get enough people to do so that Walmart realizes that they’ll lose more money by not reforming than they’ll gain by staying the status quo. Given the fact that the bad publicity, over the past few years, has made dents into their profit margins – fairly significant ones at that – it was starting to work. Of course, the economy may screw that up, as Walmart does stand to gain in bad economic times… but, still, if enough people know what’s going on and have a true understanding of it, then just a small but noticeable decrease to Walmarts profits may get them listening. We don’t have to shut them down, just skim off enough from the top to realize they’re making a terrible mistake and that their costumers won’t stand for it.
Maybe if they feel the sting of even a small drop in business they will respond. I doubt it. My gut feel is they will do a cost/benefit analysis and try to understand what the full implications may be of a unionized workforce vs. their current situation.
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p>According to their web site there are 7,390 Wal-Mart stores and Sam’s Club locations in 14 markets employ more than 2 million associates (huge growth from 1.1 million from 2004) making them the largest employer in the country.
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p>The country’s economic downturn will absolutely increase their business. Even during the last few weeks of Wall St. insanity Walmart stock has done fairly well vs. the Dow Jones (10% drop vs. 25%). My guess is they will do whatever they want and not recognize the tiny fraction of people who will boycott, especially since the large increase in business from thrifty shoppers will erase any drop from conscientious non-shoppers.
There is much talk of the enactment of card-check legislation, making it much easier to unionize places like this because of the elimination of the secret ballot.
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p>If Wal-Mart is heavily unionized, their cost structure goes up dramatically. which means that the price of the consumer commodities that they sell must also go up, which decreases the competitive pressure on Target, Shaw’s, Best Buy, and Lowe’s to keep prices low, all of which leads to increased inflation which will make everybody poorer.
Wal*Mart’s got 2 million employees. They’ll certainly be better paid [as well as be more likely to be fairly paid based on gender, be less likely to be pressured to work off the clock, and find a safer work environment].
What store will they get to shop at where price pressure is down rather than up?
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p>What is more likely is that their new, better pay will be rapidly eroded by price inflation of groceries and sundries. Which will be OK, because they’ll have the union to push for better pay to account for the inflation. Which better pay will be rapidly eroded by inflation. &c.
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p>Which is why card check will lead inexorably to the wage/price spiral and could send us into another round of 1970s inflation.
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p>Which would, um, destroy the Obama administration as it did Carter’s and Ford’s.
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p>They say that when one party gains power over all of the levers of government, it eventually sows the seeds of its own destruction by going too far.
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p>Based on what Democrats and the AFL/CIO are saying, Democrats may do this mere weeks after assuming full control of the government.
… for cheap stuff is because wages for the vast majority of consumers have been stagnant. One of the reasons wages have been stagnant is because of the weakening of unions (for whatever reasons). Another is that we have too many Wall Mart jobs and not enough living wage jobs. Its a vicious cycle.
Many people are of course the employees we are speaking of as well. Of course, if minimum wage were $10/hour as I believe it should be then this would be somewhat moot. There’s also the simple element of being the right thing to do regardless of costs. I wish some business would pay a living wage, not rely on cheap foreign labor for their products AND advertise these practices. I’d like to think prices would only be slightly higher and that some people would respond positively to such a business. My advice to Wal-Mart: slash your advertising budget and put the savings into your workforce. BTW, how much to their top executives make? I suspect it’s quite a bit, so I have no sympathy to whining that they can’t afford to pay more.
The logical extension of your second paragraph, of course, is that we should get rid of all labor-related regulations. After all, all these regulations (like minimum wage, OSHA standards, etc) mean higher prices, which reduces competitive pressure on other outfits, which leads to inflation.
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p>Therefore, if we get rid of all regulations and return to serfdom, or at least sweat-shops, inflation will be lower, which will make everybody richer.
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p>Right? I mean, we all know that all this regulation is the reason we’re one of the poorest nations on the planet and have a positively scandalous standard of living. It’s time we returned to a simpler time, like the 17th century, when nobody had ever heard the phrase “minimum wage” and press-ganging was a way of life. Down with regulation!
The problem with political activists is that they see everything as zero sum, good and evil, all or nothing, black and white.
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p>The alternative to big union expansion through card check is not to repeal all labor regulation. It is: to not enact card check legislation, and let unions expand as they ever have, through secret ballot where the workers actually want them.
Your argument, in essence, was that higher costs (in this case, caused by widespread unionization) drive up prices, which drive up inflation, which makes everybody poorer.
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p>I’m saying that your argument has a fundamental flaw, because nearly every labor regulation and law under the sign drives up businessess’ cost structure. They all drive up prices, which (according to you) drives up inflation and makes everybody poorer. But clearly we are better off today than we would be under serfdom, so something is amiss with your argument.
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p>Me, I don’t have a position on “card check”; I need to read up on it more. (Unionizing isn’t big in software development so I’m not familiar with all the ins and outs.) So it’s a little unfair to tar me as a “political activist”.
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p>What you say could well be true. But I think your reaction smacks a bit of knee-jerk-iness, and your assumptions deserve to be re-examined.
It’s amazing to drive through rural Indiana, Pennsylvania, etc. There is a small town, twenty miles from the nearest conurbation, and at the center of town you have a couple restaurants/bars, a school complex, fire/police complex, and a Wal-Mart. And really nothing else. For many, many people this means that they have Walmart or online/catalog orders that take a great deal of time.
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p>Given that Walmart is also comfortable banning certain books or cds it doesn’t like, there is little flexibility or even choice for people in such towns.
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p>And on another note, I too have gone years without buying at Walmart, but I really want Black Ice. What to do?
Many things are not. As for being the only place to shop in rural areas – Vermont has one Wal-Mart. One.
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p>The company’s predatory business plan is to flood an area with stores with artificially low prices until all significant competition is driven out, then close most of the stores so that consumers have to drive to the Wal-Mart. It’s legal, but it stinks. Unskilled people have nowhere else to work, so they have to accept W-M’s nasty policies and pay scales.
since I bought anything in Walmart – and the last time I did was an emergency: I needed a pair of dress socks for a show I was in and had around 2 hours before curtain call. Unfortunately, it was the only store in the area that I could have gone to at that point. But, yeah, $5 in 4-5 years… I think I’m doing my part.
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p>Hopefully, more Walmarts will unionize, so Walmart gets the message. If a few more do in quick succession, Walmart will have no choice but to give in.
I’ve only bought a couple of items at a WalMart and I agree we should avoid it as much as we can. But we can’t lay this at the feet of individual shoppers, who often do have price and availability issues to take into consideration. The success of Walmart lies in the lack of accountability of U.S. corporations to the communities wherein they do business. While the labor movement depends on understaffed bureaucracies for protection, corporations are afforded plenty of freedom and no responsibility.
How can you boycott Walmart if you never shop there anyway? 🙂
is with better zoning regulations. Simply don’t allow massive one-floor stores. Don’t allow stores which require such a large parking lot. Don’t allow the sprawl.
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p>Of course, you can’t single out WalMart, but each city or town can set limits on the size of retail space, forcing WalMart to go elsewhere or become miniWalMart.
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p>P.S. Given Wal*Mart’s propensity for storing garden fertilizers and chemicals outside, don’t let them build anywhere near a river or stream.
So be it. And I will drive my gasoline burning car from store, to store, to store, to store, to store on Saturday errands, instead of an out and back trip. Might have to buy a bigger car to be comfortable for so long in the car. Might have to leave the engine running, with a spouse sitting in the car, while I run into each establishment, in order to avoid waking napping children.
Isn’t this tantamount to firing employees once they unionize? How does this work? If Wal-Mart re-opens this site in a year, is it still unionized? Or do they get a do-over?
I thought there was a legally protected right to organize. Also, could someone explain the secret ballot issue? I suspect a secret ballot is a good idea, but I also think that those who want to join should have that right and those who don’t should be able to make that choice as well.
that votes to unionize reminds me of many towns in Virginia that closed their school systems rather than admit blacks during the era of civil rights.
It definitely adds some perspective.
I’m agreeing with you people again. But as a former union member (UFCW 1440) I will have to BOYCOTT WAL-MART!
And it will pass.