Wal-Mart, Wal-Mart, Wal-Mart
A new-to-me website called Wal-Mart Watch is countering Wal-Mart’s “Made in America” rhetoric with details on Wal-Mart’s sweatshop factories in China. More good ammo as you take on Wal-Mart. They ask people with websites to link to them using the word Wal-Mart. See, Google and other search engines base their result, at least partly, on how many instances a certain term is linked to a certain URL. Websites that expose the true costs of Wal-Mart’s cheap underwear should rank highly when people search the web for Wal-Mart. Say it with me. Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart. Try it at home. Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart. For that matter, Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart.
Wal-Mart Free NYC
Vornado Realty has dropped Wal-Mart from its Rego Park development plans. This happened the night after Newsday published my letter, so clearly I was the straw that broke the camel’s back. In all seriousness, the plan was killed by some very effective, aggressive lobbying by the city’s labor unions, particularly UFCW 1500 and the Central Labor Council. The initial plans for that failed Wal-Mart were announced in December, and the plan was dead by late February. In that short time, organized community opposition in the form of coalitions of small business, civic and religious activists, students and shoppers did not have a chance to develop. They are still sorely needed. Wal-Mart has already announced plans to move into Staten Island and to beef up their presence on Long Island. The Wal-Mart Free NYC Coalition has launched an excellent website full of resources so that you can recruit your civic and […]
More On Wal-Mart
My letter to Newsday was published on Tuesday the 23rd. It’s essential to keep up the opposition to Wal-Mart’s siege of our union cities. Wal-Mart opened a store in Garden City a few weeks ago. It’s their first significant toe-hold in the New York metro region, as they seek to open stores in Rego Park and the Bronx. Cities like Detroit and Boston are also on Wal-Mart’s hitlist. Wal-Mart is anti-competitive. They engage in predatory pricing practices that force smaller shops in the areas near their stores to close. True, Wal-Mart drives down prices, but they do this by driving down wages, not just in the communities where Wal-Mart stores operate but in the factories of companies that do business with Wal-Mart, America’s largest retailer. They pay sub-poverty wages. They discriminate against women in their employ. They are militantly anti-union. Against a back-drop of all this bad press, Wal-Mart has […]
A Letter to the Editor, Re: Wal-Mart
The news that the UFCW had organized a Wal-Mart store in Quebec was hailed as a real breakthrough in some quarters of the labor movement. Quebec has a card-check authorization law, which means the union merely has to present union cards that represent a majority of the workers in the bargaining unit in order to be certified. This avoids the bruising, months-long anti-union campaigns that employers like Wal-Mart engage in when unions in the U.S. petition the NLRB for a union election. Quebec also has a right to a first contract under law. In the U.S., many companies “recognize” the union but never agree to a contract, which leaves the union dead in the water. So, of course, with favorable laws like that (which, by the way, there’s nothing stopping New York or other so-called “blue states” from enacting similar laws), Quebec was recognized as a weak spot for corporations […]