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Protesters Set Their Sights on Wal-Mart
wondering
Veteran
A member of Occupy Seattle is coordinating a statewide protest against Wal-Mart slated for Black Friday, the busiest shopping day of the year.
Wal-Mart’s sins are many, says organizer Neal Bernstein, who is recovering from a case of the flu he developed while demonstrating at Seattle’s Westlake Center and City Hall over the last few weeks. The company, which has more than 2 million employees and counts profits in the double-digit billions year after year, is notorious for paying low wages, skimping on benefits, demanding long shifts and forcing local stores out of business.
A 2004 report found that Wal-Mart sucks $1.5 billion from American taxpayers’ pockets annually to cover the cost of its workers’ needs for health care, food stamps and housing. Earlier this year, it escaped a class-action lawsuit raised by 1.5 million of its female workers who alleged they were the victims of sexual discrimination.
“I think they’re a really good example of everything that’s wrong with corporate America,” Bernstein told me over the telephone.
Bernstein plans to spend the next month as a liaison between female, minority, student and worker advocacy groups and willing protesters, and wants to see the Black Friday demonstrations formed and led by people from within affected communities. His approach to protest organization mirrors that found everywhere in the occupy movement: non-centralized, grass-roots and community based.
See the Facebook page for Bernstein’s event here ( have to go to the web page )and check out a critical feature-length documentary called “Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price,” below. —Alexander Reed Kelly
located at.....http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/protesters_set_their_sights_on_wal-mart_20111026/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+Truthdig/EarToTheGround+Truthdig+|+Ear+to+the+Ground
Wal-Mart’s sins are many, says organizer Neal Bernstein, who is recovering from a case of the flu he developed while demonstrating at Seattle’s Westlake Center and City Hall over the last few weeks. The company, which has more than 2 million employees and counts profits in the double-digit billions year after year, is notorious for paying low wages, skimping on benefits, demanding long shifts and forcing local stores out of business.
A 2004 report found that Wal-Mart sucks $1.5 billion from American taxpayers’ pockets annually to cover the cost of its workers’ needs for health care, food stamps and housing. Earlier this year, it escaped a class-action lawsuit raised by 1.5 million of its female workers who alleged they were the victims of sexual discrimination.
“I think they’re a really good example of everything that’s wrong with corporate America,” Bernstein told me over the telephone.
Bernstein plans to spend the next month as a liaison between female, minority, student and worker advocacy groups and willing protesters, and wants to see the Black Friday demonstrations formed and led by people from within affected communities. His approach to protest organization mirrors that found everywhere in the occupy movement: non-centralized, grass-roots and community based.
See the Facebook page for Bernstein’s event here ( have to go to the web page )and check out a critical feature-length documentary called “Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price,” below. —Alexander Reed Kelly
located at.....http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/protesters_set_their_sights_on_wal-mart_20111026/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+Truthdig/EarToTheGround+Truthdig+|+Ear+to+the+Ground
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Comments
What this does is take local profits that get recycled into the local economy, and sucks them out of the country into the US. So developing countries just get poorer, by these practices, instead of building up their own, locally-owned businesses, and prospering. I know someone who worked as a manager in one of a small chain of stores in central America, whose business this happened to. They did it in Mexico first, then they tried it in Brazil, but Brazil had studied what happened in Mexico, streamlined their business practices, and was able to rebuff Wal-Mart.
If the WTO were to do something useful to developing countries, they'd make this practice illegal, like it is in the US.
In Canada we have "copy cat" occupy groups who have not been able to articulate any concern - out of a misguided concern about inclusivity and wishing not to speak for others. So they don't have any message at all. They are disintegrating in to encampments of incivility, drug taking and violence and have become refuges for the disenfranchised and homeless.
Still, we are talking about people's wallets, and people will always go for inexpensive over pricey (American made) products if they cannot afford them. I also go to Wawa and similar for my gas, because why pay 20c more a gallon with BP or Exxon? I need to eat. WalMart knows this, and they exploit it. Their employees are also their customer base.
The problem the US has is multi-faceted; we are either too proud or too lazy to do menial jobs. To wit the tomatoes in Alabama rotted on the vines because the immigrants left town due to new immigration laws. Growers said Americans who showed up to do the work did not last a day before quitting.
Plus, Americans expect more money for the labor that we do in comparison to other countries. Why? Because we have a status quo to maintain. Consumerism at its finest. Asian countries work more, get paid less, live relatively well in some of the larger cities, and seem fairly happy.
Americans just want want want, and little is done to help those who NEED. Instead we cut the programs that help them, rather than increase the taxes for the wealthy. It's very very broken.
Then there is immigration, we pretty much let anybody come and stay anymore, even though in some cases they are taking food out of our mouths. We pay for the social services that some Americans cannot even get. I doubt that I would get the same benefits afforded to me was I an illegal in another country.
I tried getting Medicaid once a long time ago, and was turned down,even though I was in desperate need. Took them 9 mos to make a decision, when others were getting benefits right away. During that 9 mos I found a job that had benefits, and laughed when I got their rejection.
Used to be that if someone wanted to emigrate here they were sponsored, someone vouched for them. In turn they built this country. That's what we should go back to. I am not against immigration, just the way its being done now.
It's not just WalMart, its all of those who have no idea what a work ethic is, much less pride in their work. Everyone has a niche, it does not have to be as CEO, there is no shame in that.
Society has taught us to believe that we should all be rich, have a house, X amount of kids...this American Dream. If you do not achieve what some to be considered success then we are left feeling like failures. It all folds in on itself at some point.
There is much blame to be taken all around,if Occupy can tap into it the right way, they will succeed.
Poorer people are the first ones to gather donations when there is a catastrophe in another country. Clothing, canned goods, and so on. They pretty much shame everyone else into giving something, even the government. That's because they know what its like to need.
Absolutely, vote.
http://digitaljournal.com/article/251589
It's a few years old though.
US citizens expect to be paid more because the cost of living here is higher than in developing countries, that's why this is called a First World country, and others aren't. It's the same in Europe; Europeans, especially Germanic countries and England, have higher wages because people are more skilled and the cost and standard of living are higher.
However, I do agree with you that Americans take a lot for granted, and have "needs" that are considered luxuries, even in Europe (washer/dryer in every home, car/s, home ownership). On the other hand, let's not forget that high wages for factory workers, especially in the auto industry, is what is responsible to a significant degree in creating the American middle class, lifting many out of poverty. Unions had a strong hand in that. Reagan was a union-buster. That's when things started going downhill.
If you want to get paid less, and live with less, don't worry. That day will be here sooner than you think. The US is sinking as fast as the Republicans would send us into Third World status. The popularity of Wal-Mart is a harbinger of that, as is the loss of med insurance benefits at jobs, using people as free-lance workers (independent contractors) rather than having them on salary (in Latin America they call it the "informal economy"), and other tell-tale signs.
Unions have their benefits, but they also have their cons too...such as raising the cost of doing business. They do not have the best interests of the worker at heart anymore,they take their money for crappy benefits, and are not all that successful with bargaining anymore because big business has much greater ability to take or leave employees. They are political vehicles nowadays.
We are already paid less, and living with less...and we have automated ourselves out of livelihood in the interest of greater consumerism. For what? A better quality of life? The math just does not work.
i could have sworn that i had first heard about it through the documentary linked in here, but it may have actually been through Capitalism, A Love Story... or maybe even The Corporation. i guess i watch too many social commentary documentaries.
@Hubris I agree the unions became overconfident with their power at one point, and used it in ways that weren't in everyone's interest, but they were absolutely crucial in the days after the Depression and through the mid-century, for getting good wages and benefits for workers.
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No dissent here on what the unions accomplished in the distant past, however their relevancy now is in question.
They destroyed Zellers in my town and has bought them out, it will be converting to the second Walmart in my town of 80 000 people.
I did have to stop and ask myself if the prices would stay the same.