Hillary Courts The Union, And Why Wal-Mart Sucks

On Monday Hillary Clinton meet privatly with the board of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, UFCW. UFCW spokesman said they would meet with other potential presidential candidates through the year. They have said they would not endorse anyone yet. UFCW, which represents retail and grocery workers, is a big backer of Wake Up Wal-Mart, an organization formed to pressure Wal-Mart to boost wages and benefits for its workers. An interesting sidenote to this is that Hillary was on Wal-Mart’s board from 1986 to 1992, but now has become a critic of the giant retailer. Union endorsement is a big boost to any camaign. And now why Wal-Mart sucks; If you listen to the right wing press the economy is great! Fox News reports records stock market highs almost every day. The Bulls and Bears only see Bulls. 30 years ago the largest employer was General Moters with a union represnting it’s workers making a living wage. Now the largest employer is retail giant Wal-Mart, a union busting company that pays it’s employees a poverty level wage. The average employee toils for $8.23 an hour that amounts to about $16,700 a year gross. But that’s if you are lucky enough to get 40 hours a week which is hard since Wal-Mart defines full time as 36 hours. Also reports have shown that up to 80% of the money earned at the Wal-Mart store goes out of the community, compared to the monies that stay in the community when it has just mom and pop retail stores. Wal-Mart is bigger than the next five biggest retailers. They dictate policies to venders, to the vender eventual demise, read this link,
to see what Wal-Mart did to Vlassic pickle, and how they treat other venders. Frontline also did a good job with Is Wal-Mart Good For America? Wal-Mart does recognize all this bad press, they have hired top dollar PR firms to help them out, and now they have even started opening up an upscale versions of Wal-Mart But as shown in this AlterNet article, it’s just window dressing with the same dirty practices in a prettier suit. You can go ahead and save, but you are paying the devil.
Alan Cosgrove