From their policies and executives, it isn't hard to tell how the upper echelons of the largest U.S. employer feels about partisan politics in our country. WalMart has nearly 90% of their employees in poverty and for the bottom-line, that is good for business. However, this year WalMart and their Republican friends see change on the horizon and they loathe it. So what do you think management will do about it?
From The Wall Street Journal:
In recent weeks, thousands of Wal-Mart store managers and department heads have been summoned to mandatory meetings at which the retailer stresses the downside for workers if stores were to be unionized.
According to about a dozen Wal-Mart employees who attended such meetings in seven states, Wal-Mart executives claim that employees at unionized stores would have to pay hefty union dues while getting nothing in return, and may have to go on strike without compensation. Also, unionization could mean fewer jobs as labor costs rise.[...]
The Wal-Mart human-resources managers who run the meetings don't specifically tell attendees how to vote in November's election, but make it clear that voting for Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama would be tantamount to inviting unions in, according to Wal-Mart employees who attended gatherings in Maryland, Missouri and other states.
"The meeting leader said, 'I am not telling you how to vote, but if the Democrats win, this bill will pass and you won't have a vote on whether you want a union,'" said a Wal-Mart customer-service supervisor from Missouri. "I am not a stupid person. They were telling me how to vote," she said.
WalMart will go to any lengths to keep their workers down, especially here in the United States. Thanks to stronger governments in Europe and even China, workers in those countries are protected from the abuses that U.S. employees are subjected to. WalMart, being the evil corporate behemoth that they are, left Germany two years ago because their unethical practices were not tolerated.
Now here at home, people are fed up with the status quo and with how WalMart and others like them treat workers. The Bush Administration has helped companies fight unions off while managers use fear tactics straight out of the old Gilded Age handbook on union-busting (save for the Pinkertons). Wealthy Wal-Mart executives do not want an environment where unions can thrive again and empowered workers demand better wages and rights. That is why they are trying to force the Republican brand down the throats of their lower-level managers. Well try as they might, the word about them is getting out and things will change as more and more Americans wake-up to the realities of WalMart.
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