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We’re about to find out exactly how little Barack Obama cares about working men and women.
Walmart workers at an October protest
We already know the answer is “not much,” but a job action planned by employees of the world’s largest retailer on the biggest shopping day of the year – Black Friday, just three days away - may bring into sharp relief just how far down the river this president is willing to sell the working class.
Walmart – that destroyer of small-town Main Streets, receiver of corporate welfare, and beneficiary of third-world slave-labor - has gone crying to a government watchdog which, if it holds true to the principles of its founding, should not merely toss the Walton clan out on its ear but laugh heartily as it does so.
Though you, dear reader, may not yet have heard about it, the WalMucketeyMucks have gotten wind of plans by their “associates” (hah!) across the country to walk off the job this Friday in protest of crappy wages, non-existent benefits, intimidation, and management stifling of attempts to organize themselves into a what Walmart should already be treating them as: A force that can force the planet-raping retailer to its knees.
Walmart workers would likely have unionized many months ago if this White House – at the urging of the Clintonite now-mayor of Chicago - hadn’t backed down on EFCA (that’s said with tongue firmly in cheek, of course - since this White House never really got its back up over it).
And now Walmart - the world’s best-known purveyor of goods produced in offshore sweatshops, and considered by many to have gone into groceries so its American workers could “spend” the food stamps those workers still require to make ends meet in Walmart stores - is asking the National Labor Relations Board, a body charged in 1935 with enabling the union movement and ending unfair labor practices, to protect it? Really?!
Let’s see the silver-tounged leader of the free world talk his way around this one.
Photo by Neon Tommy under a Creative Commons Share-Alike License on Flickr
10 Comments
This is truly absurd! Walmart is clutching at straws, trying to convince the NLRB that there have been 30 consecutive days of picketing without a formal call for union representation– a blatant lie. Fortunately, the NLRB is a little less anti-union now than it was under G. W. Bush’s Secretary of Labor, and is unlikely to do Walmart’s bidding in this instance.
If a majority of the workers staged even a one day sick out on Friday the entire corporation would be brought to its knees and who was really the boss would become instantly clear as daylight.
If only.
You’re waaaaay more confident of this than I am, Anti. But thanks for the comment!
Obama has proved repeatedly he is NOT the workers’ friend, and even did something last Labor Day which no Democratic Party presidential nominee has done, to my knowledge, during my 53 years on the rock: He skipped the Detroit Labor Day parade and sent a proxy (Biden) in his place.
That the
people who profit on the backs of the workers in the name of protecting themRich Trumkas of the world have refused to call out this fully nude emperor of the employed only points to the totality of his and his party’s sellout.Here’s hoping the only thing trampled at Walmarts across the nation this Friday is the behemoth’s 2012 profits.
Thanks for the artwork, moderation person :)
Wal-Mart workers take home so little pay that the vast majority of them are eligible for food stamps and Medicaid, yet most of the Wal-Mart shoppers I know condemn such recipients as “lazy” or “losers” while bragging about how much they “saved” by shopping at Wal-Mart rather than a local grocer.
Another thing Wal-Mart is an expert at is making maximum profits off of the Welfare-to-Work Tax Credit, where they are reimbursed by American taxpayers for up to 9 months worth of wages paid to employees who were receiving any kind of public assistance at the time they were hired. Of course, after that time passes, Wal-Mart deliberately tries to make those same workers’ lives so miserable that they will quit, then rinse, cycle, repeat. That last process is called “churning.” I call it a manifestation of evil that should have been abolished by the 13th Amendment, or free labor, or slavery of a kind.
Then throw in the fact that Wal-Mart usually opens new stores only after they get agreements from local governments that Wal-Mart will collect and KEEP sales taxes for a number of years, and, well, you get the picture.
Wal-Mart and other retailers who follow those practices just have no redeeming social value. And neither does a federal, state, or local government that allows them to keep it up, and the corporate media that does not report on them. Disgusting.
I suppose those Wal-Mart workers who will at least get the Blue Flu on Black Friday have figured out that they really have nothing to lose. People and the media should support them, but all I’ve heard are hopes that it won’t be too bad or righteous indignation at ungrateful employees who propose disrupting the holy ritual of Christmas shopping.
Barf.
Thanks for posting this important story, Anthony. Recc’d.
Thanks OB. Since I put this up yesterday ominous signs have come from NLRB.
Failure by NLRB to support the strikers in this will leave no doubt that the last, limp vestige of official protection for the rights of workers is happy to support their oppressers.
Wow, my Barbarian – excellent rant! Wish that I could rec your comment!
And of course highly rec’d, Anthony Noel, for this most excellent diary entry!
Thanks!
Thanks DiE :)
What he said. You could cut the evil with a knife. A big serrated knife.