Commerce
Home Page

Commerce
work in multinational
companies

Wal-Mart pages

UFCW

Canadian Wal-Mart workers in Jonquiere were thrown out on the street when they joined UFCW and wanted to negotiate a collective agreement. The company's aggressive behaviour and refusal to recognise the fundamental rights of its workers have sparked strong reactions among the American public, and the movement to wake up Wal-Mart is growing day by day. Even Smiley's mouth corners are now pointing down.

Is it a downward spiral or already a free fall? Wal-Mart's costly public relations campaign is turning sour as one disastrous mistake follows another. At the same time, UFCW-supported WakeUpWalMart.com is scoring a huge success with its bus tour through the United States, and ever more people are rallying up behind the calls for Wal-Mart to change.

First, the company's paid PR-front ambassador Andrew Young had to leave, after accusing Jewish, Korean and Arab shopkeepers of exploiting their African-American customers by selling them inferior goods. Now, a prominent member of the same front 'organisation' - Working Families for Wal-Mart - has labelled Wal-Mart-critical democrats 'hezbocrats', in an ill-advised reference to Hezbollah.

The real Walmartization problems can of course not be resolved through propaganda campaigns, as also WakeUpWalMart.com's Paul Blank says in his comments. This is about real issues - low wages, insufficient health insurance, denial of fundamental workers' and trade union rights. Human rights violations, as the Norwegian government said when its huge oil funds got rid of their Wal-Mart stock. Real problems call for real solutions, not the kind of make-up campaigns that the managers in Bentonville have embarked upon.

WakeUpWalMart.com's Smiley bus tour success makes Wal-Mart nervous

WakeUpWalMart.com has now been on the road for 25 days, with ten more to go. Wherever 'Smiley the Bus' has stopped, political and community leaders - and ordinary people as well - have joined the calls for the retail behemoth to wake up, face its social responsibility and start treating its workers in a respectful and decent way.

UNI Commerce affiliate UFCW is not an external force working for Wal-Mart to change. No - this is the union which will be the voice of the 1.5 million Wal-Mart workers in North America when they finally are able to exercise their basic human right to organise in a trade union. With a broad support for its workers' rights fast building up, the Bentonville multinational is nearing the end of its anti-union road, which seems to make its management increasingly nervous.

'Working Families for Wal-Mart' is a construction that the retail multinational has put in place to try to divert attention from its real behaviour. Employing former civil rights leader, Atlanta mayor and President Bill Clinton's UN ambassador Andrew Young as its spokesman was supposed to be a coup for the company. Instead, it backfired, badly, and Young had to leave, which at the end was surely good also for himself.

When Ambassador Young then left, the regrets on the "Working Families for Wal-Mart" were expressed by Courtney Lynch, National Steering Committee Member. Now if anyone still thought that this was a genuine popular movement and not a company front, this should remove all the doubts. The former military officer is running a consultancy, and among her main clients is Wal-Mart. As the New York Times has correctly described it, Working Families for Wal-Mart was "created and financed by the company to trumpet its accomplishments".

Lack of real arguments sends Wal-Mart out on thin ice

With real arguments in defence of Wal-Mart's behaviour being so scarce, the company's campaign was destined to go wrong and ambassador Young and others soon found themselves on less than stable ground. One can only feel sad that Mr Young got a dent to his fine reputation with this affair - his real problem was less the ill-advised statement about shopkeepers, which will soon be forgiven, but much more the mistake he made when selling his services to Wal-Mart's highly questionable propaganda campaign.

Now, Herman Cain - a conservative Georgia businessman and another leader of 'Working Families for Wal-Mart' - scored what can only be described as a new low point in the company's increasingly desperate campaign to fight off growing criticism. If Cain thought that labelling leading democratic politicians as 'hezbocrats' for their criticism of Wal-Mart would somehow make the public associate them with Hezbollah, he surely got it wrong.

Wal-Mart defender's Hezbollah-reference angers political America

Senator John Kerry was among the many political leaders who reacted strongly against the attacks from the Wal-Mart defenders' camp, which he rightly says are directed not only against Democrat politicians but also against working people who "ask tough questions of big corporations":

- I won't stand for the 'Swiftboating' of working people and Democrats who ask tough questions of big corporations. Wal-Mart has a choice to make. Either denounce the unacceptable and offensive attacks made in their defense, or admit that they represent a proxy in Wal-Mart's lavish public relations war against its workers, the former democratic presidential candidate said.

- Make no mistake, those who push and prod Wal-Mart to be a decent corporate citizen are standing up for the American worker. Decent wages and affordable health care aren't too much to ask for from the largest employer in the United States. Fifty-four percent of Wal-Mart's employees are not covered under the company's health insurance plan and 46 percent of the children of Wal-Mart's employees are either uninsured or on taxpayer funded public assistance. That's over 700,000 Americans and their families who have been told by their employer they're on their own. Americans expect better than that from a company with $11 billion in profit and that's what this broad coalition is fighting for, Senator Kerry added, quoted by AXcessNews .

"Only through real positive change will Wal-Mart become a better company"

In a WakeUpWalMart.com reaction to Mr Cain's attack, the movement's director Paul Blank calls on Wal-Mart to "immediately and publicly denounce Cain's comments and, in the same manner as Ambassador Young, immediately ask for his resignation from the Wal-Mart group".

Paul Blank also asks Wal-Mart to "immediately shut down this pointless attack group, end its association with the cadre of right-wing operatives it currently employs under the made up name of Working Families for Wal-Mart, cast aside its misguided political threats against so many Democratic leaders, and realize that only through real positive change will Wal-Mart become a better company".