The war against Wal-Mart
Atlantic Monthly (the click-through just gives you a chance to subscribe to the magazine to read the whole article, unfortunately) has an interestng article on Andrew Stern, the union leader who's used his big Service Employees International Union to bedevil Wal-Mart. It's not, as the article notes, about unionizing Wal-Mart, though it is about protecting working people of all sorts. Excerpt:
Stern seemed to take a Bart Simpson– like delight at the spectacle of a flummoxed symbol of authority whose current chaos he’d helped devise. Spending around $5 million annually, Wal-Mart Watch has pushed anti-Wal-Mart laws in dozens of states, leaked damaging internal documents, and helped make the company known as much for its exploitation of government health plans as for its business acumen. Over the last year, and very much against its will, Wal-Mart has been moved to the center of the national debate over health care, and Stern has drawn one step closer to what he’s really after.
In Stern’s thinking, if the world’s largest company could be coaxed or bullied into publicly favoring a national health-care policy, here’s how things might play out: a rush of other companies already beset by health-care costs and accustomed to mimicking Wal-Mart would fall in line, putting business on the same side as labor. Governors burdened with soaring Medicaid costs might also join in. The pressure on the federal government would be overwhelming. Stern, in other words, is seeking to turn the Wal-Mart effect to his own ends, harnessing it to transform health-care policy just as it routinely transforms business policy. It’s an audacious plan…
Comments
Have this tattoo'd on your left forearm:
Save your hometown
Boycott Wal-Mart!
Posted by: Louie | May 2, 2006 02:47 PM
Where is the article? Do you have a link? Thanks!
Posted by: webster | May 2, 2006 03:21 PM
And the AT wonders why some don't consider it a legit newspaper.
Tell us why you will print every negative story and rumor you can find on Wal-Mart. But when Wal-Mart is found not guilty or culpable in something you don't print it or give it a thread?
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060502/ap_on_bi_ge/wal_mart_suit
ARK. BLOG 1) we don't run every negative story there is about Wal-Mart. Don't possibly have the room. We look for thematic stories. 2) this one is a routine, run-of-the-mill negligence case arising from a story hundreds of miles away. Wal-Mart has literally hundreds of them pending at any given moment, many of them undoubtedly without merit. We don't run them when they're filed and almost never when they're decided.
Posted by: andyouwonder | May 2, 2006 04:16 PM
When I started boycotting the evil giant six years ago, it was the result of an extensive research project. What I discovered just floored me, as I had shopped there all my life. My mom probably spent $2,000 a month there since the first one opened in Arkansas until she died in 1999.
My personal decision to never shop there again did not seem like enough, so I began to educate my family and friends and anyone else who would listen with an open mind about WalMart and their practices.
It probably won't matter in the end - I firmly believe that evenutually WalMart will take over everything - but 50 or 60 of us don't step foot in the place.
Gotta do what you gotta do. I sure sleep better at night.
Posted by: paula | May 2, 2006 10:06 PM
Paula Baby...you are paying to much for your tampons and hormon pills if you ain't shopping Wal-Mart....quit complaining and save some dough....
Posted by: Anonymous | May 2, 2006 10:22 PM
Learn to spell, anon. And don't call me Baby.
Posted by: Paula | May 3, 2006 12:12 AM
Walmart Stuttgart has sunk to the lowest level. As a political candidate I set up at the front of their parking lot for Ballot Petition Signatures. (they are after all being subsidized by our tax dollars) The manager was alerted and within minutes was in his SUV at my end of the parking lot. I was given a quick cease and leave order. He recognized that our taxes and city maintained the lot. He was concerned for his stockholders who would not want such things happening against their policy, Once again Americanism denied.
Ballot Access denied.
PS This was after I was ran off of two college campuses in the name of State Law.
Posted by: Harvey Edwards | May 3, 2006 12:23 AM