Debate: Wal-Mart

[SteveDallas]

Retail stores trying to keep out unions is no news. My wife worked at Borders for some a few years back and there was a movement afoot to unionize that was resisted tooth and nail by the company. Ironically, by the time the vote was carried out--the union won--most of the people agitating for it had turned over. The actual negotiation of the contract could, for all I know, still be ongoing today some 5 years later. (A lot of these people were morons IMNSHO... they thought having a union would cure every single problem they had, and a lot of the agitation was based on "they're exploiting me because I have a master's degree and they're not paying me well enough." I was rolling my eyes & thinking, "dude, you're a retail clerk.. you could have five PhDs and a Nobel Prize and you'd be getting the same pay.) So while it might not be nice of Wal-Mart to try to suppress the unions, they aren't alone in trying.

I've never known what to make of all the labor abuse allegations. Yes, unclocked overtime is bad, but I'm hard pressed to say it's worse than the company that chops its workforce and whose president then preens about how efficient and lean they are while his staff are on the verge of nervous breakdowns because each of them is doing work that 2 or 3 people used to do. Every company gets away with what it can. If you're going to hang Wal-Mart out to dry, don't leave everybody else behind.