Change to Win on Wal-Mart’s Political Intimidation

Change to Win is a coalition of unions and union members committed to restoring the American Dream for a new generation of workers – wages that can support a family, affordable health care, a secure retirement, and the opportunity for the future. They are calling on Wal-Mart to stop its shameful practice of worker intimidation.

Wal-Mart: Playing Politics, Playing Workers [Change to Win Press Release]

WASHINGTON, D.C. – A Wall Street Journal article today exposed that Wal-Mart is using mandatory meetings with its employees in seven states to tout its political message, warning them not to vote for Democrats in the November elections for fear of new legislation that would make it easier for workers to organize unions. The WSJ reported that according to those who attended these meetings, the message was that voting for Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama would be tantamount to inviting unions in. The following is a statement from Change to Win executive director Chris Chafe in response.

“In an election season driven by the desire for change and a demand by working families for better jobs, better wages, pension security and health care for all Americans, it should come as no surprise that Wal-Mart is weighing-in heavily – and possibly illegally – with its employees over the choices they face this November. Wal-Mart’s tactics are designed to intimidate their employees and discourage them from considering choices that would strengthen their voices on the job and bring tangible change for all American workers.

“Wal-Mart’s track record is clear. When workers try to organize a union, they are met with internal intimidation campaigns and illegal firings. Where workers succeed in gaining a voice on job, their departments are eliminated or their stores are permanently closed. It should be no surprise that Wal-Mart would stretch the limits of the law in an attempt to deny their workers’ rights and kill the Employee Free Choice Act. The company knows what all union workers know: workers in unions earn 29 percent higher wages on average, are 62 percent more likely to have employer health coverage, and four times more likely to have a pension.

“Shame on Wal-Mart. The industry leader’s attempts to skirt the law, and use scare tactics to alter the outcome of the election is nothing less than disgraceful.”

Posted by Alex Goldschmidt on Monday, August 04, 2008

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COMMENTS

Give me a break, this is clearly a union slant on this story or situation. If infact WalMart is as a company telling their employees how they feel about a canadate, so what....they have the right to do so..

Ray Pursifull in Sarasota,Florida
Monday, August 04 at 04:36 PM

Ad Exaggerates Obama’s Credentials

Friday, August 1, 2008 8:41 AM

By: Kenneth R. Timmerman Article Font Size

Sen. Barack Obama claims in a new campaign ad to have “reached out” to Republicans in Congress to launch a major new program to “lock down loose nuclear weapons,” when in fact the legislation he helped pass authorized the Bush administration to maintain and expand an initiative pioneered by John Bolton to help foreign countries stop shipments of weapons of mass destruction components from reaching rogue states such as Iran.

In the campaign ad, titled “America’s Leadership,” the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee says, “The single most important national security threat we face is the threat of nuclear weapons falling into the hands of terrorists. What I did was reach out to Senator Dick Lugar, Republican, to help lock down loose nuclear weapons.”

An on-screen caption provides the details. “On the Foreign Relations Committee, Obama Passed a Law . . . To Keep Nuclear Weapons Out Of Terrorists’ Hands.”

However, the bill mentioned in the ad — Public Law 109-472, signed into law by President Bush on Jan. 11, 2007 — was introduced by Lugar in late September 2006 without co-sponsors and not as a result of Lugar’s discussions with Obama and was voted out of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee without a hearing.

In his speech to unveil the new measures, Lugar said he was “introducing legislation today at the request of the executive branch and will be seeking unanimous consent to request its passage as soon as possible.”

Aides to Lugar tell Newsmax that Obama and his staff helped craft a key portion of the final bill that was introduced as a stand-alone measure on April 6, 2006 with broad bipartisan support.

The April 2006 bill, known as the Cooperative Proliferation Detection, Interdiction Assistance, and Conventional Threat Reduction Act of 2006, was later folded into a broader legislative package for the State Department that became law.

The main feature of the stand-alone bill required the president to report to Congress within 180 days “on proliferation and interdiction assistance” to other nations.

In a series of “findings,” the Lugar-Obama act applauded the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI), unveiled by then-Undersecretary of State John Bolton in 2003, for having won the cooperation of “more than 70 countries” in assisting U.S. efforts to detect and interdict shipments of WMD materials and components.

“I’m glad Senator Obama supports President Bush’s PSI,” Bolton told Newsmax. “But he definitely was not present at the creation.”

The best-known success of the PSI occurred in October 2003, when authorities in Germany, Italy, and Indonesia worked together with the United States to intercept the ship BBC China en route to Libya with what turned out to be a disguised uranium enrichment plant on board.

Lugar was quick to praise Obama when the freshman from Illinois joined him in an August 2005 fact-finding mission to Ukraine and Azerbaijan, where they toured former Soviet nuclear weapons sites.

“I was particularly pleased that Barack chose Nunn-Lugar [law for threat reduction sponsored by Sam Nunn and Lugar] as the subject of his first foreign travel as a senator,” Lugar told the Council on Foreign Relations shortly after that trip.

Since the start of the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Program in 1991, Congress has provided $400 million per year on average to help Russia and other states in the Former Soviet Union to dismantle nuclear weapons, delivery systems, and chemical and biological weapons.

In a major foreign policy address at the University of Denver on May 27, Sen. McCain expressed support for continued funding of the Nunn-Lugar programs, as well as strengthening of the Bush administration’s Proliferation Security Initiative, the program Obama claims to have co-authored with Lugar “to lock down loose nuclear weapons.”

Onward Christian Soldiers in
Monday, August 04 at 11:54 PM

Does it matter to anyone that John McCain doesn’t know how to use a computer?

Ken V in Texas
Tuesday, August 05 at 07:42 AM

Or US Navy aircraft?

Gene in
Tuesday, August 05 at 10:55 AM

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