Wal-Mart Rolls Out The Astroturf Carpet

Just read this in todays New Yrok Times: “And there is growing evidence that the negative publicity is hurting the company. An internal Wal-Mart report, prepared in 2004, found that 2 percent to 8 percent of Wal-Mart consumers surveyed have ceased shopping at the chain because of “negative press they have heard.”

Wal-Mart can’t hide the reality of their bad business practices.

Looks like rather than improving it’s poor treatment of workers and communitites Wal-Mart is doing all it can to make itself look better. Imagine the improvements that could be made if WalMarts top brass spent half as much time and money worrying about it’s workers rather than it’s public image.

How is this any different from the tactics unions use to add to their membership? In fact unions use far more egregious tactics. In fact there was a lawsuit involving a union in which union reps illegally cross checked employee license plates at a business they were looking to unionize. Then used that data (names and addresses) to conduct unsolicited visitations at the repective employees homes.

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05361/628543.stm

“When a union organizer showed up unexpectedly at Elizabeth Pichler’s Bethlehem, Pa., home on a cold Saturday afternoon in February 2004, she shut the front door on him.

“It annoyed me that anybody could go and get information about me and come to my house,” says Ms. Pichler, a 64-year-old receptionist at uniform company Cintas Corp.

A handful of co-workers at the company’s Emmaus, Pa., plant were also annoyed about visits to their homes and complained to their managers. They eventually learned that the union had traced their home addresses from license plates in the company parking lot. That made them angry enough to meet with lawyers provided by the company and then file a suit in June 2004 alleging their privacy rights had been violated.

It’s highly unusual for workers to bring a lawsuit against a union trying to organize, and the case is threatening to send ripples through the labor movement. Labor experts regard the joint campaign by Unite Here and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters to organize laundry workers and truck drivers at Cincinnati-based Cintas as the most important current union drive apart from the battle to persuade Wal-Mart Stores Inc. to let unions represent its workers.”

“This is a lawsuit brought by our employees to vindicate their privacy rights,” she said. “Many employees came to us to complain about the union coming to their home and in some instances frightening their families.”

“Workers in the lawsuit said their rights had been violated under the little-known Driver’s Privacy Protection Act of 1994, which prohibits the disclosure and use of personal information obtained through motor vehicle records, with a limited number of exceptions, including use by courts or law-enforcement agencies. This past June, U.S. District Judge Stewart Dalzell granted class-action status to the case and said that any worker whose license plate allowed the union to obtain personal information from motor vehicle records between July 1, 2002 and Aug. 2, 2004, could stand to receive $2,500 in damages for each time the union used it to make home visits or mail materials, for example.

Paul Rosen, a partner of law firm Spector Gadon & Rosen in Philadelphia, which is representing the workers, said more than 1,000 Cintas workers will be members of the class.

According to legal documents in the case, union organizers admitted to gaining access to motor vehicle records from Pennsylvania and eight other states with the aid of a private investigator. After Judge Dalzell ruled that only 12 plaintiffs could pursue legal action against the Teamsters, the union, without admitting wrongdoing, reached a settlement with them for a total of $6,000. The liability facing Unite Here, excluding punitive damages, will depend largely on the size of the class and the number of times the union tried to contact workers, but labor law experts said the liability could rise to tens of millions of dollars. “Based on the evidence adduced so far, Unite faces an uphill battle to avoid liability,” wrote Judge Dalzell in a May 2005 opinion.”

Wal-marts “membership drive” is not illegal.

Arcticle about how a union hired unemployed temps to picket., Ironically the union offered these workers neither a living wage nor health coverage.

http://www.lasvegasweekly.com/2005/09/08/awsi1.html

“The shade from the Wal-Mart Neighborhood Market sign is minimal around noon; still, six picketers squeeze their thermoses and Dasani bottles onto the dirt below, trying to keep their water cool. They’re walking five-hour shifts on this corner at Stephanie Street and American Pacific Drive in Henderson—anti-Wal-Mart signs propped lazily on their shoulders, deep suntans on their faces and arms—with two 15-minute breaks to run across the street and use the washroom at a gas station.

Periodically one of them will sit down in a slightly larger slice of shade under a giant electricity pole in the intersection. Four lanes of traffic rush by, some drivers honk in support, more than once someone has yelled, “assholes!” but mostly, they’re ignored.

They’re not union members; they’re temp workers employed through Allied Forces/Labor Express by the union—United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW). They’re making $6 an hour, with no benefits; it’s 104 F, and they’re protesting the working conditions inside the new Wal-Mart grocery store.”

“We had one gal out here in her 40s, and she had a heat stroke. I kept making her sit down, I noticed she was stepping (staggering), and I made her sit in the shade,” Greer said. She went home sick after her shift and didn’t ever return to work.

Another woman, Greer said, had huge blisters on her feet and he took her inside to the Wal-Mart pharmacy. The pharmacist recommended some balm, and Greer bought it for her. Since then, he said, other picketers have purchased the balm for their blisters inside the Wal-Mart they are protesting. “

Wal-mart’s little campaign doesn’t look too bad now huh? ;-)

Wonders! You never cease to amaze me.

Its not that we are trying to say that WM is perfect, its that the unions are not perfect either and they use stong arm/illegal tactics to get things done too.  Don’t criticize WM till you clean up your act.

Wondersneversease -

I wonde why there is no rebuttal to your posts??  I have noticed that when a WM supporter posts “the facts,” one of two things happens…
1) the post is deleted by WMW
2) there is NO response from the WMWers.....they just call you names or fling insults…

Well,
sorry I didn;t respond to any of the union bashing that the pro-walmart folks like so much. I’m still not going to respond to it because all they are trying to do is deflect the conversation away from Wal-Mart and it’s bad behavior.

And sorry I don’t post all that often but I have a job that keeps me pretty busy and I don’t have time to post everyday several times a day like the pro-walmart folks (Which does sometimes make me wonder if they are part of the pro-Wal-Mart Astroturf machine).

Gee, I’m shocked, refusing to respond to something that Wal-Mart did by deflecting it onto the unions, then saying, “No one responded to this.” in the same way that they refused to respond to the charges against Wal-Mart.  Here’s the difference, I support efforts to unionize Wal-Mart, but I won’t make excuses or defend union corruption, like those who support Wal-Mart make excuses or defend (or completely ignore and deflect) the continuous, unethical, centrally decided upon actions of Wal-Mart.  There is just no way to ethically defend this practice mentioned in the story, whether it’s legal or not.  It’s similar to another propaganda tactic used in Michigan recently by Republicans to try to end Affirmative Action by having people sign a “civil rights bill” that was designed to look like something that it wasn’t.  I’ll say it again, if Wal-Mart would just spend some of that money on improving their business practices instead of pretending and lying and utilizing propaganda techniques, then they wouldn’t be having these problems.  Their public image is the result of their own policies and actions and a good percentage of the public won’t tolerate that kind of thing, period.

What part of voluntary is not understood? Wal-mart does not pressure individuals to sign up unlike unions which actually have been know to manipulate union memberships by agressively pursuing potential canidates through illegal means and coersive tactics.

Here is an arcticle illustrating those agressive and and/or illegal activities

http://www.johnlocke.org/news_columns/display_story.html?id=1701

And surely you’ve heard of unions bypassing the secret ballot in favor of coercing workers into signing union agreement cards

http://www.capitalresearch.org/pubs/pdf/x3760043186.pdf#s
earch=’aggressive union tactics’

I can say without a doubt that unions are far more agressive in this area .

So, in other words - when walmart pulls dirty tricks it’s ok, yet when people use their own tricks against them it’s suddenly wrong?????

THIS pisses me off!!!!!!!!
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On Saturday, four such workers were posted outside the two entrances to a Wal-Mart in Marietta, just outside Atlanta. As shoppers entered the store, they were encouraged to join WFWM.

##Their immediate reward was to be enrolled in a drawing to win an expense-paid party##,
one of a series to be offered for Memorial Day, July Fourth, Labor Day, Thanksgiving and New Year’s Eve.
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So walmart has to resort to BRIBING people to stick up for them??