The drumbeat of “news” around Wal-Mart’s entry into Chicago’s retail market continued yesterday, as the local media continued to print Wal-Mart’s press release promising jobs city-wide and wages that start at 50 cents above the minimum wage. And Mayor Daley demanded answers from labor leaders in Chicago for their opposition to the mega-retailer’s urban expansion. “They’re up to the highest point that no other retailer pays at the beginning salary. And they don’t pay that in the suburban area. No other retailer has gone that far,” Daley said, before launching into a tirade that Fran Spielman noted hinted at playing the race card, as the mayor did four years ago when he vetoed the so-called big-box ordinance.

“Why is it only in the African-American and Hispanic [neighborhoods of Chicago] that you cannot build a Wal-Mart? We built one on the West Side and no one complains about it. Those people who work there don’t complain. Those ex-offenders don’t complain. … That’s sales tax for us [for] public transportation, schools and parks,” he said. “If it’s built in a suburb, there’s not one controversy. Not one controversy dealing with the development. And why is it now there’s a controversy? It’s in the African-American community. You ask me.”

via Daley’s Wal-Mart Drama Continues – Chicagoist.

Wal-Mart like most chain stores when they come into a neighborhood do more harm than good. Greg LeRoy has written all about this. Also, there is controversy when a Wal-Mart is built in suburbs all over America. People have stood up and fought back. There are people in Manhattan still fighting the entry of Wal-Mart into that borough. Lastly fifty cents above the minimum wage is not a living wage. Besides the sales tax revenue is Wal-Mart going to pay any other type of corporate taxes or is the city of Chicago giving them a break on those?

The American Booksellers Association asked the Justice Department’s antitrust division to investigate “predatory” pricing of books sold by Amazon.com Inc., Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and Target Corp.

“We ask that the Department of Justice investigate practices by Amazon.com, Walmart and Target that we believe constitute illegal predatory pricing that is damaging to the book industry and harmful to consumers,” nine ABA board members wrote in a letter addressed to Christine Varney, the assistant attorney general for the antitrust division.

via Booksellers Seek Probe on ‘Predatory’ Amazon.com, Target Prices – Bloomberg.com.

This is just like everything else a big corporation would do when competing in the marketplace. They move in then undercut the competition with lower prices. When the competition is gone you will then see prices raised. It is unjust. Although with the online element of Amazon I would gather that their predatory pricing is capable of major damage.

I wasn’t going to blog about this but then the audacity of Wal-Mart really got me thinking. It turns out that the United Food and Commercial Workers Union in Canada have been running a very successful website at walmartworkerscanada.ca. The reason why I think this site is so great is because of what Wade Rathke in his latest book talks about and that is workers organizing through minority unionism and worker centers. While not all Wal-Mart stores in Canada and certainly none of the ones in the US have recognized unions via a government approved election. This still doesn’t mean that workers can’t organize outside of the workplace and there’s nothing any corporation especially Wal-Mart can do to stop them.

So Wal-Mart is trying to thwart this website because of what it represents and what it is doing and that is organizing workers against Wal-Mart’s will. Sure they’ve closed down stores who have tried to unionize the “normal” way (in Canada) and have fought attempts via the NLRA process in the US. However, this sort of organizing is something that is harder to stop.

The Starbucks Union is built on a similar idea. Also, before the Smithfield plant in Tar Hell, NC was finally unionized by the UFCW in the United States they too implemented direct action and minority unionism tactics for years. This sort of organizing can also be seen with the AFL-CIO’s Working America and WashTech.

In the end Wal-Mart should know that you can’t really take down a website. If they have to change some things in order to not infringe on their “trademark” then I’m sure it would be done. Also, worst case scenario do not think that a website can’t go underground! If people in Iran can find ways to organize and use the Internet as well as in Burma. Do you really think you’re going to stop the Canadians?

So Wal-Mart got a lot of press last week for the announcement that it would be creating something it called a sustainability index.

Walmart today announced plans to develop a worldwide sustainable product index during a meeting with 1,500 of its suppliers, associates and sustainability leaders at its home office. The index will establish a single source of data for evaluating the sustainability of products.

“Customers want products that are more efficient, that last longer and perform better,” said Mike Duke, Walmart’s president and CEO. “And increasingly they want information about the entire lifecycle of a product so they can feel good about buying it. They want to know that the materials in the product are safe, that it was made well and that it was produced in a responsible way.

You have to give credit to their PR people (Edelman?). I mean this is one class A PR effort. When I heard about this earlier in the week I honestly did not really care to think much about it. I figured at least they were trying to do something good for a change. Now that I’ve read Philip Mattera’s surgical smackdown I now have a change of mind!

Rating products is a good idea. It’s already being done by various non-profit organizations that bring independence and legitimacy to the process. Wal-Mart, by contrast, brings a lot of negative baggage. In recent years, Wal-Mart has used a purported commitment to environmental responsibility to draw attention away from its abysmal record with regard to labor relations, wage and hour regulations, and employment discrimination laws. It also wants us to forget its scandalous tax avoidance policies and its disastrous impact on small competitors. The idea that a company with a business model based on automobile-dependent customers and exploitative supplier factories on the other side of the globe can be considered sustainable should be dismissed out of hand. Yet Wal-Mart is skilled at greenwashing and is, alas, being taken seriously by many observers who should know better.

They are indeed very skilled at their messaging and spin. They’ve made it into a science really. I honestly get tired of blogging about Wal-Mart but when you’re the biggest corporation in the world doing so many bad things I guess you make good copy.

I think Lee Scott is still infected from the Wal-Mart Kool-Aid.

"The answer was, of course, one place I would have liked to have done more is helping people understand that Wal-Mart jobs, retail jobs in general, are good jobs," Scott said.

"They pay well and they offer extraordinary opportunities. But the fact is, you just can’t do everything."

Retail jobs are not yet good jobs. If you have worked for Wal-Mart and other retailers in the past ten or even twenty years you’ll know why. Personally I hate retail and sales work but that’s just me. I realize that they can be good jobs for many people if new laws concerning the federal minimum wage and worker organizing are passed.

So I know the Wal-Mart assistant manager has since apologized for this but I still find it disturbing. Obviously this mentality came from somewhere.

When an assistant manager emerged from the store, she asked family members to fill out an accident form. Asked to call 911, she allegedly refused, saying it was against company policy, Rita Mixter said.

Obviously Bentonville is saying that this is not the case and that the manger was wrong. However, the manager didn't just pull this out of thin air. There must have been an understanding coming down from the store manager that calling 911 was bad for business or something. It's just like how changing employee hours so that they don't get overtime is illegal but it still happens all the time. It would appear there is one policy for the public to see and another just for employees to follow.

Posted via email from Jason’s posterous

I actually thought that unionized and Wal-Mart were two words that could never be put together but obviously I was wrong.

Saint-Hyacinthe boasts the only unionized Wal-Mart store in North America with a contract after a Quebec arbitrator imposed one yesterday.

Both Wal-Mart Canada Corp. and the United Food and Commercial Workers union are claiming victory after reading Alain Corriveau’s 46-page ruling.

This is significant because Wal-Mart actually closed down the last store that unionized.

It was Corriveau who last summer imposed a collective agreement on Wal-Mart for nine employees at the store’s Tire & Lube garage in Gatineau, calling for 33-per-cent wage hikes for entry-level auto workers.

Wal-Mart subsequently closed that garage and another unionized store in Jonquière before contracts were negotiated, blaming union demands for making those operations unprofitable.

The union is awaiting a Supreme Court of Canada ruling on the closing of the Jonquière store in 2005, four years after it opened.

And the struggle continues but at least there’s a small win.

Wal-Mart Watch also has a website where Wal-Mart employees are encouraged to speak out against the corporation.

Hat tip to Cyber Steward for pointing out this SNL skit. Also Kudos to Saturday Night Live for having the guts to do a skit like this.

CEH – Consumer Watchdog Finds Illegal Jewelry

Oakland, CA-The Center for Environmental Health (CEH) announced today that it has found high lead levels in jewelry purchased from major retailers, including WalMart, Banana Republic, Lane Bryant, Express, Anchor Blue, Abercrombie and Fitch, and Longs Drugs (now part of CVS Caremark pharmacies). The California Attorney General yesterday sent a notice of violation of the jewelry law to WalMart, and has recently notified four of the other retailers (Lane Bryant, Express, Anchor Blue, and Longs) about their illegal jewelry. CEH is notifying Banana Republic today, and recently notified Abercrombie and Fitch that their jewelry violates the state’s Prop 65 consumer protection law.

I wonder if these corporations even realized that there were state laws in California regulating lead levels in jewelry?

A surface coating on a WalMart store-brand green frog charm for a child’s necklace tested as high as 37% lead, more than 600 times over the standard set by the state law that was developed from CEH’s landmark January 2006 settlement with the jewelry industry. The surface coating has variable lead levels, with some pieces testing at more than three times the legal limit.

Will any of these corporations have any comment about this?